On the issue of evaluating efficiency of the occupational safety and health management system in mines

Abstract

In terms of occupational safety and health (OSH) management system functioning at the enterprises of the Coal Business Unit of DTEK ENERGO LLC, a number of procedures and techniques have been developed and implemented for improving the OSH management system. However, rate of injuries and accidents is still fairly high at these enterprises. It is proposed to describe effectiveness of the OSH management system as a catastrophe of the “assembly” type. It is further proposed to describe effectiveness of the OSH functioning in mine by a potential function. To this end, probability of an accident (injury) is considered as a coordinate of the disaster, level of development of the coal mining technology means an external parameter, and the internal parameter is presented by the level of readiness of miners to perform processes and operations. With increase of internal control parameter characterizing level of the miners’ readiness to perform basic and auxiliary processes and operations, probability of accident and injury generally decreases; however, this curve is bifurcated by its nature. With increase of external control parameter – i.e. level of technology development - the curve narrows, while width of the catastrophe band decreases. At sufficiently high level of technology development, the system exists only in one state of equilibrium; but when passing a certain critical value, splitting and two alternative stable states appear. The area of the curve, which is limited by critical values of the level of miners’ readiness to perform technological processes and operations, determines an undesirable effect or a value reciprocal to the OSH effectiveness in the mine. At insufficiently high level of technology, a catastrophe (high probability of an accident) can happen both at insignificant and sufficiently high level of the miners’ readiness. In practice, in each mine, these parameters should be normalized and set according to the results of expert evaluation; and quantitative indicators of the level of miner’s readiness to perform processes and operations can be obtained during the psychophysical testing.