ABSTRACT
A diverse group of people• . This includes differences in people’s sizes and shapes, physical strengths, motivation, training and education, perceptual and cognitive styles, skills, expertise, and age. Many of these will be further reviewed in this book; however, the important point to make here is that there is no single “one-size-ts-all” categorisation to describe the people working in mining. As will be seen throughout this book, this has consequent implications for mining equipment design and operation. Diversity of company cultures• . Many mining companies are multinational, and own sites in countries with diverse cultures; however, each also has its own unique organisational structural and cultural differences. They differ on many important dimensions such as their safety management systems, recruitment policies, and corporate leadership styles. Just as there is no typical mining employee, there is also no “typical” mining company. Wide variety of national laws, regulations, and guidelines• . Given the above-mentioned multinational nature of mining, different countries have differing laws, regulations, political pressures, standards, and guidelines. For example, safety regulation varies immensely around the world, and particularly in the responsibility given to companies to individually manage risks versus comply with regulation (e.g., Poplin et al., 2008), and the onus placed on equipment manufacturers for equipment safety. Indeed, regulation can be quite
different between different states in the same country (e.g., in the United States or Australia). Different procedures, rules, practises, and cultures at mine sites• . Cultures, practises, formal and informal rules, and procedures vary within companies, as well as across them. For example, mines in a small geographic area, such as the coal-mining region of the Hunter Valley in Australia, often have different procedures, practises, and cultures, stemming in large part from their history. And when it is considered that some mines have a history of ownership by different companies, it is not too surprising to see that the mine culture may be a stronger inuence on site practises than the culture of the owner company of the day. Differences relevant to equipment design might include policies for the separation of people and mobile equipment (e.g., the exact “give-way” rules), teamworking procedures, or safety communication methods, together with less obvious cultural differences such as attitudes towards risk taking. Many equipment manufacturers and suppliers• . Added to the mix is the variety of different equipment manufacturers, dealers, after-market suppliers, technology developers, and so on. For example, looking at surface mining, there are ve or six major manufacturers of large mobile equipment (such as haul trucks). Although they usually follow international standards for equipment design (where they exist), the differences in the equipment for maintenance or operational purposes can be quite signicant (as will be seen in Chapter 8, which examines controls and displays). Variation in the built environment• . Of course, mining methods differ; at the broadest level, of course, they differ between underground and surface mining, but also differences exist as a function of the substances being mined or processed. Coal mines in particular have additional complexity associated with the additional environmental hazards involved with this. But, going into more detail, the design of the built environment between mines using the same mining method can signicantly differ. This includes differences in issues such as access to the mine site or roadway construction. Similarly, a mine that is built near a major population centre has a very different set of requirements and needs from one in a remote location. Whereas a mine near a major population centre usually has better access to a source of personnel and might be better equipped to transport goods (e.g., fuel or ore) to and from the site, it may have greater issues with respect to site security and/or community relations. Many uncertainties in the natural environment• . Given the worldwide nature of mining, the natural environment can certainly have a major inuence. The variation of temperatures between sites in the tropics compared to those in the polar region can clearly be huge.
