Articles

Marcus Punch Pty. Ltd.

Risk and Reliability

Articles

Published in Hydro Review Worldwide, May 2004 edition.

“Many engineers complain that business decision-making is dominated by short-term, cost-cutting agendas to the detriment of long-term sustainability. This gap between engineers and business planners might be bridged if engineers and technical staff found a new paradigm — that, in the final analysis, despite the technical intricacies of their jobs, they are still managers of risk and creators of value”.

Presented at the Earth-moving Equipment Safety Round-table (EMESRT) Workshop, Parkes, NSW, Australia, September 2014.

Mining Collision Avoidance Systems

“Would the presence of a proximity detection / collision avoidance system lead an operator to come to rely upon it to ‘maintain’ a safe state?”

When SIL2 Will Just Not Do

Presented at the NSW Department of Trade & Investment Electrical Engineering Safety Seminar, Sydney, NSW, Australia, November 2014.

A retrospective overview of the application of the functional safety approach in Australian mines since 2006.

Plant Reliability Improvement and Financial Gain:

What’s the Connection?

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This paper provides an explanation of the key safety and cyber-security challenges in autonomous mining. A risk-based approach using the “reasonably practicable” test is presented, based on the author’s experience in load-haul-dump automation in block cave mines in Australia.

Safe and Cyber-secure Autonomous Mining

Presented at the NSW Department of Trade and Investment Electrical Engineering Safety Seminar, Sydney, NSW, Australia, November 2018.