“Impounded water storage facilities are often neglected, with the focus of both regulators and operators skewed towards tailings storage facilities.

“This means these impounded water storage facilities don’t always receive the same attention. However, alkaline or production waste water can be equally toxic to the environment and the infrastructure equally dangerous.

“In the past 24 months, PAGERisk has been engaged by a number of major global miners to undertake comprehensive reviews of their impounded water storage facilities across Australia, Africa, South America and Europe.

“The objective is to develop a deep and consistent understanding of the organisation’s risk exposure – and to provide practical recommendations for ongoing risk management.

“PAGER uses its versatile tailings and water storage risk management framework to guide this work. The framework connects site and corporate practice, as well as technical and non-technical elements, to optimise risk outcomes and promote shared continuous improvement.

“We start with a review of corporate governance and controls standards. What is in place at the enterprise level to guide consistent activities across all jurisdictions?

“We also looked at organisational capability. What kinds of technical knowledge is on staff and how is technical knowledge stored and retained? How is the governance structured to support diverse facilities? What about the application risk framework (identification, assessment, management)? Are first-, second- and third-line responsibilities covered? And is right-sized risk assured against regularly?

“We then conducted site-based risk reviews. These are not technical engineering reviews. Rather, we look at risk-based decision making, control effectiveness, assurance process, and monitoring and reporting to compile our holistic risk-informed picture.

“A major part of our task is translating technical information into risk-based language. This is a key step in integrating technical site knowledge into an aggregate risk profile that can be understood, communicated and compared with other top risks at enterprise level.

“We travel to each facility and talk with the local teams in detail. We bring them along on the journey, making them part of the solution – not the problem. Many times, site managers thank us for helping them to objectively elevate these issues while pointing out key gaps and potential solutions.

“We ask ‘are corporate standards being followed?’, but, equally, ‘are corporate standards adequate?’.

“Major differences exist in regulations, risk maturity and resourcing across jurisdictions. Our structured approach helps our clients to identify gaps and pockets of excellence and design strategies to uplift across the portfolio.

“Our final report for each client consolidates board and executive priorities while providing practical solutions to the front-line workers. The information is grouped by theme to enable leaders to easily see issues connected to their areas.

“This high-level summary is supported by a detailed evidence base of our observations and findings, connected to relevant actions and recommendations.

“Invariably, our work drives re-evaluation of these risks and a higher aggregate risk rating. This feeds into the enterprise risk profile, driving a higher standard of risk and control management and assurance while providing visibility to leaders to make key decisions (i.e. budget allocation).

“A deeper understanding of the plausible failure modes and pathways also critically informs emergency and crisis management preparedness and response capability, both internally and for surrounding communities.”