Case Study

Tailings+

About the Customer

The Customer is one of the largest mining companies globally with operations in North and South America, and Asia. It maintains approximately 50 tailings dam facilities (TSFs) with many in remote and / or environmentally sensitive areas.

In managing these TSFs, the Customer has undertaken to comply with:

  • the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM)
  • the Mining Association of Canada’s Towards Sustainable Mining standards (TSM); and
  • the Customer’s own Corporate Standard, incorporating jurisdictional legal requirements.

Customer Challenges

Operating multiple tailings management frameworks is a complex and resource-intensive process. It requires careful planning and coordination to ensure compliance, consistency and effective stakeholder engagement. This undertaking was proving to be extensive and resource laden.   

The Customer identified the following specific challenges in operationalising conformance with multiple tailings management frameworks:

Coordination and Consistency

Consistent implementation of multiple tailings management frameworks is complex and challenging process that requires significant coordinated efforts between different teams and departments within an organisation.

Public Disclosure

Manual processes to ensure that public disclosed information is accurate, substantiated, accessible, understandable, current, and approved for release presents its own set of difficulties.

Adherence Tracking

Managing verification findings in multiple systems without a direct relation to compliance goals can lead to inefficiencies and inconsistencies in the reporting process. It can also result in an increased risk of non-compliance if verification findings are not properly addressed or prioritised.

Other challenges included

Verification Fatigue
Communication and Engagement
Resource Allocation
Technical Complexity
Systems Integration
Monitoring and Review
Document Control

The Customer was seeking a tool to simplify the compliance journey against multiple standards.

Forwood Solution

We configured our Tailings+ solution to meet the Customer’s specific requirements. The solution is in the process of being deployed across all of the Customer’s TSFs, globally.

In particular, Tailings+ offered the Customer a single integrated audit whereby each of the TSF standards could be assessed with a single audit.

The other major benefits include:

  1. Centralised Compliance Management 
  2. Real-Time Adherence Reports against internal, GISTM, and MAC TSM standards without conducting separate verifications against each standard. 
  3. Accelerated Verifications with a unique user-centred verification design 
  4. Reduced Verification Fatigue 
  5. Site-Based Performance enables organisations to analyse multiple sites and establish performance benchmarking
  6. Comprehensive Verification Capability

Outcomes Achieved

A 50% reduction in time and effort

Thanks to Tailings+, the Customer saved a significant amount of time and effort by combining various tailings management standards into a single verification in the Tailings+ Solution.

The Customer has publicly stated that, by using the Tailings+ Solution, it experienced an approximate 50% reduction in verification and reporting time and effort through this innovative approach and optimised its tailings management practices across its entire operations.

Furthermore, the Customer is now widely recognised as a global leader in TSF compliance monitoring, disclosure and reporting.