My $40,000 mistake

Fear of doing it wrong‍

I will never forget the fear of being a newcomer to mining.

Everyone at some point is ‘new to industry’ or a ‘cleanskin’...or other similar more colourful language.

I had come to mining from a background in law (that’s a longer story). I had completed my ‘extensive’ two week induction and very soon found myself on site.

(As it turns out I was part of a long term effort to try to attract people to mining outside of the industry in an effort to reverse the trend of long term skills shortages - clearly they were casting a wide net.)

Technical skills were not something that was included in those inductions. They insisted that those would be best delivered in the field.

But let me tell you, everyone was flat chat. Nobody had time for me. 12.5 hour shifts go by extremely fast on site as there was always more that needed to be done.

‍

Whilst everyone had access to manuals, the way I was shown how to do things was more..’tribal’. Typically I learned things exactly how they were shown, and it soon became clear that every process had a variation between any two operators. 

All of this compounded my fear - other cleanskins seemed more confident - but I learned later this was either cover for their own feelings or worse, they genuinely thought they knew everything (which presented a different type of risk).

A valid fear

This all culminated for me with one interaction in particular.

The task, involving a wireless trailer, seemed simple enough. I identified all the hazards (BMASafe aka Take 5 completed) and passed out to do the task. Ready to go.

The short version is that there was a step where I needed to loosen a winch bolt. I had the OEM manual. It was printed out and covered in coal dust, but I had it with me.

There were two bolts in front of me. I glanced at the manual. I remember the thought ‘if I was at home, I would have YouTubed this’.

Murphy's law - the bolt I loosened was not the winch but the pivot point for the mast.

The damage totalled about $40,000 - thankfully no risk to life or limb (the BMASafe meant a clearance zone control was at least put in place), but a pretty easily avoided event if a basic different choice was made on the tools.

For my generational learning style, a 45 second video would have meant I didn’t have to inaccurately trawl through 12 pages of technical pages. Yes in that instance I still should have read the manual, but I didn’t in part because of its form factor.

Boeing (now a HINDSITE customer) and the CSIRO did a study that found that when a physical manual and how-to information is more than two meters away from where a task is being performed, a frontline technician introduces a significant risk of errors and variances to how that task is being performed.

100,000 choices like mine are at risk of being made at every site, every day.

Everyone knows the 10,000 hours it takes to master something, but let me tell you the first thousand are rough when you are on site and surrounded by hazards. Not to mention needing to know hundreds of processes as you go about your day once you reach proficiency.

Thinking back to that Boeing study, why is it that we expect everyone (juniors and experienced) to have all of these regular and irregular processes in their head, or ask for assistance over a radio?

HINDSITE is a beautiful thing

HINDSITE was started to help the Liams of the world.

We’re helping METS, advanced manufacturers and utilities companies give their frontline technicians access to skills and processes in a just-in-time fashion.

Learn more about how we’re doing it at hindsiteind.com/servicedelivery.