Preparing for New and Emergent Technologies
A mining and metals company was constructing a new operation centered around an emergent green technology to reduce emissions during production, while also shortening the time required to start commercial production. The company needed to understand what new risks this could bring to the operation.
Challenge
But what were the risks? The company had no historical data to draw upon, so it had no visibility into how the new technology might impact on-time procurement delivery and other aspects of the supply chain. Besides potential delay, health and safety risks needed to be identified. Without safety standards or best practices in place, the delay, health and safety risks needed to be identified. Without safety standards or best practices in place, the company needed to understand what new risks this could bring to the operation.
dss+ Approach
A team of top experts in occupational and process safety, electrical safety, and engineering were involved in a multi-path risk assessment that reviewed procurement, operation, maintenance, and engineering protocols and policies. This also reviewed relevant hazard assessment reports and incidents, the company’s fatal hazard protocol, emergency response plans, supply chain records, and more.
The dss+ team used facilitation tools and methodologies to first assess potential risks and then offer mitigation strategies for each project phase, starting with procurement. By understanding and assessing the health and safety risks early in the procurement phase, the company could give potential vendors the detailed protocols they required upfront, as opposed to having to update them later due to safety requirement changes.
Once project safety, project, and operations-related risks were adequately estimated, the client was confident to move forward and make a full investment.