Annual analysis of findings and incidents at Major Hazard Facilities (MHFs)

Western Australia (WA) has some of the biggest, costliest and most complex industrial plants in the world. They supply vital energy, minerals and chemicals that are essential to modern living. Their outputs and exports make immense contributions to WA’s economy, enable major downstream businesses, employ thousands of people and support hundreds of local businesses.

These plants handle explosives, flammables or toxic resources like LNG, LPG, ammonia, ammonium nitrate, chlorine, cyanide and other similarly hazardous materials and are classified as major hazard facilities (MHF). Specialist inspectors from the WorkSafe Petroleum Safety and Dangerous Goods Directorate regulate MHFs with a particular focus on the prevention of major incidents. As a proactive measure, an annual analysis of the findings from site audits and reports is published.

In 2023–24, 20 formal safety audits were carried out. Key findings include:

• the need to improve emergency preparedness – this issue was identified in a quarter of the audits
• non-compliances requiring priority action were all related to asset integrity and maintenance.

More than 60 dangerous goods incidents at MHFs were reported. Analyses of 62 incidents identified:

• on average, every fifth reportable incident resulted in some degree of harm to people, property or the environment
• approximately two thirds of incidents which caused harm occurred due to a loss of containment of a dangerous good
• in just under half of the incidents which caused harm, issues with work control systems and personnel competency were identified as the primary cause.

These figures serve as a strong reminder for all sites storing or handling dangerous goods to diligently maintain and comply with their emergency response plans, systems of work, staff competency, and asset integrity and maintenance systems. These will form part of our proactive audit and inspection campaign for the coming year.

Further information

See Safety statistics and other reports for the full report.

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Australian Dangerous Goods Code

The National Transport Commission has released the Australian Dangerous Goods Code Edition 7.9. It can be used from 1 October 2024 and will be mandatory from 1 October 2025 in Western Australia.

For a summary of the most important changes, please read Australian Code for the Transport of Dangerous Goods by Road and Rail: Differences between edition 7.8 and edition 7.9.