Mobile equipment interactions are among the most critical risks in industries such as transport, freight, mining, and construction. While these sectors are well-known for their reliance on mobile equipment, many other industries face equally high exposure to the risks of incidents involving vehicles. These include warehousing, logistics, manufacturing, agriculture, utilities, energy, emergency services, telecommunications, public works, infrastructure, forestry, ports, shipping, healthcare, tourism, hospitality, entertainment, events, retail (including gig workers), and even community services. Facilities like schools and aged care centres frequently use vehicles and buses, and we mustn’t overlook the passenger transport industry, encompassing taxis, rideshare services, and bus services.
Vehicles are a Cornerstone of Modern Industry
Vehicles are a cornerstone of modern industry, supporting operations across a vast array of sectors. From small passenger vehicles to heavy industrial equipment, the range of vehicles we rely on is immense.
Light Vehicles
Cars, utes, and 4x4s are staples across many industries, especially where workers need to travel long distances for work. These vehicles are commonly used in:
Mining and Construction: For site inspections and transporting personnel.
Agriculture: For farm management.
Emergency Services: For rapid response to incidents.
Commercial Vehicles
Vehicles like forklifts, loaders, and road trains are essential in operations requiring material handling and large-scale transportation. Typical industries include:
Logistics and Warehousing: Forklifts and loaders for stock movement.
Transport and Freight: Road trains and trucks for long-haul operations.
Heavy Equipment
Heavy-duty vehicles play a critical role in infrastructure development and resource extraction. Examples include:
Excavators, Haul Trucks, and Cranes: Used extensively in mining, construction, and infrastructure projects.
Specialised Vehicles
Certain industries rely on vehicles designed for unique tasks:
Push Bikes and Electric Vehicles: Common in last-mile delivery, tourism, and community services.
Motorbikes: Used for patrols, deliveries, and navigating difficult terrains.
Service Vehicles
Service vehicles are vital for maintaining community operations and responding to mechanical or operational needs. These include:
Garbage Collection Trucks: Used by municipal services for waste management.
Street Sweepers and Maintenance Vehicles: Seen in urban and public works.
Mechanical Response Vehicles: Tow trucks, fuel trucks, and service trucks that support vehicle recovery, refueling, or maintenance in industries like transport, freight, and construction.
Passenger Transport
Buses and buggies are essential for moving people efficiently and safely. They are commonly used in:
Public Transport: Urban and regional transit systems.
Community Services: Schools, aged care, and disability support services.
Tourism and Events: Shuttle services and transport within large venues.
Potential Incidents and Scenarios
Understanding the types of potential incidents and scenarios involving mobile equipment is essential for effective critical risk management. These incidents can take many forms depending on the nature of the interaction and often lead to severe consequences such as injuries, fatalities, equipment damage, environmental harm, and operational delays. By categorising these scenarios into vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-pedestrian, vehicle-to-infrastructure, and single-vehicle incidents, organisations can pinpoint causal pathways, implement targeted controls, and significantly reduce the likelihood of unwanted events. Below are examples of common scenarios that illustrate the diverse risks faced across industries.
Vehicle-to-Vehicle Incidents
These occur when two or more vehicles collide or interact unsafely. Common examples include:
Collisions Between Heavy Vehicles: E.g. haul trucks or cranes colliding on a mining site or construction zone.
Light Vehicle and Heavy Vehicle Interactions: A ute failing to yield to a dump truck on a haul road.
Reversing Accidents: Forklifts or loaders backing into other vehicles in warehouses or loading zones.
Chain Collisions: Multiple vehicles involved due to poor visibility or weather conditions.
Vehicle-to-Pedestrian Incidents
These involve a vehicle striking or endangering a pedestrian. Common scenarios include:
Worksite Strikes: Pedestrians walking in undesignated areas on construction or mining sites.
Delivery Vehicle Hazards: Push bikes, motorbikes, or electric delivery vehicles hitting pedestrians in urban areas.
Crosswalk and Intersection Accidents: Vehicles failing to stop for workers or pedestrians crossing paths.
Loading/Unloading Risks: Pedestrians struck by forklifts or other vehicles while handling materials.
Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Incidents
These occur when a vehicle damages infrastructure, equipment, or buildings. Examples include:
Collisions with Powerlines or Poles: Elevated work platforms or cranes contacting overhead lines.
Dock and Container Damage: Trucks or reach stackers colliding with port infrastructure.
Building Strikes: Vehicles hitting facility walls or gates, often due to misjudged turns.
Bridge Damage: Heavy vehicles exceeding load limits or striking low-clearance bridges.
Environmental Impacts: Fuel or chemical spills caused by vehicle damage to containment structures.
Single-Vehicle Incidents
These occur when only one vehicle is involved but can still result in significant consequences. Examples include:
Vehicle Rollovers: Common with haul trucks, tractors, or vehicles navigating uneven terrain.
Vehicle into Water: Vehicles driving into rivers, lakes, or flooded areas due to poor visibility or loss of control.
Vehicle Contact with Powerlines: Overhead and underground powerlines in the vicinity of vehicle movements.
Vehicle-Animal Collisions: Strikes involving wildlife e.g., kangaroos, or livestock, particularly in rural or remote areas.
Loss of control of vehicle: Resulting in impact with a tree or fence for example.
Common dynamics that contribute to these incidents include driving long distances, operating in remote locations with limited support, working in high-traffic or high-pedestrian areas, poor workplace or traffic management design, operators not being fit for work due to fatigue or impairment, and using equipment that is unsuitable for the task or conditions.
Establishing Your Context for Critical Risk Management
The next step in managing critical mobile equipment risks is to clearly define the context for your critical risk management program. This involves determining the scope and boundaries of your efforts. Ask yourself:
Are you addressing all activities, all workplaces, and all personnel, or will you prioritise certain areas?
Will your focus be on high-risk activities, high-exposure areas, or specific types of equipment?
By establishing clear boundaries, you can streamline your efforts and allocate resources where they are most needed.
Identifying Relevant Scenarios
Once your context is defined, the next step is to identify all possible scenarios related to mobile equipment interaction within your scope. This includes:
High-Risk Activities:
Loading and unloading materials.
Operating heavy vehicles on uneven or poorly maintained terrain.
Working near overhead powerlines or under cranes.
Multiple vehicles working together such as light vehicles and heavy vehicles.
High-Exposure Areas:
Sites with high vehicle traffic, such as construction zones or warehouses.
Workplaces with frequent pedestrian interactions, like loading docks or ports.
Equipment Types:
Consider the range of vehicles in use, such as light vehicles, forklifts, heavy haul trucks, cranes, or elevated work platforms.
Identify risks associated with each, including single-vehicle incidents (e.g., rollovers) and multi-vehicle interactions.
By understanding your context and the specific scenarios relevant to your workplace, you can develop a targeted and effective critical risk management approach tailored to your operations.
Constructing Your Critical Risk Bowtie Analysis
A Critical Risk Bowtie Analysis is a structured and visual approach to understanding, assessing, and managing high-risk scenarios. This tool helps you map out the pathways leading to an unwanted event, as well as the controls that can prevent or mitigate it. The goal is to create a clear picture of how risks can materialise and how they can be managed effectively.
Step 1: Define Your Unwanted Event - Centre of Bowtie
The first step is to identify your unwanted event, which is the critical scenario or grouping you aim to manage. This event represents the central focus of your analysis—the point where risk must be prevented or mitigated. Select an unwanted event that could lead to the highest consequence outcomes in your context.
For example, you may choose to prioritise high-risk scenarios first and address lower-priority areas in subsequent analyses.
Step 2: Identify Causes (Threats) - Left-Hand-Side of Bowtie
Once your unwanted event is established, the next step is to identify the causes or threats that could lead to it.
These causes must be likely and direct pathways to the event.
Avoid being too broad or generic, as this can dilute the analysis and lead to ineffective control identification.
By focusing on specific causes, you ensure that your controls are tailored and relevant to managing the risk.
Step 3: Identify Consequences (Impacts) - Righ-Hand-Side of Bowtie
Next, identify the consequences or impacts that could result from the unwanted event occurring.
Consequences must be direct outcomes of the event.
These help you understand what’s at stake and guide the development of appropriate mitigating measures.
Like causes, keeping consequences specific ensures the analysis remains focused and actionable.
Step 4: Map Preventing and Mitigating Controls
Once you have identified causes and consequences, it’s time to map out controls. Controls are the measures implemented to either prevent the unwanted event from occurring or reduce its impact if it does. Start with identifying what controls you already have in place managing the critical risk, then you can start to identify gaps and opportunities to strenthen your causal pathway with proposed or new controls. Controls are acts, objects or technical systems. Try to call out the actual control, not the document that manages the control.
Preventing Controls
These controls address the causes (threats) on the left side of the bowtie.
Their purpose is to stop the unwanted event from happening.
Think of them as barriers that block or interrupt the progression from a cause to the unwanted event.
Mitigating Controls
These controls address the consequences (impacts) on the right side of the bowtie.
Their purpose is to reduce the severity or extent of the impacts if the unwanted event occurs.
They act as safety nets that limit harm, damage, or loss.
By clearly distinguishing preventing and mitigating controls, the bowtie ensures you’re addressing both the likelihood and the consequences of the event.
Why Focus and Specificity Matter
The success of a bowtie analysis hinges on its ability to identify specific controls that effectively manage risks. If the causes or consequences are too broad, you risk overlooking critical controls or diluting their effectiveness. A focused analysis ensures that every identified control is targeted, actionable, and essential.
By following these steps, you can construct a comprehensive bowtie analysis that visualises your critical risks and the pathways to managing them.
Identifying Critical Controls
Critical controls are the cornerstone of managing risks in a bowtie analysis. These are the controls that, if absent, ineffective, or failed, would have a significant impact on the likelihood of an unwanted event occurring or on the severity of its consequences. Proper identification and selection of critical controls ensure that resources are focused on the most important barriers to risk.
Preventing Critical Controls
Preventing critical controls are focused on the causal pathways leading to the unwanted event. These controls act as barriers to stop the event from occurring.
What to Ask:
Would the absence or failure of this control significantly increase the likelihood of the unwanted event?
Is this control essential to interrupting the causal pathway?
By identifying and implementing preventing critical controls, you can drastically reduce the probability of the unwanted event occurring.
Mitigating Critical Controls
Mitigating critical controls are focused on the consequences of the unwanted event. These controls do not stop the event from occurring but instead limit its severity or extent.
What to Ask:
Would the absence or failure of this control result in the highest potential consequence?
Is this control critical to reducing harm, damage, or loss if the unwanted event occurs?
Mitigating critical controls ensure that even if the event occurs, the outcomes are managed to minimise harm.
Key Considerations for Identifying Critical Controls
Critical controls must be effective, measurable, and reliable to ensure they perform as intended.
Avoid overloading the analysis with non-critical controls. Focus only on those that significantly influence the risk pathways or outcomes.
By selecting critical controls with this structured approach, you create a robust system that prioritises the most impactful barriers to risk.
Critical Control Management
Critical control management is an essential component of effective risk management. It ensures that the most important controls in your system are clearly understood, properly implemented, and rigorously maintained to prevent or mitigate high-consequence events. This process involves understanding each critical control’s requirements, verifying their effectiveness, and managing their performance over time.
Critical Control Performance Requirements
To effectively manage critical controls, it is crucial to understand their performance requirements. This involves developing a Critical Control Performance Standard that clearly defines the expectations and parameters for each control. The performance standard should include the following key elements:
Objectives of the Critical Control
Clearly state what the control is designed to achieve (e.g., prevent vehicle collisions, reduce the impact of equipment failure).
Performance Requirements
Define how the control must perform to meet its objectives. This includes measurable criteria such as reliability, timing, and responsiveness.
Critical Operating Parameters
Identify operational thresholds or conditions under which the control must remain effective (e.g., maximum load capacity for a crane).
Failure Modes
Outline potential mechanisms of failure and how they might occur (e.g., wear and tear, human error, environmental factors).
Training Requirements
Specify the knowledge and skills required for personnel to operate, inspect, and maintain the critical control effectively.
Maintenance and Inspection Requirements
Detail the frequency and type of maintenance activities, as well as inspection protocols to ensure ongoing functionality.
Critical Control Verification (CCV) Process
The Critical Control Verification (CCV) process is vital for ensuring that critical controls are implemented, effective, and not at risk of failure. This process typically involves three primary activities:
Verifying Critical Controls Are in Place
In-Field Observations: Confirm that critical controls have been physically implemented in the workplace. For example, check that safety barriers, alarms, or procedures are present and accessible.
Verifying Critical Controls Are Effective
In-Field Testing: Test the functionality of critical controls to ensure they perform as intended. For example, test brakes on vehicles or collision-avoidance systems to confirm their effectiveness under operating conditions.
Verifying Critical Controls Are Not at Risk of Failure
Maintenance Programs: Ensure regular servicing, repairs, and inspections are conducted to prevent degradation or failure.
Audits and Certifications: Use independent or internal audits to confirm compliance with performance standards and identify potential risks.
Detecting Failure Mechanisms: Monitor and address early signs of failure, such as wear and tear, system alerts, or operational deviations.
Defining Verification Frequency
The frequency of verification activities should be based on the level of exposure and the number of areas where the critical control is implemented. Consider the following factors:
High-Exposure Areas
For controls in high-risk or high-frequency areas (e.g., intersections of heavy vehicle and pedestrian traffic), verification should occur more frequently to account for the increased likelihood of failure or incident.
Multiple Implementation Sites
When a control is implemented across numerous locations (e.g., multiple cranes on a construction site), verification activities should be scaled to ensure all instances are regularly checked.
Risk-Based Scheduling
Use the severity of potential consequences and historical performance data to determine appropriate intervals for verification (e.g., daily, weekly, or monthly checks).
Why Critical Control Management Matters
By systematically managing critical controls, organisations can ensure that these essential barriers remain functional, reliable, and aligned with their intended objectives. Performance standards provide a clear understanding of how controls should operate, while verification processes offer confidence that controls are effective and ready to respond when needed.
This structured approach ensures that risks are not only managed but also proactively mitigated, contributing to a safer and more resilient workplace.
Conclusion: Managing the Critical Risk of Mobile Equipment Interactions
Mobile equipment interactions remain one of the most significant risks across many industries. The potential for severe consequences—ranging from fatalities to operational disruptions—makes it imperative to manage this risk with precision and diligence. By adopting tools like bowtie analysis, implementing robust critical control management practices, and verifying the effectiveness of controls, organisations can significantly reduce the likelihood and impact of incidents.
To support you in managing this critical risk, we offer the Mobile Equipment Critical Risk Package, a comprehensive solution tailored to your industry and specific mobile equipment risks.
If you have an existing critical risk program in place for mobile equipment that is due for a review, you may be interested in a Comprehensive Critical Risk Audit. |
Who We've Worked With
We have extensive experience developing successful critical risk management and critical control programs for a diverse range of clients, including:
Glencore
BHP
Ampol Australia
Local councils
Leading construction companies
NDIS providers
Charities and not-for-profits
Our expertise spans industries and sectors, allowing us to tailor solutions to meet the unique challenges faced by our clients. Let us bring this experience to your organisation and help you achieve effective and sustainable risk management outcomes.
What’s Included in the Package
Tailored Approach: A package tailored to your industry and mobile equipment critical risks.
Comprehensive Bowtie Analysis: A mobile equipment critical risk bowtie analysis to identify and manage causes, consequences, and controls.
Critical Control Identification and Selection: Structured tools to pinpoint critical controls.
Critical Control Performance Standard Document Suite: Define objectives, performance requirements, operating parameters, and training needs for each of your selected critical controls.
Critical Control Verification Document Suite: Ensure critical controls are effective and not at risk of failure through field observations and testing tools.
Consultation and Implementation Guide: Guidance to implement and integrate the package effectively.
Worker Toolbox Talk: Equip your team with the knowledge to manage mobile equipment critical risks.
Tailored to a Single Bowtie Analysis
This package is designed for a single bowtie analysis, focusing on a well-defined grouping of scenarios that form an unwanted event. Selecting an appropriate grouping ensures the analysis is precise, actionable, and effective in managing your critical risks.
By leveraging this comprehensive package, you can streamline your risk management process, ensuring critical controls are in place, effective, and verifiable. Click below to take the first step in managing your mobile equipment critical risks confidently and effectively.
You will be asked in the checkout to provide information on your industry and the equipment you'd like included in your mobile equiopment critical risk package.
Further customisations will be required including context and scenarios. This package will be delivered via email within 5 business days.
Principal Hazard Management Plan (PHMP) Mobile Equipment Add-On
The Principal Hazard Management Plan (PHMP) is a vital document required by many industries to address high-consequence risks effectively. This add-on complements our Critical Risk Packages by providing a comprehensive framework tailored to your specific industry and operations.
What Is a Principal Hazard Management Plan (PHMP)?
A PHMP is a high-level strategic document that:
Identifies specific principal hazards in your operations (e.g., working at heights, confined spaces, or mobile equipment interactions).
Outlines your organisation's approach to managing these hazards, ensuring compliance with legislative and regulatory requirements.
Provides a clear structure for hazard assessment, risk controls, and ongoing monitoring.
What’s Included in the PHMP Add-On?
When you add the PHMP to your Critical Risk Package, you’ll receive:
Tailored Principal Hazard Management Plan:
A detailed plan aligned with your industry and operational requirements.
Integration of specific risks and controls identified in your Critical Risk Package.
Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment:
Comprehensive identification of principal hazards and associated risks.
Strategies to mitigate risks effectively and sustainably.
Compliance Framework:
Alignment with relevant industry legislation, standards, and codes of practice.
Monitoring and Review Framework:
Procedures for continuous improvement, audits, and periodic reviews.
Actionable Strategies:
Specific control measures, implementation steps, and roles/responsibilities.
Why Add a PHMP to Your Package?
Regulatory Compliance: Ensure your organisation meets all legislative requirements for managing principal hazards.
Customised Solutions: Receive a plan tailored to your operations, ensuring relevance and practicality.
Enhanced Risk Management: Build a robust framework to manage high-consequence risks effectively.
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