Risk communication in Athabasca oil sands tailings operations
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Risk communication in Athabasca oil sands tailings operations Kathleen E. Baker 1
&
Renato Macciotta 1
&
Michael T. Hendry 2
&
Lianne M. Lefsrud 1
Received: 2 September 2019 / Revised: 20 October 2019 / Accepted: 22 October 2019 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Abstract Oil sands operations involve many working groups, which can result in communication silos that make effective risk communication challenging. Workers are also directly at risk when they encounter conditions that contain hazards they are not equipped to identify and control. This is illustrated by fatalities in the oil sands related to unseen ground hazards at tailings storage and transport facilities. This research asked how gaps in communication between different working groups can be identified and how information about risks can be effectively disseminated to workers who interact with these facilities. Using ground hazards as a case study, we analyzed four datasets to identify areas for enhanced risk communication. The aim was to determine the hazards that workers see on the job site and compare their responses to tailings safety experts, geotechnical analysis, and recorded incidents. This will allow for the design of effective risk communication strategies at oil sands tailings operations. Traditional risk communication principles to disseminate information to external stakeholders will be applied to an internal audience of workers in tailings operations. The aim is to enhance the dialogue regarding risks across the organization. This will be done by increasing the knowledge and understanding of ground hazards in oil sands tailings operations, resulting in the invisible becoming seen and the risk tolerance among workers being lowered. Keywords Risk communication . Unseen hazards . Hazard identification . Visual tool
Introduction Our research is motivated by a workplace fatality that occurred around 6:00 am on 19 January 2014; a worker broke through frozen ground and drowned in an underground cavern that had been created by a pinhole-sized leak of hot tailings from a transportation pipeline (OHS 2017). In this instance, protocols to ensure the safety of workers had been followed, including the use of pipeline leak detection and mitigation, administrative controls such as call-in procedures, and the use of personal protective equipment (OHS 2017). Despite these hazard identifications and controls, none of the frontline tailings team knew that a tailings leak could create an underground cavern. Furthermore, leaks from a tailings pipeline tend to give off steam because of the temperature differential
* Kathleen E. Baker [email protected] 1
School of Engineering Safety and Risk Management, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
2
Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
between the hot tailings and the ambient environment. As the tailings were draining elsewhere from the cavern, no steam was emitted at the leak site. It was inconceivable to workers
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