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How The Weir Group Built a Blueprint for Sustainable AI Governance

Headquarters
United Kingdom
Employees
10,000+
Industry
Mining and materials
Customer since
2023
  • The Weir Group faced a growing gap between AI adoption and governance, with AI identified as a board-level business risk in its safety-critical mining operations.
  • Using Collibra, The Weir Group built centralized AI inventories, risk-tiered workflows, and system-based approvals, replacing scattered documentation and slow email-driven processes.
  • Governance now extends beyond traditional risk to include sustainability factors like carbon footprint and water usage, aligning AI oversight with environmental commitments.

Goal

Engineering Trust

The Weir Group is a mining engineering technology company with over 150 years of history, originally founded as an engineering firm in Glasgow. Over the past decade, the company has made a strategic pivot toward mining technology, driven by a mission to make mining operations more sustainable as the world transitions to renewable energy sources. Operating in an industry where worker safety is paramount and environmental responsibility faces constant scrutiny, Weir Group navigates unique pressures that extend into every aspect of how it manages data and deploys technology.

Robin Sinclair, Senior Data Governance Manager at The Weir Group, is responsible for operationalizing data governance policies across the organization. As the company expanded its use of AI across business operations, from engineering workflows to sustainability initiatives, a gap emerged. Robin explained that “AI governance hadn't kept pace with the increasing scale of AI applications,” adding that their governance framework needed to ensure safety in high-stakes environments like mining, maintain operational consistency and monitor AI's growing scope.

The stakes were not abstract. In mining, errors can endanger lives, and unchecked AI use carries real operational and reputational consequences. Company leadership recognized this exposure at the highest level. Robin noted that “AI has been identified as a business risk, and therefore it has board oversight as well,” highlighting the urgency of building a governance approach that matched the pace and breadth of AI adoption.

Solution

Operationalizing Governance

To close the gap between governance policy and day-to-day practice, The Weir Group turned to Collibra. Robin said that “using AI governance tools like Collibra has allowed us to create centralized inventories of AI use cases, standardized risk assessments, and traceable workflows.” Rather than relying on scattered documentation and manual coordination, the team built structured, system-based processes that brought governance directly into the flow of work.

A key design principle was differentiating how projects move through review. Robin explained that “risk categorization assures that high-risk projects undergo detailed reviews while low-risk projects proceed swiftly,” ensuring rigor where it matters most without creating unnecessary bottlenecks.

The shift was deliberate and measurable. Robin described how the team “shifted from policies to integrated workflows, from email-based approvals to system-based ones, and from undefined risks to localized accountabilities visible to the entire organization.”

The Weir Group's strong safety and sustainability culture also shaped what governance covers. Robin noted that “as a sustainable company, we are now looking at things like cost, compute power, carbon footprint, and water usage in the governance of AI, not just assessing whether or not it's a risk,” expanding the governance lens well beyond traditional compliance.

Results

The Impact of Governed Innovation

With Collibra in place, The Weir Group now operates a centralized, traceable AI governance framework with clear ownership at every level, from project teams through to the board. AI governance is reported as a standalone risk category, chaired by the Head of Data Governance and led by the Chief Data Officer, giving the organization consistent visibility into how AI is being used and managed.

The risk-tiered workflow has removed friction where it isn't needed while preserving thorough review for high-stakes applications. Slow, email-driven approval chains have given way to system-based processes. Accountability is no longer ambiguous. It is localized and visible across the organization.

The Weir Group has also broadened its governance criteria beyond traditional risk to include sustainability factors like compute power, carbon footprint and water usage, aligning AI oversight with the company's environmental commitments. Looking ahead, the team plans to integrate real-time governance intelligence using evolving platform capabilities.

AI governance hasn't kept pace with the increasing scale of AI applications. Our governance framework needed to ensure safety in high-stakes environments like mining, operational consistency, and monitoring AI's growing scope.

Robin Sinclair

Robin Sinclair

Robin Sinclair

Data Governance Product Owner, The Weir Group

The road to Data Confidence™ starts here.