Each edition, we feature someone who knows their field inside and out, sharing practical lessons you won’t find in a manual. This month we hear from Dr Timothy Vangsness, a geotechnical engineer and cofounder of HazView.
Hazard management on a mine site rarely fails because people don’t care. It fails because communication breaks down.
A known hazard can exist, with known controls, yet still become operationally invisible. When hazards and controls are communicated primarily through shift-based paperwork, text-heavy reporting and a quick pre-start briefing, gaps can appear. Most systems involve multiple touchpoints: pre-start, handover, reporting, distribution and access to information in the field. Any weakness or inconsistency in that chain creates exposure.
The recurring failure modes are consistent across sites.
Visibility: hazards and controls exist, but they are fragmented across plans, reports, spreadsheets, shift notes and inboxes. Crews may rely on one artefact as their “source of truth,” even when critical detail sits elsewhere. Once in the pit, how visible is this information?
Verification: it is difficult to confirm that what is recorded still matches reality in the field after conditions change. Controls can degrade, be removed or become irrelevant without a clear trigger for review.
Accessibility: even where information is accurate, it is not always accessible at the point of work, especially when people are mobile, in dead zones or operating in evolving conditions.
Accountability: once information is copied between systems, reformatted or rewritten, it becomes harder to track changes, approvals and ownership.
This raises a practical question for any hazard reporting system straight out of the acts and regulations: is it suitable and adequate, or is it simply ticking a box?
One of the biggest contributors to communication breakdown is interpretation load. When hazards and controls are communicated as paragraphs of text, workers are expected to translate complex descriptions into a mental picture while also completing their jobs. Work areas often have multiple hazards present at any point in time which adds to the confusion.
This is an avoidable failure point. Clarity improves when the same information is represented visually in a way that can be understood quickly such as with signage, physical barriers and maps.
Visual hazard management is a straightforward concept: hazards and controls are displayed visually, so workers can immediately see what applies to the area around them and what has changed. The objective is not “more reporting”. It is better hazard communication, faster comprehension and fewer opportunities for hazards and controls to be lost between multiple systems.
A visually driven approach also shifts the hazard management focus towards communication of what’s happening instead of just recording what happened.
That thinking led to HazView, an interactive hazard map built around a simple principle: hazards and controls work better when they are visually communicated and easily accessible. HazView is designed for real-world site conditions, where connectivity is inconsistent and time is limited.
Implementation works best when it starts with a simple operational pain point and builds from there. This is often the shift-based Statutory report that takes hours to complete from memory, or cumbersome checklists that end up in file storage never to be used.
Intersections management is a pain point most sites encounter. Inspectorates have focused heavily on intersections and intersection compliance as they deal with a principal hazard – vehicle interactions. A visual, map-based approach turns intersections into something that can be clearly marked out, recorded, inspected and tracked with all the information in one area as a single source of truth. This improves safety, has everything in one place, and reporting and reconciliation is simplified.
If visual reporting tools are used they have to result in practical outcomes to be adopted. Real data indicates the reporting frequency increases when the output helps the user complete their job, rather than feeling like paperwork for the sake of meeting KPIs. Sites engage when the system makes work easier and safer in practical terms, and this ends up making the sites more money.
After 12 months of use in the field, hazard data on HazView provided a useful reality check. More than 3,000 hazards were logged across that period. Operational hazards dominated (around 60–65%), with blasting and geotechnical hazards each representing a meaningful portion (around 16–18%), and environmental hazards least reported.
Those numbers underline a practical truth: most site risk is driven by day-to-day operational hazards – the frequent, repeatable issues that can become normalised if they are not visible and tracked.
These typically include issues like rough roads, inadequate bunding, pooled water and sim-ops. Prior to the use of a visual reporting tool, the majority of these operational hazards would never have been recorded or looked at again once they were resolved.
Two field learnings sit behind this data.
First, many small hazards are corrected on the spot and never logged. That is positive in the moment, but it removes the ability to see repetition and clustering which could provide early warning trends over time. These smaller hazards and their controls are often only verbally communicated which can create gaps that put workers at risk. If recording hazard data is simple, workers will do it and the insights will follow.
Second, with traditional tools operational hazards are often only captured when they are a high severity and escalated for further review such as a High Potential Incident (HPI) or Potential Life Lost (PL4). These tools have no mechanism for tracking trends and the root causes of these incidents longitudinally.
When hazards are spatially logged, smaller but frequent issues become trackable. Patterns start to show up: repeated locations, repeated types, and the early signs that a risk is trending in the wrong direction.
This is where visual hazard management moves beyond communication into prevention. Modern spatial tools provide a practical pathway to improve hazard communication and can integrate with existing safety management systems rather than replace them. When hazard information is structured and consistently captured, it can be used to monitor critical risks and principal hazards, identify trends and make proactive decisions that avoid incidents before they occur.
The bottom line is hazard management is only as strong as the clarity of its controls where work is happening. If hazards can be “known” but not visible, or controls can disappear between shifts, the system is fragile. Making hazards visible in context is a practical way to make that system harder to break.
| HARD TO LOSE. EASY TO SEE Early in his mining career, Tim watched a known hazard and its controls effectively vanish in the noise of shift reporting and handover. The risk hadn’t changed – only its visibility. That was the turning point: controls only protect people when they stay visible, current and easy to verify where the work is happening. That’s where software developer Dr Samuel Hislop-Lynch came in. Sam had spent years building software where reliability is the whole game – tracking, automation, computer vision and systems that have to keep working when conditions aren’t perfect. Together, they built HazView around one simple principle: make hazards and controls hard to lose and easy to see. Learn more at: hazview.com |
| IN THE KNOW: QUICK TIPS Controls must be visible at the moment of exposure. Recording a hazard after it’s been dealt with doesn’t help anyone. Reduce interpretation wherever possible. If the system relies on workers interpreting long text under pressure, you’re building in failure points. Aim for one source of truth. The more places a hazard “lives”, the more likely someone works off the wrong version. Start simple. Pick one high-focus area (intersections, for example), make it visible and trackable, then build from there. Treat hazard data as an asset. If repeat hazards and patterns can’t be seen across time and area, opportunities to prevent incidents are missed. Keep language and intent clear. Systems stick when framed as making work easier and safer for crews, not surveillance. |
