Mining Industry: Safety Challenges and Obra’s Fit

Mining is widely recognized as one of the most hazardous industries. Although miners comprise only ~1% of the workforce, mining accounts for about 8% of fatal workplace injuries worldwide. In 2023, U.S. mining fatalities spiked, with 38 miners tragically killed, up from 30 the previous year. The fatal injury rate in mining is alarmingly high – in the U.S. it was 17.8 per 100,000 workers (in 2021 for mining excluding oil/gas), nearly 5× the average for all industries. Common mining hazards include ground collapses, machinery accidents (e.g. haul truck collisions, conveyor entanglements), explosions in coal mines, and exposure to dust or toxic gases. In Canadian mines, safety has improved over the past decade (fatal injury rate fell 23% from 2012 to 2021) but still stood around 2.7 per 10,000 employees – equivalent to 27 per 100,000, underscoring persistent risk. These incidents carry steep costs in lives, lost production, and regulatory repercussions.

How Obra Helps: Obra can greatly enhance safety management in mining operations through digital workflows and real-time insights. Some potential use cases include:

• Digital Inspections & Hazard Reporting: Facilitate daily equipment checks and mine inspections via a mobile app. Frontline miners can easily report hazards or near-misses (even offline in underground settings), ensuring no issue goes unlogged. This increases reporting of “near miss” events that often go unrecorded (reducing dark data).

  
  

• Incident Management & Compliance: Streamline the process of recording incidents, investigating root causes, and tracking corrective actions. Obra can ensure compliance with MSHA regulations by scheduling required safety drills and monitoring that all incidents are reported and submitted per law. For example, all reportable accidents can be automatically formatted for MSHA’s requirements, avoiding penalties.

  
  

• Training and Certification Tracking: Mining has strict training mandates (e.g. new miner training, annual refresher). Obra can track employee certifications, send reminders for refreshers, and log training completions. This helps large mining firms (often multinational) maintain consistent safety standards across sites in the U.S., Canada, or elsewhere.

  
  

• Real-Time Operational Intelligence: By aggregating data from inspections, sensors (e.g. methane or ground stability monitors), and incident reports, Obra can alert managers to emerging risks. For instance, a pattern of high equipment temperatures or repeated minor conveyor incidents could signal a looming breakdown or injury risk – enabling preventive maintenance or targeted safety talks. Over time, analyzing this data helps identify accident hotspots and operational inefficiencies that, once corrected, improve both safety and productivity.

Construction Industry: Safety Challenges and Obra’s Fit

Construction remains one of the most dangerous occupations in North America. In the U.S., construction workers accounted for roughly 1 in 5 workplace deaths in 2023. The fatal injury rate in construction is about 9.6 per 100,000 workers – nearly three times the all-industry average. Each year over 1,000 construction workers die on U.S. job sites, and hundreds of thousands are injured. Canada sees similar challenges, as construction consistently leads in worker fatalities among industrial sectors. The “Fatal Four” hazards cause the majority of construction deaths: falls from height (38% of fatalities) are the top killer, followed by struck-by object incidents (~17%), electrocutions (~8%), and caught-in/between accidents.

These incidents are expensive – beyond the human cost, an average fatal construction accident is valued at ~$1.3M in direct+indirect cost, and non-fatal injuries (e.g. a severe fall injury) typically cost tens of thousands each. Overall, U.S. construction injuries and fatalities cost an estimated $11.5 billion annually in medical, lost work, and liability costs. Despite improvements in equipment and training, construction companies still struggle with compliance (e.g. OSHA cited over 7,000 fall-protection violations in 2023) and with capturing all safety incidents (many near-misses or minor injuries go unreported).

How Obra Helps: Obra’s platform can be a game-changer for construction safety by digitizing compliance workflows and enhancing field communication. Use cases include:

• Site Audits and Toolbox Talks: Supervisors can use Obra on a tablet or phone to run standardized safety checklists each day (scaffolding checks, PPE compliance, etc.) and instantly flag any issues. The platform can log toolbox talks and safety meetings with attendance, ensuring daily briefings are documented. This creates a verifiable trail for OSHA or Ministry of Labour requirements.

  
  

• Incident & Near-Miss Reporting: Encourage workers to report even minor incidents or hazards by making it as simple as snapping a photo and filling a quick form in Obra. By reducing paperwork, more incidents get reported. (Notably, studies estimate at least 25% of workplace incidents go unreported globally, and as many as 69% of injuries may be missing from U.S. official records – Obra aims to close this gap by capturing those “dark” safety data points). The software can automatically notify safety managers when a report comes in and guide them through an investigation workflow (recording root cause, corrective action, etc.).

  
  

• Compliance Task Management: Construction firms juggle many regulatory tasks – from equipment certifications (e.g. crane inspections) to worker training (e.g. OSHA 10/30 courses) to environmental permits. Obra provides a calendar and alert system to track these compliance deadlines and tasks. For example, it can alert when a crane’s annual inspection is due or when a site-specific safety plan needs updating, helping avoid lapses that could lead to accidents or fines.

  
  

• Analytics for Prevention: By collecting rich data across multiple job sites, Obra can generate dashboards identifying trends – e.g. if fall-related near-misses are increasing on a particular project, or if one subcontractor reports disproportionately more incidents. Management can then intervene proactively (retrain crews, improve fall protection, etc.). Over time, this data-driven approach boosts not only safety but also operational efficiency (since a safer site often runs with fewer disruptions).

Oil & Gas Industry: Safety Challenges and Obra’s Fit

Oil and gas operations (from upstream drilling to pipelines and refineries) are high-risk environments with unique dangers. In recent years, safety performance in oil and gas has worsened after prior improvements. In the U.S., the fatality rate in oil & gas extraction jumped to 16.1 deaths per 100,000 workers in 2022, a sharp increase (20% higher than the previous year). This is over four times the average workplace fatality rate, making oil/gas one of the most perilous sectors. Common accidents range from catastrophic events (explosions, well blowouts, pipeline fires) to everyday injuries (slips on oily surfaces, equipment crush injuries, vehicle crashes transporting crews and supplies). Explosions and fires remain a leading cause of fatalities – for example, among global oil & gas producers, 41% of worker deaths in 2024 were due to explosions or burns. Vehicle and transportation accidents also consistently cause a large share of deaths in oilfields. On the non-fatal side, tens of thousands of severe injuries occur in this industry; between 2015 and 2022, over 82,000 severe work-related injuries in oil & gas were reported to OSHA (with many more likely unreported). Impact injuries (being struck-by or caught in equipment) account for about 60% of on-site oilfield fatalities, and heavy machinery is responsible for ~30% of serious injuries. The financial repercussions of accidents are immense – a single upstream incident (like a well explosion) can cost millions in damages, lost production, and environmental cleanup, not to mention legal liabilities. Furthermore, oil and gas companies operate under a web of regulations (OSHA, EPA, BSEE offshore rules, provincial OHS laws in Canada, etc.), making compliance complex yet critical.

How Obra Helps: Obra provides an integrated safety and compliance solution well-suited to the oil and gas sector’s needs. Key use cases include:

• Permit-to-Work and Procedure Compliance: High-hazard operations (confined space entry, hot work, line breaking, etc.) require strict permit workflows. Obra can digitize the permit-to-work process – ensuring that before any high-risk job, the required checks, approvals, and isolations are logged in the system. For example, an operator at a refinery can request a hot-work permit through Obra, which then routes to the appropriate supervisors for sign-off, verifies that gas testing was completed, and stores the permit record for compliance audits. This prevents shortcuts and captures whether procedures were followed (or if someone deviated, as is a known issue contributing to accidents).

  
  

• Contractor Safety Management: Oil and gas projects often involve numerous contractors and subcontractors. Obra can maintain a centralized record of all contractor personnel certifications, orientations, and safety performance. When a new crew arrives on an oilfield, they can be registered in Obra, complete mandatory safety inductions via the app, and report any incidents. The platform can track each contractor firm’s incident rates and compliance status, giving the operator insight into which contractors meet safety expectations.

  
  

• Incident Response and Root Cause Analysis: In the event of an incident (from a minor leak to a major blowout), time is critical. Obra’s incident management module guides teams to record initial details, notify key personnel, and begin an investigation. It can integrate checklists for root cause analysis (e.g. TapRoot or 5-why frameworks), and assign corrective actions. All steps are timestamped and documented, which is invaluable for later review and for regulatory reporting. Having this centralized, time-lined record helps demonstrate due diligence to regulators and prevents recurrence by ensuring lessons learned are recorded and shared across the company’s global operations.

  
  

• Real-Time Monitoring & Analytics: Modern oil & gas sites have sensors and IoT data (pressure readings, gas detection, vehicle telemetry). Obra can interface with these systems or allow importing their alerts into the safety dashboard. For instance, if a hydrogen sulfide gas detector triggers an alarm at a drilling site, Obra can log it as a safety event, notify nearby personnel, and later correlate it with any incident reports. Over time, analyzing this data alongside incident logs might reveal patterns – e.g. certain wells have more frequent safety alarms, or certain shifts/crews experience more near-misses. These insights form a part of operational intelligence: management can use them to improve maintenance schedules, refine operating procedures, or target training where it’s needed most. Moreover, since many oil & gas companies operate internationally, Obra provides a unified platform to enforce global safety standards while still catering to local regulations (OSHA in the U.S., OHS codes in Canadian provinces, etc.), ensuring consistency in safety performance across all sites.

Addressing Underreporting and “Dark Data” in Safety

Across mining, construction, oil & gas and other industries, a huge proportion of safety incidents never get officially recorded – creating “dark data” that obscures true safety risks. Surveys indicate that roughly 25% of workplace accidents and near-misses go unreported on average. In some regions, the underreporting is even more severe: for example, up to 31% of incidents in one survey of Australian firms were not reported, and the International Labour Organization (ILO) warns that official national injury statistics are widely incomplete.

In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates as many as 69% of work injuries and illnesses never make it into the annual statistics. In other words, well over half of the incidents might be “invisible” in the data that companies and regulators traditionally review. This underreporting can stem from cumbersome paper reporting processes, fear of blame, or lack of easy mechanisms to report minor incidents and near misses. The consequence is a missed opportunity to learn from and prevent future incidents – near misses that aren’t analyzed often foreshadow serious accidents down the line.

Obra’s design explicitly tackles this challenge. By making reporting easy (via mobile forms, quick logs, even anonymous submissions if needed), it lowers barriers for workers to report all incidents and hazards. The platform’s analytics then illuminate the dark data – consolidating all those previously hidden observations into dashboards of actionable insights.

For example, if minor oil leaks or “almost accidents” are frequently reported on a certain machine, Obra will highlight that trend so the company can fix the issue before a major spill or injury occurs. In this way, Obra not only helps companies stay compliant with required recordkeeping, but actually uses the newfound data to drive preventative safety actions. Over time, this cultivates a transparent, proactive safety culture: workers see that reporting is encouraged and leads to improvements, and managers base decisions on a complete picture of operations rather than just the tip of the iceberg.

From Compliance to Operational Intelligence

While safety and compliance are the core focus, the benefits of Obra’s platform extend into broader operational intelligence. The detailed, real-time data captured on incidents, inspections, and workforce behavior can be leveraged to improve efficiency and performance. For instance, analyzing safety inspection records might reveal maintenance issues that also impact production (e.g. a drill rig that frequently triggers safety alarms may also be operating below capacity – fixing the root cause improves output and safety in parallel). By breaking down data silos, Obra allows EHS (Environment, Health & Safety) teams and operations managers to share insights.

Many leading firms are now viewing safety metrics as key operational KPIs – lower incident rates correlate with better productivity and worker morale. Obra supports this by providing not just raw data but intelligent trend analysis, predictive alerts (for example, flagging when a certain threshold of minor incidents suggests a larger problem), and reporting tools that tie safety performance to business outcomes.

In summary, Obra is built to be more than a digital compliance checklist – it’s a strategic tool for risk management and operational excellence. By focusing on mining, construction, and oil & gas, Obra addresses the toughest safety environments, helping companies in North America and beyond protect their people, avoid costly accidents, and optimize their complex operations.

Safety and compliance workflows are streamlined end-to-end: from the field worker uploading a hazard report, to the manager viewing a compliance dashboard, to the executive analyzing enterprise-wide safety trends. With powerful analytics and an intuitive interface, Obra turns your on-site safety practices into a source of continuous improvement. In an era where every incident can have massive human and financial consequences, Obra offers a way to stay ahead of risks, ensure compliance, and unlock the hidden insights in your safety data – ultimately fostering safer and smarter operations.

Sources:

• Claris Design-Build – “44 Construction Safety Statistics for 2025” (Phil Clark, Mar 11, 2025)clarisdesignbuild.comclarisdesignbuild.com.

• Liliana Cruz-Ausejo et al. – “Occupational accidents in mining workers: scoping review” (BMJ Open, Oct 2024)pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

• Ogletree Deakins – “Where MSHA and the Mining Industry Are as 2023 Comes to an End” (Dec 8, 2023)ogletree.com.

• U.S. BLS – “Mining fatalities rose 21.8% from 2020 to 2021” (TED article, Oct 20, 2023)bls.govbls.gov.

• Mining Association of Canada – “The Mining Story 2024 – Facts and Figures” (June 2024), safety statsmining.ca.

• ISHN – “Safety first: Protecting workers in oil and gas industry as fatalities rise” (Rose Morrison, Sep 4, 2024)ishn.comishn.com.

• JPT (Society of Petroleum Engineers) – “IOGP Safety Performance Indicators 2024” (Jennifer Pallanich, July 2, 2025)jpt.spe.org.

• Noggin (Motorola Solutions) – “Guide to Addressing Underreporting of Safety Incidents” (March 28, 2024)noggin.ionoggin.io.

• National Safety Council – Injury Facts 2023 (via injuryfacts.nsc.org)clarisdesignbuild.comishn.com.