Mining & Critical Minerals Health and Safety Consultancy

Specialist support for the minerals sector

UK mining and mineral extraction is changing. Established quarrying and industrial minerals operations are being joined by exploration and development projects for critical minerals, which bring new organisations, new contractors and new processing facilities into the sector. Many of these organisations need health and safety management systems that match the regulatory regime and the risk profile of mineral extraction, often while a project is still being designed and built.

Featherstone Safety supports that work through management-system consultancy, contractor assurance and project-specific HSE advice. To be clear about our position: our project experience to date is in major energy infrastructure, not in operating mines. What we bring to the minerals sector is technical education in geology, professional health and safety qualifications, management-system expertise and experience of complex multi-contractor projects.

Where Featherstone Safety can help

Occupational health and safety management systems

Designing or improving the system that ties risk assessment, competence, contractor control, monitoring and review together, aligned with the regulations that apply to the site and, where wanted, with ISO 45001.

Contractor HSE assurance

Mineral operations rely heavily on contractors for drilling, blasting, haulage, maintenance and construction. We review how contractors are selected, inducted, supervised and monitored, and how their arrangements fit with the operator’s own.

Construction and development-phase safety management

New projects bring site establishment, earthworks, haul roads, processing plant and buildings, often before the operational organisation is fully in place. Where construction work is involved, construction-specific duties apply alongside mining or quarrying legislation, and establishing which regime applies to which activity is one of the first questions to settle.

Mineral processing facility safety management

Crushing, screening, conveying, washing and other processing plant raise familiar industrial risks in a dusty, noisy environment: machinery guarding, isolation and lock-out for maintenance, access to plant at height, entry into bins, hoppers and other confined spaces, and housekeeping around conveyors.

Risk assessment arrangements

Risk assessment that works across fixed plant, mobile operations and changing extraction areas, with a clear route from assessment to the controls supervisors actually apply.

Occupational exposure management

Dust, noise and vibration are the long-term health risks in most mineral operations, and the ones most easily under-managed because their effects are delayed. A sound exposure management arrangement identifies who is exposed and to what, puts controls in place in the right order, starting with elimination and engineering controls, measures exposure through competent occupational hygiene monitoring, and uses health surveillance where the regulations require it.

Featherstone Safety helps organisations set up and run these arrangements within their management system. Exposure monitoring itself should be carried out by a competent occupational hygienist, and we will recommend that one is engaged where monitoring is needed.

ISO 45001, ISO 14001 and integrated management systems

Many mineral operators use ISO 45001 for occupational health and safety and ISO 14001 for environmental management, often combined into one integrated system. For operators and developers the standards give a recognised structure for managing risk, meeting investor and customer expectations, and showing regulators and communities that the operation is managed systematically.

See ISO 45001 and ISO 14001 consultancy for mining operations for how we approach gap analysis, implementation and certification readiness in the sector, and ISO 45001 and ISO 14001 consultancy for our general ISO service.

Questions buyers ask

Has Featherstone Safety worked on mining projects?

Featherstone Safety’s project experience to date is in major energy infrastructure, including two super grid transformer installations. We do not claim mining project experience. What we offer the minerals sector is management-system consultancy, contractor assurance and project HSE advice, informed by a Diploma in Geology and professional health and safety qualifications, with specialists engaged where the work needs them.

Do you work with quarries as well as mines?

Yes. The management-system, contractor assurance and risk assessment work described here applies to quarries, mines and mineral processing sites. Each is governed by its own regulations, which we confirm at the start of any engagement.

Can you carry out dust, noise or vibration monitoring?

No. Exposure monitoring should be carried out by a competent occupational hygienist using appropriate equipment and methods. We help organisations set up the arrangements around monitoring, act on the results and build them into the management system.

Does a Diploma in Geology make you a geotechnical specialist?

No. Geological education gives relevant understanding of rock, ground and groundwater, which helps when discussing those hazards with operators and specialists. Geotechnical assessment of faces, slopes, excavations and tips must be carried out by competent geotechnical specialists.

Can you support a critical minerals project before it is operational?

Yes. Development-phase projects often need health and safety arrangements for exploration, site establishment and construction, and an outline management system that can grow into operation. We can help plan that structure from the start.