The last decade has been characterised by some of the worst environmental and loss-of-life disasters in the history of tailings dam failures. As a result, the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM) has been introduced as a multi-stakeholder effort to prevent future tailings storage facilities (TSF) related disasters from happening again. Many mining companies, ICMM (International Council on Mining and Metals) members and non-members have committed to comply with the Standard.

Operationalising this governance framework will require regular self-assessments to identify and manage gaps toward standard compliance. In that respect, different requirements are provided for implementing and auditing the standard. This undertaking, combined with the additional effort to comply with jurisdictional legal requirements, other standards and guidelines as well as internal policies can be extensive and resource laden.     

Even though there are many requirements derived from all these standards-related demands, there are also many resemblances. In that direction, Vale has taken this challenge as an opportunity to streamline the efforts and, in collaboration with Forwood Safety, built a platform to simplify the compliance journey against multiple standards.

This paper presents an innovative approach to merge requirements from multiple standards into a single integrated verification process, thereby reducing the number of assessments and introducing a new attempt to differentiate the best practice from standard practice. The equivalency study completed by ICMM and MAC (Mining Association of Canada) as well as Vale’s internal normative documents and local regulatory compliance were used to develop this solution.

Vale also designed an active action management approach to link the resulting action plans from the gap analyses with the compliance score, gaining real-time compliance visibility, allowing the system to forecast when a TSF will be 100% compliant against the chosen standard.

1. Introduction

History shows that, several catastrophic tailings dam collapses have highlighted the urgent need for mine operators to address the safety of these structures. In recent years, significant efforts have been made to enhance the standards for tailings storage facilities (TSFs) and water storage dams. Vale acknowledges the importance of these standards and improvements, which stem from insights gained from international industry bodies.

Tailings management frameworks vary from country to country and even within jurisdictions, which make it challenging for organisations to navigate and comply with the different requirements. For example, in Canada, the Mining Association of Canada (MAC) Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) sets out specific requirements for tailings management, while Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM) sets out several requirements across a range of topics for tailings management.

Some standards emphasise on technical aspects, while others have a broader focus aimed at improving transparency for internal and external stakeholders. Vale acknowledges the strengths from different standards and commits to pro-actively working towards conformance of multiple industry tailings standards including GISTM, MAC TSM and the organisation’s own internal tailings management systems.

Operationalising multiple tailings management frameworks is a complex and resource-intensive process that requires careful planning and coordination to ensure compliance, consistency, and effective stakeholder engagement. This paper discusses the innovative approaches that Vale has implemented to overcome the challenges and effectively operationalise their commitment to comply with multiple tailings management frameworks.

Vale’s roadmap goes beyond the compliance to meet the true intent of the requirements of the standards.

2. Operational conformance challenges

Conformance with tailings management frameworks and local, national, and international regulations requires significant investment in technology, infrastructure, and resources. It also requires a commitment to continuous improvement and transparency, which may require changes in organisational culture and management practices. These are the key challenges with operationalising conformance with multiple tailings management frameworks:

1. Co-ordination and Consistency: Consistent implementation of multiple tailings management frameworks can be a complex and challenging process that requires significant coordinated efforts between different teams and departments within an organisation.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Verification Fatigue: Regular self-assessments, external verifications on active and legacy sites, maintaining the assessment data, managing identified gaps and areas of non-conformance, proves to be a formidable task for all TSF and dam owners.
5. Communication and Engagement: The implementation of multiple frameworks can hinder the effective communication and engagement with all stakeholders including employees, regulators, and local communities, involved in tailings management.
6. Organisational Standards and Procedures: Complying with various tailings management guidance and conformance protocols, as well as adhering to internal standards and procedures, can be an arduous task for TSF and dam owners.
7. Resource Allocation: Implementing multiple tailings management frameworks requires significant resources, including financial and human resources. This can be especially challenging for smaller companies with limited resources.
8. Technical Complexity: Different tailings management frameworks may have different technical requirements, which can make it difficult to ensure that all sites are being managed effectively and safely. This can be especially challenging for companies with multiple sites located in different regions or countries, as local regulations and standards may also differ.
9. Systems Integration: Conformance to the standards requires stronger interaction and integration between the range of disciplines and various systems dealing with engineering, social and environmental monitoring.
10. Monitoring and Review: A challenge that organisations may encounter is effectively assigning responsible individuals for identified gaps and monitoring performance against internal and external targets. This impacts the organisation’s ability to efficiently address gaps and meet established targets.
11. Document Control: Along with performing regular verifications, the verification findings need to be consolidated and visually reported to the relevant authorities which is a major challenge. The maintenance and upkeep of verification records is also a challenge.

3. A roadmap for integrated tailings compliance

Embarking on the journey of operationalising a tailings management framework entails establishing consistent processes and continually advancing towards achieving full compliance.

Figure 1: Roadmap for Integrated Tailings Compliance

The journey can be broadly classified in four phases:

• Verification Phase: Independent verifications are a crucial part of the process to ensure compliance with multiple global and internal standards. After an independent verification is conducted, it is essential to identify any gaps or non-conformances and develop action plans to address them. Tracking compliance and collecting supporting evidence is essential to demonstrate compliance.
• Reporting Phase: The next phase after the independent verification is to report the verification findings. This phase involves several key goals, including executive compliance reporting, action management, overall adherence tracking and plans for ironing out site-level differences to achieve deadlines.
• Integration Phase: Establishing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) with multiple standards combined into an integrated verification is a key deliverable of this phase. This involves analysing and developing integrated verifications that cover multiple standards, rather than conducting separate verifications for each standard. Regular reviews are undertaken on the existing governance structures and programs to identify any areas for improvement to meet compliance requirements. This involves evaluating the effectiveness of current processes and procedures, identifying any gaps or weaknesses in transparent reporting to the internal and external stakeholders.
• Beyond Compliance Phase: Going beyond compliance means implementing practices that exceed the minimum requirements set by the tailing’s standards. This can help organisations to achieve higher levels of sustainability, social responsibility, and ethical behaviour by setting ambitious goals, investing in innovation, collaboration with other organisations. Building trust with stakeholders and investors through transparent reporting and produce evidence that demonstrates the organisation is going beyond compliance.

3.1 Compliance Audit & Tracking

In a Harvard Business Review, the author examines “Why Compliance Programs Fail—and How to Fix Them”. The paper summarises that the firms should start by linking compliance initiatives more closely to specific objectives: preventing misconduct, detecting it, or aligning policies with laws and regulations. Companies routinely had policies and procedures but did not track breaches, or even a formal conformance score.

Mining companies can take several steps to link compliance initiatives more closely to specific objectives and improve their tracking of breaches. The following steps describe in general framework applied at vale to rollout compliance audit and tracking.

1. Conduct a comprehensive compliance assessment: Begin by conducting a thorough assessment of existing compliance policies, procedures, and controls. Identify any gaps or areas for improvement that need to be addressed. This assessment will serve as a baseline for further actions.
2. Establish clear compliance objectives: Define specific compliance objectives related to preventing misconduct, detecting it, and aligning policies with laws and regulations. These objectives should be measurable, realistic, and aligned with the company’s overall goals and values.
3. Develop a robust compliance framework: Create a well-defined compliance framework that outlines the key elements of compliance, including policies, procedures, risk assessments, training programs, and internal controls. Ensure that this framework aligns with the specific compliance objectives established in the previous step.
4. Evidence based reporting and tracking mechanisms: Implement robust systems and processes to capture and track compliance breaches This may involve leveraging technology solutions, such as compliance management software that supports evidence-based tracking. Encourage employees to attach substantiating evidences to demonstrate the adherence of compliance
5. Regular monitoring and auditing: Conduct regular monitoring and auditing activities to assess compliance with policies and regulations. This includes reviewing data, conducting internal audits, and performing risk assessments. Regular review of breaches to ensure they are completely resolved and supporting evidence are provided. This allows the internal assessments frequency to be kept more reasonable without leading to audit fatigue.
6. Provide comprehensive training and awareness programs: Offer regular training sessions and awareness programs to employees at all levels. This training should focus on educating employees about compliance policies, procedures, and the importance of reporting breaches. It should also cover relevant laws and regulations that apply to the mining industry.
7. Regularly review and update policies: Continuously review and update compliance policies and procedures to reflect changes in laws, regulations, and industry best practices. Stay informed about emerging compliance risks specific to the mining industry and address them promptly.

By implementing these steps, mining companies can strengthen their compliance initiatives, enhance their ability to prevent and detect misconduct, and align their policies with laws and regulations. This proactive approach helps mitigate compliance risks and promotes ethical conduct within the organization.

4. Integrated Compliance Framework

Vale recognised the challenges of complying with multiple tailings management standards and took the opportunity to develop a solution that streamlined the compliance process. By consolidating the requirements of multiple tailings management standards into a single governance framework, Vale was able to simplify its compliance efforts and improve the efficiency of its operations.

In developing this solution, Vale relied upon equivalency assessments conducted by different industry bodies to compare various tailings management standards and identify areas of alignment and divergence. The equivalency assessments are aimed to identify the key elements of a credible tailings management systems and evaluate the equivalency of different tailings management standards, such as the GISTM and the MAC TSM.

The study’s findings provided insights and recommendations to help TSF owners to improve their tailings management practices and ensure compliance with relevant standards. Vale conceptualised the integration of the GISTM, MAC TSM and their internal Tailings and Dams Management System (TDMS) to create a single verification, covering these three standards. Bringing the conceptual idea of an integrated verification to fruition was a challenging and multi-step process that involved:

• Analysis of the resemblances of the requirements derived from 77 GISTM requirements, 96 TSM requirements, 36 TDMS requirements to identify commonalities, and 5 Legal requirements applicable to a specific jurisdiction (not covered in any applicable standard); and streamline the compliance process. More than 200 requirements were analyzed.
• Creation of mappings against the requirements of GISTM vs TSM, GISTM vs TDMS, TSM vs TDMS to derive the commonalities, and mapping all the local regulations that would still require an additional effort to comply with.
• Development of 107 integrated verification questions based on the common requirements identified through the exercise of mapping individual standards. The count of questions developed for the integrated verification was reduced by nearly 50%.
• Linkage of the 107 integrated verification questions to the relevant GISTM, TSM and TDMS requirements.

This was a time and resource-intensive process for Vale as it required a thorough understanding of each standard and its specific requirements.

4.1 Conceptual Design

The following diagram illustrates the conceptual design in how different standards have common requirements and an integrated verification can cover multiple requirements in a single verification.

Figure 2: Integrated Verification – Conceptual Design

Table 1 maps the commonalities between the requirements of GISTM 7.2, 7.4 and 7.5 and TSM 2.27 and the merging of these requirements into a single verification question.

GISTM Requirements	Topic III: Design, Construction, Operation and Monitoring of the Tailings Facility PRINCIPLE 7: Design Implement and Operate Monitoring Systems 7.2 Design, implement and operate a comprehensive and integrated engineering monitoring system that is appropriate for verifying design assumptions and for monitoring potential failure modes. Full implementation of the Observational Method shall be adopted for non-brittle failure modes. Brittle failure modes are addressed by conservative design criteria.   7.4 Analyse technical monitoring data at the frequency recommended by the EOR, and assess the performance of the tailing’s facility, clearly identifying and presenting evidence on any deviations from the expected performance and any deterioration of the performance over time. Promptly submit evidence to the EOR for review and update the risk assessment and design, if required. Performance outside the expected ranges shall be addressed promptly through Trigger Action Response Plans (TARPs) or critical controls.   7.5 Report the results of each of the monitoring programmes at the frequency required to meet company and regulatory requirements and, at a minimum, on an annual basis. The RTFE and the EOR shall review and approve the technical monitoring reports.
TSM Requirements	Indicator 2 Performance Evaluation 2.27 Do performance evaluations include results of surveillance and reviews (both internal and independent) and address: • operating performance against objectives and critical controls. • compliance with legal requirements, and conformance with plans and commitments. • the risk management process, including the need to update the risk assessment. • need for changes or updates to the OMS manual, including evaluating the effectiveness of surveillance activities and the utility of the information being collected, and identifying any gaps in information collection; and • need for changes or updates to the emergency response plan and emergency preparedness plan?
TDMS Requirements	People 1 – TDMS Training 1. Geotechnical employees trained in the TDMS. Performance 25 – Engineer of Records 25 The EOR or DOR (if the structure is in the design or construction phases and the EOR is from Vale) contracted, appointed, and managed according to the guidelines in PNR- 000106.
Integrated Verification Requirements	1.EoR states that the facility is performing according to its design intent

 

Table 1: Mapping of GISTM and TSM Requirements Example

5. Challenges

The journey in these last twenty-two months among Vale Base Metals business units using the new developed platform, aiming to deliver the compliance against all applicable standards has requested a uniformed and aligned efforts from different areas within the company. Some of the challenges and lessons learned from the process will be listed below.

5.1 Scarcity of Expertise

The main challenge faced was related to the shortage of dams and tailings experienced professionals with the required knowledge and time to perform the comparison exercise and hence compile the verification assessment checklist that would aim to encompass all the applicable standards. This situation can be even more emphasised, when that professional needs to be knowledgeable in multiple jurisdictions where Vale Base Metals business unit operates.

5.2 Reporting and Scoring Variations

The inconsistent or non-existent reporting scores for each standard. While one can be binary, other is a letter ranking categorization, and a third one would be in a decimal format or percentage. Work in the system background to find a common conformance score denominator that would support he evidence-based approach to reflect the conformance reality, and still tracking progress along the journey was an exciting overcome problem.

5.3 Conformance Correlation Issues

The conformance correlation from one standard to another is another major challenge in applying a unified approach. In the integrated verification approach, there many occasions where we would have encountered one to many correlations, this means that one single requirement in one standard, is equivalent to many similar requirements in other. As can be imagined, this brings a problem of error allowance. For exemplification simplification, percentage will be used as a scoring report metric. From the integrated verification approach, if in a standard A you can achieve 95% conformance, the same Standard A, but in the stand-alone verification, that score can very base on company error tolerance (4%), meaning the score can be between 91-99%. It is up to each company to defined which tolerance to use, recognize this, and continue improve the process to the error can be minimize at each review cycle.

6. Integrated framework business benefits and learnings

Vale has saved a significant amount of time and effort by combining various tailings management standards into a single verification. This integration has resulted in a reduction of regular self-assessments, and reporting, culminating on the company concentrating its efforts on managing the newly created and existing action plans to address the identified gaps.

As shown in Fig.2, Vale experienced an approximate 50% reduction in verification time and effort through this innovative approach and optimised its tailings management practices across its entire operations. In conjunction with the integrated verification, the solution was developed to address another time-consuming routine task, which is the reporting capabilities, in which another approximately 50%-time reduction is being achieved.

Figure 3: Optimisation through integrated verification

 

The incorporated dashboards, provide users the ability to assess their progress visually and keep track of their findings and associated actions. Apart from simplifying the compliance process, the system’s focus is on identifying gaps, creating action plans for all requirements, displaying incremental adherence progress, and linking existing actions to complex requirements.

The integrated verification solution has led to substantial cost reductions and increased efficiency since fewer resources are needed to oversee the verification procedure.

Through effective integration of industry best practices and requirements from various standards, Vale has established an integrated approach to tailings management. This has resulted in a comprehensive understanding of tailings management, including a holistic perspective of the associated risks and opportunities.

Vale can efficiently recognise and rectify gaps in its tailings management procedures, leading to continuous compliance improvement.

6.1 Reducing the Verification Cycles

The integrated verification allows Vale to streamline its compliance and avoid duplication of efforts. Instead of conducting separate verifications for each standard, which leads to verification fatigue, Vale can now perform a single verification to assess compliance with all relevant requirements. This has resulted in significant cost savings and efficiency gains, as fewer resources are required to manage the verification process.

Vale has come up with an innovative approach to assign compliance weightage for each gap identified during the self-assessment process. This approach aids in managing compliance adherence and reducing verification fatigue by assigning a compliance weightage for each gap identified during the self-assessment process. This allows Vale to prioritise the most critical compliance gaps, rather than trying to address all gaps simultaneously.

By assigning a weightage score to each gap, it enhances compliance visibility and enables efficient monitoring and tracking of adherence.

Adopting a data-driven approach to compliance management enables Vale to make well-informed decisions regarding resource allocation and efforts, while continuously enhancing its compliance adherence.

7.  Move Beyond Using Spreadsheets

Capturing the entire compliance process in multiple spreadsheets can present various challenges when it comes to maintaining, managing multiple verifications, action plans, and compliance tracking. While excel spreadsheets can be a useful tool for tracking and managing compliance data, they have several limitations that can hinder effective compliance management.

Spreadsheets are not flexible in capturing changes in data, which is one of the primary limitations of using them for compliance management. Since spreadsheets rely on manual data entry and manipulation, they are prone to errors, omissions, and inconsistencies, which can undermine the integrity and accuracy of compliance data.

In a joint effort to enhance the efficiency of regular self-assessments, ensure seamless compliance with multiple standards, and effectively manage gaps, Vale and Forwood Safety collaborated to develop WeComplAI Tailings, an innovative software solution.

This comprehensive system helps track, manage, and achieve compliance across multiple tailings management standards with a single verification and provide compliance measurement against each standard.

The system is capable of presenting each verification question with all the relevant mapped requirements from different standards along with additional guidance to the user to fully understand the context of the question and how to achieve compliance.

As previously mentioned, the path to achieving continuous compliance begins with standardised verifications and gap analysis before progressing towards integrated operational frameworks. If an organisation is commencing its compliance journey, the software system can carry out independent verifications against a single standard. As the organisation progresses the compliance journey, the software system can enable a more comprehensive integrated compliance framework.

The software system includes dashboard visualisations that allow users to gauge the status of the various verifications and determine the progress achieved quickly and easily. Findings for each requirement can be captured and reviewed in the verification summary. Associated gaps are captured in an action plan and assigned to a responsible individual to address the gap

7.1 Key Features and Benefits of the Software Solution

1. Centralised Compliance Management provides a single platform to manage and monitor compliance across multiple tailings management frameworks, enabling organisations to streamline their compliance processes.
2. Real-Time Adherence Reports against internal, GISTM, and MAC TSM standards without conducting separate verifications against each standard. This helps organisations to identify gaps and take corrective actions quickly.
3. Accelerated Verifications with a unique user-centred verification design that provides maximum context for faster and consistent verification results, reducing verification time and efforts.
4. Reduced Verification Fatigue as verification questions are linked to multiple tailings management standards, eliminating the need for multiple verifications and reducing verification fatigue.
5. Site-Based Performance enables organisations to analyse multiple sites and establish performance benchmarking, helping them to identify focus areas for improvement.
6. Comprehensive Verification Capability provides a comprehensive verification capability for both internal and external verifications, ensuring that verifications are conducted efficiently and effectively.
7. Risk Assessment and Remediation establishes processes to assess risks on a regular basis and work through the remediation process, enabling organisations to identify potential risks and take proactive measures to mitigate them.
8. Improved Visibility across all the tailings assets and the nearby environment and social profile, enabling organisations to manage their operations responsibly and sustainably.
9. Reporting capabilities for both internal and external stakeholders, providing organisations with the necessary information to make informed decisions and demonstrate compliance.

8. Conclusion

In summary, multiple tailings management standards have been introduced as a multi-stakeholder effort to prevent TSF and dam disasters from happening. The operationalisation of tailings and dam governance frameworks is a complex and resource-intensive process that requires regular self-assessments to identify and manage gaps towards standard compliance. In collaboration with Forwood Safety, Vale has taken this challenge as an opportunity to streamline efforts and built a platform to simplify the compliance journey against multiple standards. The innovative approach presented in this paper merges requirements from multiple standards into a single integrated verification, reducing the number of self-assessments and introducing a new way to differentiate best practice from standard practice.

Vale’s active action management approach links the resulting action plans from gap analyses with compliance scores, gaining real-time compliance visibility, allowing the system to forecast when a tailings storage facility will be 100% compliant against the chosen standard. These efforts serve as an excellent example for other organisations seeking to enhance their tailings management practices and improve their overall compliance performance. By adopting this innovative approach and streamlining efforts, organisations can not only ensure compliance with multiple standards and regulations across multiple jurisdictions.

Effective implementation of integrated tailings management roadmap goes beyond compliance, achieving higher levels of transparency across the system and setting a solid foundation towards broader organisational sustainability and (Environmental, Social, and Governance) ESG commitments.

9. References

Chen, H., Soltes, E. 2018. Why Compliance Program Fail – and How to Fix Them. Harvard Business Review: 116-125.

Global Tailings Review (GTR). (2020). Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management, https://globaltailingsreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/global-industry-standard-on-tailings- management.pdf. Accessed May 2023.

Global Tailings Review (GTR).  (2020).  Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management, tail-ings_conformance-protocols.pdf (icmm.com) Accessed May 2023.

Global Tailings Review (GTR). (2020). Global Tailings Portal, https://globaltailingsreview.org/. Accessed May 2023.https://tailing.grida.no/

ICMM (International Council of Mining and Minerals) .2022. Mining Principles: Best Performance.

ICMM (International Council of Mining and Minerals). 2020. Equivalency Benchmark. ICMM’s Mining Principle compared with Mining Association of Canada’s Towards Sustainable Mining.

MAC (Mining Association of Canada). 2019a. A guide to the Management of Tailings Facilities, Ottawa, ON: Mining Association of Canada.

MAC (Mining Association of Canada), Towards Sustainable Mining. 2023. TSM Alignment with the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management. https://mining.ca/towards-sustainable-mining/tsm-alignment-with-the-global-industry-standard-on-tailings-management/. Accessed May 2023. May 2023.

MAC (Mining Association of Canada). 2021. Equivalency Between Requirements of Towards Sustainable Mining and the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management. https://mining.ca/resources/guides-manuals/mac-assessment-of-equivalency-between-tsm-and-the-standard/

10. Authors

Fabricio da Silva¹, Greg Puro², Steve Wood³, Olumide Iwakun⁴, Sebastian Fernandez⁵

1. Senior Geotechnical Governance Specialist, Vale, Canada
2. Base Metals Manager for Dams, Vale, Canada
3. Chief Executive Officer, Forwood Safety, Australia
4. Principal Geotechnical Engineer, Vale, Canada
5. Senior Geotechnical Governance Specialist, Vale, Canada