Ep. 13: Managing Risks on Mine Sites with Gary Kent

In this episode of Chemical Safety at Work™, we are joined by Gary Kent, an experienced hazardous areas and high voltage auditor, and Specialized Services Manager at Tolk Group. 

With decades of experience spanning the oil, gas, and mining industries, Gary shares his in-depth knowledge of managing dangerous goods in complex and high-risk work environments.
 
From understanding the critical differences between flammable and combustible liquids to navigating the nuanced challenges of remote mining sites, Gary highlights the gaps in safety training and common storage mistakes that can lead to serious incidents.

He offers practical advice on implementing site-wide audits, ensuring consistent safety standards across multiple sites, and creating effective awareness programs for staff. 

We also explore the importance of proper labelling and the role of up-to-date SDS (Safety Data Sheets) in mitigating risks. 

Whether you’re a safety officer, worksite manager, or industry consultant, this episode is packed with actionable insights on how to enhance workplace safety and compliance. 

Don’t miss Gary’s expert advice on keeping hazardous areas under control and ensuring every worker goes home safe.

Learn more about Gary's work at Tolk Group here: https://tolkgroup.com.au/ 

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts!

Transcript

Pat: Hello and welcome back to Chemical Safety at Work the podcast. Gary Kent joins us remotely from Queensland this week. Gary is an accredited hazardous areas and high voltage auditor. He's a member of the Australasian Institute of Dangerous Goods Consultants, and he's also a specialized services manager at Tolk Group. Welcome, Gary. 

Gary Kent: Thanks for having me.

Pat: So, can start off by telling us a little bit about your experience in the industry and what your job entails?

Gary Kent: Oh, righteo. We'll try and keep it brief. Yeah. So, I've been involved with hazardous areas, high voltage, latterly dangerous goods the last few years. For 20, 30 years, oil and gas, coal mining, etcetera. It was previously TechServe, Now Tolk Group – we’ve just been taken over. We’re still in Mackay, but we cover the whole of Queensland, and I'd venture into New South Wales occasionally, Tassie and occasionally Northern Territory, depending on where there's a regulatory requirement and people asking for assistance with compliance with, well, general consulting. All things hazardous area, high voltage and dangerous goods.

Typically, our expertise is with coal mines, but that also extends to gas plants, ports, bioethanol, sugar anywhere where there's, a risk of explosion due to hazardous atmospheres or hazardous combustible dusts. And, then that leads into the dangerous goods side of things. Hazardous areas and dangerous goods dovetail quite nicely. A lot of our clients require site wide audits.

So, the transport of dangerous goods is fairly well regulated and controlled. But once it gets onto site, things become a little more fluid. The training and awareness programs are not ideal for a lot of site personnel with warehousing storage areas. And then the further you get away from those storage areas, the more it gets quite exciting. And it's a little bit like the Wild West times, because people just don’t know.

Yeah. So, your flammable liquids, your combustible liquids, your batteries, your gas bottles, the temptation for sites to have squirrel stalls where, you know, they might be many kilometres away from the main store, or they may have issues with how easy it is to book stuff in and out at odd times and over weekends. So, if you're not careful, sites can lose control of it because, other areas of the plant that perhaps aren't as dangerous good aware, they start doing their own thing, and that's when you start to lose control and the risk for each site and for organizations that have multiple sites, the risk starts to multiply and sooner or later they're going to have an incident. 

Mel: Yeah, sure. How do worksites go about making sure that the staff are educated and aware of the risks and is that a challenge?

Gary Kent: It is a challenge. Most sites these days, they will have induction requirements and competency requirements and people that are working in stores and storage areas where they're handling and taking dangerous goods off transport, putting them into stores, moving them around the yards.

They have a reasonable idea and they generally, I’ve found, they want to do the right thing. They want to know. But, other than occasional dangerous goods awareness courses, there's not a lot out there in terms of national certification, recognized certificates for people that need to control and handle dangerous goods. So, we do find there is rather a gap in the knowledge.

And then once you move away to workshops and contractor allies, as I call them, where you have multiple contractors spread across sites, sometimes they have dangerous goods cabinets, sometimes not, sometimes they are all mixed up, sometimes it's the back of trucks - on a fairly large scale, that's when you tend to find that there's shortcomings in the training and awareness for dangerous goods. People that have a need, but it's a challenge. 

Mel: Yeah, absolutely. And I guess that's where Tolk Group comes in or your role specifically. So, how can you support these organizations with these rather tangled situations, I guess. 

Gary Kent: Well, certainly when it's a formal hazardous area that's easy to classify. We can do the drawings or some drawings, accredited auditors as well.

So, with in-house we can, control that design process, documentation process and check that it's compliant. But when that relates to the dangerous goods and control roles, where we seem to do well with a lot of clients is we extend that auditing process to say, well, let's have come and have a look at, see what you've got.

And relative to the approximately 6 to 8 main dangerous goods standards, we look at how are you handling it when it comes off the transport. Where are you putting the stuff? Where are your flammable liquids? Where are your combustibles? Where are things sneaking past and ending up in general population and stores, when really, they should be segregated and grouped together with like dangerous goods?

A perfect example is combustible liquids with flammable liquids. So, your oils, your greases, your adhesives, those things, they sneak by quite a lot. Checking how they've got their separation and segregation, checking their quantities, their minor storage levels versus their major storage levels. The applicability then, of either part or all the relevant Australian Standards and completing an audit, review.

So, we say right, relevant to this standard, here’s your different clauses where you've got tick, cross... […] and then comments and photographic evidence as to where they may be falling short and how they can fix things. And we recognize that they can't do it immediately. But a lot of our relationships with clients have been built up over a few years now, a lot of repeat business.

So, you can see incremental improvements. And what clients like is that consistency of approach. If I've got ten, 15 sites, then we'll go around and look at all of them, apply the same metrics to them all, and they get a consistent reporting format out of us for all their sites. So, then the individual site managers or the group managers can then start to say, oh, we've got some system issues here, or we've got a specific problem on this site, and occasionally sites do go backwards sometimes because they've changed personnel, or they've suddenly increased their work throughput.

So, it's a case for them to keep track of things and to close out actions. And then when I go back the following year just to see how things are sitting. 

Pat: Yeah, absolutely. So, you mentioned, like the vastness of some of these work sites, particularly thinking about mine sites, the remoteness, the multiple locations, the vast work sites. What are some of the other challenges around managing dangerous goods particular to mining sites? 

Gary Kent: I think it's that they end up sometimes with changing scenarios where workplaces, they’ll, it's almost like tidal, where they might need to move whole departments because of mining areas encroaching. They might need to reposition areas, get them ring fenced, move things. The other one is keeping track of their materials as well. 

So, a lot of the sites use ChemAlert systems, which is one product, but it's a behemoth, to get the information you need out of it in a timely manner, especially if someone was in an emergency situation, tends to lend the best engineering or a best practice approach, I should say, now is to yes, use ChemAlert, but everyone's returning to local, recent copy SDS that are stored at each Dangerous Goods location.

And when those locations move, the SDS is moved so that if you or I had a chemical spill and we were needing first aid, then whoever comes to our assistance, they can readily get that information and don't have to rely on running to find a ChemAlert terminal. Finding the right information, which could be in the system 3 or 4 times under different names, printing it out, finding the right info.

It's there, right at the source of where the dangerous goods are stored. That is a common trait and trend that we're pushing again now. It's like, yes, the regulations say the information should be readily available, but what does that mean? If someone needs help, they need it ASAP and it needs to be immediately on hand.

Mel: Exactly. That's great. And you mentioned combustible liquids earlier. Is that sort of the main substance you noticed safe sites holding? Are there any other substances that, you know, pose quite a large risk on these sites? 

Gary Kent: Yes. Well, combustible liquids it's a very close cousin to flammable liquids separated by temperature and flash point. Because there's no nice little diamond pictogram for combustible liquids, it's got its own little rectangular sign that's recommended, but people don't always give it the respect that it deserves. It's pushed to the side. Yeah. Well, yes. And that's why you see grease cartridges, lubrication cartridges, adhesives that are combustibles, buried away in general store. When you start to collate them all together, there can be a significant quantity, and they should really be stored with or alongside the flammable liquids because it's only temperature that separates them.

And as the ambient temperature comes up, they very quickly start to reach their flash point and then guess what? Combustibles, they’re required to be treated as flammables when they get within six degrees of that. So, I often say to people it's not a problem until it's a problem. But when you get a fire, those ambient temperatures are going to rocket quickly.

And something with a flash point over 100 degrees will very quickly reach its unstable state and start giving off vapours. And then you've got additional fire risk and fire load that you could do without. So, I always say, pay attention to your combustible liquids. But the problem is they're not always labelled very well. You know, everyone looks and recognizes the pictogram with the fire in it, the little flame.

But there's an issue sometimes with SDS sheets - is that they're not immediately apparent if they're defective or not up to standard, unless people realize there's a problem and report it through to the regulators. The regulators aren't there policing every SDS before it's released to market. That means you can get goods with markings on it, which are a little bit fluid in some instances where it's a combustible liquid or it’s a corrosive, but it might have an exclamation mark on it.

And when you read it or look at the SDS, it'll say, this is a combustible liquid or this is a toxin, or this is this is a corrosive. You think that, well, you've not signed it very well. So, the combination of just understanding what you may be dealing with, always checking the SDS sheets, if it's in ChemAlert you've got half a chance that it's been checked, but that's a risk; that things aren't always properly labelled.

And sometimes, yes, SDS and are a bit deficient. That adds to the general confusion and can explain why things like corrosive but combustible liquids in particular, they sneak through, and they find themselves in general storage population when they should be segregated. You mentioned the importance of managing temperatures with things like combustibles. 

Pat: What specific recommendations do you make in some of those harsher environments where you've got those high temperatures, you know, deserts, and what other environmental factors can come into play?

Gary Kent: Yeah. Well, some places they're prone to a lot of lightning storms and dust storms. So, IP ratings of, that’s ingress protection ratings, of your storage cabinets or having decent shaded areas for your dangerous goods. So, that is proprietary branded dangerous goods containers, as they go up to some significant sizes, like 60,000l, coming right the way down to your normal flammable liquids or, combustible liquids or corrosive cabinets with, bunded storage, self-closing doors, etc..

So, always go for proprietary storage devices, always go for shaded areas. And if you've got to store things outside, try and avoid areas exposed to the western sun because in the afternoon, in hot locations, it can bake and you can get surface temperatures high 50s, 60 degrees. And that starts to create a problem for some of your combustibles with lower flash points that you know, the designation point is 60-61 degrees between a flammable and a combustible. But if a combustible, like diesel, sits there at 63C and you've got that western sun beating down on it, you can find it starts becoming unstable, and vapours start to develop within the storage spaces on those hot days in the tropics and northern Australia. So, you know, be mindful of shade, proprietary containers and ready access. Make sure you've got ready access, and your fire protection equipment is on hand as are your first aid kits and your safety showers and your eyewash stations and your spill kits. 

Mel: How can businesses train staff to properly identify and manage these substances on site? 

Gary Kent: Well, I always say try and seek out hazardous area and dangerous goods awareness training. So, you know, restrictions for areas, you know, what to look out for, for labelling. You know about the segregation and separation. The problem you have, and sites have is, other than that initial awareness, where do they go?

And that's where I suppose consultants come in and I make myself available. So, I'll go and do the dangerous goods audits for them. I'll give them their reports, I'll give them recommended actions and pragmatic solutions, but then also say, right, it's one thing telling you what the problem is, but I make myself available to say, right, let's have a meeting on site, make sure you understand the nature of the problem and then hold their hand if you'd like to actually guide them through, to say, because sometimes it's a bit like, one of those kids puzzles where you know, you're moving the plastic squares around trying to find the space and get that puzzle. To move one thing, you've got to do 15 others. Yeah. Apply that. Like, for example, on the combustible liquids where they're scattered around the stores. It could be days of work because you can't just create space, and you want to put things in the right place and have them separated. But to do that, you've got to reorganize half your stores.

And how are you going to find time for that when it's fully operational? Sometimes they're running 24/7, so consultants being available to help guide them through. It isn't just a matter of do the report or do the design and then so see you later. You've got to be prepared to say, right, you know, do you need a hand to get this fixed and implemented?

Mel: Exactly. It's that key, ongoing support and commitment isn’t it. Other than storing combustibles in general stores and things like that are there any other, like, mistakes that you see commonly on some of these worksites? 

Gary Kent: Yes. Gas bottles. Understanding the relationship between minor storage, major storage. This applies to any dangerous goods, but particularly gas bottles.

But then where your legislation will call up your placarding limits for quantities and then it goes into manifest limits which are reportable to the regulators and having the information readily available at site entrances for your external fire authorities. That causes a lot of confusion. And there's the perennial issue of confusing, empties and full bottles, because when you're doing tally counts of the different gas types, you're obliged to count the empties as full because they're never properly empty, they're always pressurized.

So, having proper storage, ideally with all-weather access, concrete floors, area lighting but outside of the immediate vicinity of the gas bottles, proper signage, separation of empty and full, making sure you keep the oxygen away from your flammables, your LPGs and your acetylenes. That seems to be a problem. And what leads to this is inventory control.

Sometimes with these sites, they have remote inventory facilities where persons other than the immediate site buying officers will control when to flag purchase orders and the system can incorrectly generate it. I need six more. Six more what? Six more bottles or six more racks of six bottles? And then you can find that next week you get this big delivery arrive on site and they go, oh, what are we going to do with this?

It creates an overspill. It means they've got to find somewhere to put it that isn't designated for the purpose. And that just accentuates the control of gas bottle problem. So, that's an issue that we come across time and time again. 

Mel: That's interesting. You mentioned about those deliveries. Is transient storage something that comes up a bit in mine sites?

Gary Kent: Yes. It can be. Normally where they have a central warehousing facility or purchasing facility that will bring the goods into there before, they dispatch them to the milk run to the different sites. But a lot of sites are recognizing the problems with transient stores, because then you're introducing another facility that must have greater hazardous area or dangerous goods, particularly, awareness and training of staff. Whereas they start to say, well, why don't we just get those things dispatched directly?

Oh, yeah. That's right. So, transit stores, not as much of a problem as they used to be, but certainly your transport companies, the Tolls of this world… [...], they would certainly have ongoing issues where they’re holding things for multiple different clients. A lot of the times we’re getting involved with clients that have groups of sites, so they tend to take a higher-level view.

And when I've said to them, why are you holding product X, Y, Z, like liquid nitrogen, for example, which is inherently leaky 160L flasks, inherently leaky. When they come to use it, half the time it's empty. And they're storing 2 or 3 of them on each side, you know, and then have a look at an alternative hot shot arrangement.

These things get brought up and discussed and then they change their group philosophy as to how they might hold and transport certain goods.

Pat: Do you consult with many worksites out at sea. 

Gary Kent: No, not so much in this life. I used to when I was more into oil and gas and used to travel around the world visiting various oil rigs and things.

And that's an added dimension as well, is that, how much stock do you hold of dangerous goods because you might not always get reliable resupply options if it's stormy weather, for example. Yeah. Can you get a boat out or if you've got to fly stuff in and if you're flying stuff in, it's not the best option for dangerous goods.

Pat: Yeah, they must pose some unique challenges as well. But I think you've just answered one of those one of those challenges. 

Mel: Gary, can you tell us a little bit about what's kept you passionate about being in this area for so many years? 

Gary Kent: Oh, having the curly problems, I feel like, because I live and breathe this stuff and, you know, you've met me and now you've heard me, I'm not short of a thing to say. And it's just a matter of, well, what point do people glaze over.

You have to be careful of that. But it's making sure that you can provide a valuable contribution that improves a site’s compliance, improves the worker's knowledge, improves the scenario. But, you know, no one likes to be involved in a problem. And again, coming back to my favourite saying; it's not a problem until it's a problem. We all need to go home safely.

We all need to believe that we've done a good job, and we can lie straight in our beds at night. And that means consistency of approach, keeping up with the latest standards and advice and getting the information out there, being helpful to people. You know, I don't think it does anyone any good to hold on to the information and knowledge as a source of power.

It's about getting the information out there and helping people. 

Pat: That's amazing. That's good. And I guess looking forward, how do you see storage standards and practices evolving in areas like mining to enhance safety and compliance? 

Gary Kent: Well, it's interesting because as, mining are inherently dangerous and dirty occupations. They involve hazardous areas, dangerous goods and high voltage and, they also try and take advantage of alternative energy cost reductions, etc.

So, there are a lot of mine sites that do a lot of green work with water treatments and solar or wind power, etc.. Hydrogen is coming along very quickly. I don't think it'll be too long before, in fact there was an email come through this morning about the upskilling courses for engineers and consultants about how hydrogen is going to fit in with the mix and how are we going to change our thinking not only in hazardous areas, but dangerous goods, the way it's used and transported and generated and the types of facilities where you actually get the fuels and the dangerous goods from. You know, whether its heavy goods, vehicle refuelling, whether it's charging stations and the different colours of hydrogen where it's manufactured and how it fits in with the whole process. So, I think there's big changes afoot, especially in the hydrogen space and alternative energy space. And dare I say, if nuclear, which is a hot topic now, if that comes to the fore in future years, there's another complexity to our energy and dangerous goods mix.

Mel: Yeah. The landscape could look very different. 

Gary Kent: I think so. And the way, the way we generate and move fuels around, I think is, is going to have a lot of change. 

Pat: How much has the industry changed over the course of your career to date in terms of regulation, attitudes towards safety and different ways people are managing dangerous goods? 

Gary Kent: A lot. These days people expect workplaces to have, standard operating procedures, risk assessments, PPE, safety officers, and they expect to be given good advice, some good training, which is good because everyone wants to go home safe. You know, from years ago what was commonplace tomfoolery and messing around, and as an apprentice used to get picked on a bit. That just doesn't wash anymore.

And, the advent of having more women in engineering and mine sights and things. That's a positive. You've only got to look at what might be happening overseas. And so occasionally we get involved in overseas consultancy as client representatives to go and check out equipment and goods to see if they're going to comply with Australian Standards or what the client might have to do to them to make them acceptable for use on their site.

And when you see some of the safety standards on foreign sites, manufacturing facilities, it's like stepping back in time. And it makes you realize just how far we've come, especially in leading manufacturing nations such as Australia, where health and safety compliance is. and regulatory standards are, that's such a big impact. Yeah. And I think it's a good thing. That's very promising to hear.

Pat: Are there any other trends or, innovations in hazardous materials management that you see shaping the future of safety and compliance in the industry? 

I think the use of mobile devices like phones, and apps to track quantities, to track storage locations, to upload audit results, photographs of conditions both on a maintaining and compliance aspect, but also in terms of potential accident and risk assessment knowledge and assistance.

There's an awful lot, I think that can be done in that space, and I think we'll see more and more of that information coming on to your phones and tablets to make it easier to say, well, what am I storing where? What does it currently look like? What was the latest information on that? Have I even got CCTV there to see what the conditions are like etcetera.

Just so you can keep the more up-to-date information you have, the better your decision making ability. 

Mel: Is there any sort of major tips or any final comments you'd like to share with our subscribers as to how they could improve their safety on site today? 

Gary Kent: Don't be shy. Ask. You know you've got to get past that. Oh, I don't want to ask that question because I might sound stupid. The chances are someone else is thinking about it. But I think if you can, if you can find consultants that are happy and engaging and happy to provide the advice and just go the extra mile to say, okay, well, this is what you need to do, and righteo, now you're going to need assistance with how to do it, but make yourself available so that if people don't know, they can pick up the phone or they can drop you an email, send you text, and just ask.

As I say, one of the things I enjoy is the particularly curly nature of things that you might have not come across before and you go, ‘ooh, I’ll need to think about that’. Yeah. And, you know, it's a learning process. We're applying experience and knowledge of standards and regulations. But it's important to talk to people on the site to understand how they do things and why they do what they do.

Because there may be some valid rationale, that we've not considered as an outside consultant and it's like, ‘oh, okay, this is why they do that’. And that could put a whole new light on how you use and interpret and give them potential solutions. Because I don't believe anyone goes to work to do a bad job or to be unsafe.

It's normally because of those reasons why they're having to do stuff or because they don't know of a certain requirement. 

Mel: Thank you very much for joining us on the Chemical Safety at Work podcast. It's been very insightful. We've learned a lot, especially around mine sites. It would be great to stay connected, and we will obviously drop a link in the show notes below so our listeners can find you and find out a bit more about yourself and Tolk group and the services you provide.

Pat: And to the listeners. Thank you very much for tuning in again. I hope you got a lot out of, today's episode. Tune in again next week. Will be discussing lithium-ion batteries again, but this time with electrical engineer and skilled performance batteries director Ryan Hammond. We'll talk to you then.