96
7 Let’s Start with Some Serious “Do Nots”!
Once it is understood that consequences are multidimensional it becomes selfevident that qualifying safety with a single number—be it a Factor of Safety (FoS)
or a probability of failure p f —is severely insufficient.
So, let’s now start looking at the problem from the side of consequences Henry
Brehaut used the term “materiality” in his keynote lecture at TMW 2017, and we
will adopt it here.
• From a corporate internal perspective materiality is primarily defined in financial
terms.
• For a government, materiality is largely defined in non-economic terms considering
possible loss of life, environmental damage and economic loss (see Sect. 5.3).
• For the public, materiality is primarily defined in terms of personal impact with
their personal safety being paramount.
The elements that must be considered for the definition of the overall metric of
losses are, at least and not in any particular order: (a) direct and indirect; (b) health
and safety; (c) environmental; (d) image and reputation; (e) legal, etc. (Oboni and
Oboni 2016).
The potential economic losses to a company for even a partial failure of a tailings
dam include loss of profits and costs related to dam reconstruction, environmental
rehabilitation, lawsuits and government fines. Economic factors alone will usually
dictate that tailings dams be considered a material risk for a corporation. In addition,
a company must also consider potential impacts such as the loss of human life,
environmental damage and public economic loss in its materiality ranking. When all
potential impacts are considered, including a company’s loss of public credibility, it
is hard to visualize a company not considering the design and operation of any one
of their tailing dams not to be a material risk issue.
7.7 Do Not Forget to Define Performance, Success
and Failure Criteria
In addition to committing to a comprehensive risk assessment program, the mining
industry should commit to ensuring that:
• Suitably qualified and experienced experts are involved in TSF risk identification and
analysis, as well as in the development and review of effectiveness of the associated
controls.
• Performance criteria are established for risk controls and their associated monitoring,
internal reporting and verification activities (ICMM Position 2016: 5).
In our experience, very often mining companies skip a first, very important step:
defining the failure criteria to be considered in the risk assessment. Indeed, without failure (or malfunction) there is no possible risk definition. Thus, from the
very beginning this is paramount in order to avoid confusion, conflict of interest,
biases, censoring from this very point on. Censoring and biases occur when, for
7 Let’s Start with Some Serious “Do Nots”!
Once it is understood that consequences are multidimensional it becomes selfevident that qualifying safety with a single number—be it a Factor of Safety (FoS)
or a probability of failure p f —is severely insufficient.
So, let’s now start looking at the problem from the side of consequences Henry
Brehaut used the term “materiality” in his keynote lecture at TMW 2017, and we
will adopt it here.
• From a corporate internal perspective materiality is primarily defined in financial
terms.
• For a government, materiality is largely defined in non-economic terms considering
possible loss of life, environmental damage and economic loss (see Sect. 5.3).
• For the public, materiality is primarily defined in terms of personal impact with
their personal safety being paramount.
The elements that must be considered for the definition of the overall metric of
losses are, at least and not in any particular order: (a) direct and indirect; (b) health
and safety; (c) environmental; (d) image and reputation; (e) legal, etc. (Oboni and
Oboni 2016).
The potential economic losses to a company for even a partial failure of a tailings
dam include loss of profits and costs related to dam reconstruction, environmental
rehabilitation, lawsuits and government fines. Economic factors alone will usually
dictate that tailings dams be considered a material risk for a corporation. In addition,
a company must also consider potential impacts such as the loss of human life,
environmental damage and public economic loss in its materiality ranking. When all
potential impacts are considered, including a company’s loss of public credibility, it
is hard to visualize a company not considering the design and operation of any one
of their tailing dams not to be a material risk issue.
7.7 Do Not Forget to Define Performance, Success
and Failure Criteria
In addition to committing to a comprehensive risk assessment program, the mining
industry should commit to ensuring that:
• Suitably qualified and experienced experts are involved in TSF risk identification and
analysis, as well as in the development and review of effectiveness of the associated
controls.
• Performance criteria are established for risk controls and their associated monitoring,
internal reporting and verification activities (ICMM Position 2016: 5).
In our experience, very often mining companies skip a first, very important step:
defining the failure criteria to be considered in the risk assessment. Indeed, without failure (or malfunction) there is no possible risk definition. Thus, from the
very beginning this is paramount in order to avoid confusion, conflict of interest,
biases, censoring from this very point on. Censoring and biases occur when, for