Between October and December 2024 MCP supported Jarah Corporate at BMA’s Broadmeadow Underground Coal Mine, facilitating risk assessments and preparing technical documentation for the site’s Safety and Health Management System (SHMS). The engagement is written up on the project page. These are the practice notes behind it.
Run the assessment to the site’s own process
Broadmeadow runs BMA’s Risk Management PRO and Coal WRAC processes. The temptation with an external facilitator is to bring a method in. That is a mistake. The site’s people know their process, the auditors expect it, and the outputs have to slot into systems that already exist. MCP prepared and facilitated the assessments inside BMA’s framework, not alongside it.
Get the right people in the room
A risk assessment run with the wrong attendees produces a tidy document and no change. The Risk and Control Owners have to be there because they will own the outcome, and the affected coal mine workers have to be there because they know how the task is actually done. Both were engaged throughout.
Feed in what the site already knows
The assessment is not a blank sheet. MRE/DIR records, SCP requirements and relevant events all carry information about where the real risk sits. Integrating them into the assessment process is what stops a workshop from re-deriving what an incident report already established.
The document is the product
The workshop is the visible part. The value is in what comes out of it and whether anyone can use it. MCP supported the development and QA of the technical documentation, including SOPs, with a deliberate focus on making it high quality, practical and frontline-friendly. That meant strengthening consistency and alignment of processes across the asset, coordinating document management workflows and maintaining document control requirements, so that the current version is the one on the wall.
Coach it in, then leave
Documentation that depends on the consultant who wrote it is a liability. Coaching and mentoring site personnel was part of the scope, so the site team can maintain the structure and run the next assessment themselves. The aim throughout was a simplified, consistent and effective SHMS, not a thicker one.