Unearthed helps to deliver Rio Tinto’s 2025 The Pitch Program

Unearthed worked with Rio Tinto to support the delivery of The Pitch, Rio Tinto’s internal employee innovation program designed to crowd source and prioritise innovation opportunities from across its global business units.

The Pitch provides a structured mechanism for Rio Tinto employees to submit observations and ideas, based on their direct operational experience. The program is designed to surface high value opportunities from within the business, then convert those insights into defined challenge statements that can be progressed through innovation activities.

In 2025, the program focused on eliminating falling objects.

For Rio Tinto, falling objects represent a critical safety risk across a wide range of operating environments. These risks can occur across mine sites, processing facilities, ports, smelters, refineries, workshops, warehouses and project areas. 

The challenge is complex because falling-object risks are not isolated to one asset class or operational activity. This makes the topic highly suited to an internal crowdsourcing model, where input from frontline teams, technical specialists and functional leaders can be brought together to build a clearer picture of the problem.

Caption: Bell Bay Aluminium in Tasmania engaged in The Pitch, with one of its operational teams helping sponsor and support the delivery of an external innovation challenge.

Unearthed supported Rio Tinto through program delivery, submission review, thematic clustering, opportunity framing and decision support. This included helping interpret internal submissions, identify recurring areas of risk, and translate operational insights into focused challenge statements with clear pathways for further investigation.

The program received strong internal engagement from across Rio Tinto’s global operations, with a final forty four submissions considered for open innovation challenge delivery.

Following review and prioritisation, three final challenges were selected for further development, with support from an operational sponsor:

Aging infrastructure management (RTA, Bell Bay Aluminium)

This challenge focused on falling-object risks associated with older infrastructure, particularly where corrosion, wear or deterioration may be hidden, elevated or difficult to inspect. The opportunity was to improve the identification, monitoring and management of ageing assets before they become a safety risk.

Material build-up prevention (RTIO, Western Australia)

This challenge focused on material build-up across equipment and materials handling systems, including earthmoving equipment, conveyors, trucks and chutes. The opportunity is to explore improved prevention, monitoring and early detection of build-up that may release unexpectedly and create safety exposure.

Unstable stacking management (RTX)

This challenge focused on unstable stacking and storage risks, including equipment, signage, samples and operational materials that may be temporarily stored, stacked or handled at height. The opportunity is to identify better methods for storage, detection, handling and risk reduction, drawing on solutions from both mining and adjacent sectors.

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The Pitch 2025 demonstrated the value of combining internal crowdsourcing with structured innovation delivery. By bringing together insights from Rio Tinto’s workforce and shaping them into focused challenge areas, the program created a practical pathway to address a critical safety risk.

Unearthed was proud to support Rio Tinto in translating broad internal crowd sourcing activities into clear innovation priorities.

By capturing operational insight from across the business and shaping it into defined challenge areas, the program created a strong foundation for the next phase: engaging external innovators, technologies and adjacent-sector capabilities to explore new ways of reducing falling-object risk.