CASE STUDY
Urgent fire suppression systems fix
Client: Underground mine
Location: Queensland
Duration: Eight months
Context
Nine fire-related incidents in nine months left our client reeling and in need of urgent and considered action to protect its people and heavy mobile equipment. The organisation’s investigation into its fire suppression systems identified a number of essential actions to avoid future events. The solution required a balance of speed, disciplined rigour, and finesse to engage a large number of internal and external stakeholders effectively.
Our client reached out to Minset because of our industry, process and change management expertise, and our ability to work with frontline staff through to senior leaders. Minset acted as an extension of our client’s team to close out unresolved actions and eliminate the risk of future equipment fires.
Approach
The first step was to understand the current situation. Leveraging Minset’s practical approach, the team:
- reviewed the entire mobile equipment fleet and ensured there was no further risk to operators and maintenance team members.
- engaged with maintenance and operations teams to redesign the inspection process, address failure modes, and ensure consistent and quality work. This provided the team with the opportunity to standardise the inspection processes using visual aids to demonstrate a pass/fail criteria and to reinforce the vital role inspections play in ongoing safe and quality work practices.
- acted as an independent provider, and worked seamlessly with the OEM, other independent experts, and the client’s own internal stakeholders to get to the heart of the matter quickly.
In addition to working through the urgent action items, Minset also identified a number of maintenance strategy changes required to make the equipment safe in the longer term. Minset suggested aligning inspections to technical degradation information, revising torque settings, changing the installation techniques for nozzle and flush points, and leveraging the OEM’s expertise, which was already available as part of the organisation’s standard contract support.
Results
People
- Engaged maintenance and operations team members so they were part of the solution and understood why changes were being made
- Updated onboarding training for new starters to reflect the latest information
Process
- Improved and standardised the inspection processes to streamline the identification of known failure modes
- Used a disciplined approach to ensure all incident-related risks were identified and progressed quickly
Physical
- Implemented solutions that led to zero fire suppression failures for the monitoring period
- Identified defects in mobile units and immediately rectified and mitigated fire risks
- Used visual aids to clearly define quality and pass/fail criteria for inspections
