Collaboration between geologists and engineers is critical for the exploration phase of mine development, through geological interpretation, feasibility, mine planning, and daily mine operations management.

The customer needed an end-to-end planning solution for their mine project.

Engineers needed tools to quickly and accurately design drill patterns and rapidly change and modify patterns to suit their needs.

Also needed was enhanced data visualization to build accurate models and increase the speed to dig.

Fragmented tactical planning was delaying processes and preventing engineers from understanding the impacts of decisions. This affected steps of the process and the overall schedule.

Short-range mine plans were disconnected from the blending plans and did not account for the blending process because the old method was unable to place item constraints. There was insufficient control over the ore hardness, grade, and mineralogy characteristics, which sometimes led to mill ore shortages and poor mill production periods.

Creating mine plan reports was time consuming and at the expense of more optimal and achievable mine plans. End-of-period maps were prepared from mining cuts by hand, and the mine plan data was output into an archaic format.

Customer is a state-owned enterprise which operates mines throughout Vietnam. The industrial conglomerate focuses on coal and mineral mining.

Productivity and operational efficiency has declined in recent years across mine sites.

The mine company needed a geology and engineering solution at its key site. Pending success, the goal is to implement the solution at the company’s other mine sites.

Multiple ore percent models present the eternal question of where in the block does the coal actually sit. Footwall geometry must be accounted for at toe and crest. Hanging wall and endwall geometry presents issues. In addition, coal loss and dilution occur on contact and vary depending on seam, dip, and structure.

A rolling three-year plan, that must be updated monthly, market pressures and permitting concerns create a need to examine multiple scenarios.

Extremely limited dumping space near mining areas is another issue. Non-linear coal flows and long ROM haul distance create unbalanced fleet usage and bottlenecks in trucking capacity. Short hauls must be conserved and used appropriately to balance fleet demands.

Most mining projects around the world typically follow the logic of “mining the next best ore”. Consequently, head grades tend to decline over the life of the mine.

A decline in head grade combined with a decline in iron ore prices forced our customer to adapt to a new business environment and adopt new technologies to face these challenges.

The first step was to increase the confidence and reliability of the resource model. This task involved additional drillhole campaigns coupled with more detailed modeling techniques.

A new fleet management system (FMS) was needed to monitor the operation and ensure plan execution and compliance, thus capturing in the field the value of the project as forecasted in the mine plan.

A combination of planning software created many challenges, such as the translation of data from one tool to another, each one with different assumptions and levels of detail. It was difficult to reconcile plans prepared with different tools.

The mine plan called for a high profile of run-of-mine leach and total material movement. A solution was required that would allow engineers to evaluate other planning alternatives to optimize the material routing in the schedule and reduce the mining rate.

An integrated producer of copper and other metals, the mine business produces hundreds of millions of pounds of copper annually.

The current pit, 2.5 miles long by 1.5 miles wide and 1,200 feet deep, is situated on 20,000 acres. Benches are 40 feet high.

Due to mine size, geologists needed a comprehensive solution to efficiently store, manage, and analyze drillhole data, perform geological interpretation of the deposit and generate an accurate block model.

Our customer’s open pit mine uses a conventional truck and shovel fleet, comprising 83 haul trucks, five rope shovels and three hydraulic shovels, as well as the necessary support equipment.

The mine processing plant consists of a heap leach gold and silver recovery facility and a sulfide flotation plant.

The mine’s archaic ore control process worked, but not without complications, particularly when it came to data integrity. This old process needed to be replaced with a newer standardized workflow that allowed the mine to trust in its results and to make informed decisions with higher confidence.

Mine customer was specifically looking for three operational improvements:

1. Increase tonnage per truck
2. Increase drilling production
3. Decrease staff operational delays

In 2014, a company acquired an entry-level fleet management system solution for its 23 trucks and six high-precision shovels. However, the solution did not meet expectations.

The primary business challenges included:

• Automatic cycle detection
• Fleet optimization (automatic assignment) high-precision shovels to improve ore quality control

Due to the depth and breadth of their underground operation, minimizing operating costs is important to optimize return on investment for the company.

The mine needed a system that would regulate its 24 ventilators, so the ventilation system would only run when necessary. It needed to integrate with the underground fleet management system and with the frequency inverter to provide real-time guidance to dispatchers, informing them when to turn the system on and off, based on the mine’s operation.

The mine employs two mining methods: cut-and-fill and longhole stoping. In 2011, to improve safety and productivity, cut-and-fill was largely replaced by longhole stoping (sub-level stoping and variations). Cut-and-fill is still applied in stopes with lower inclination, requiring the use of in-stope pillars in wider stopes.

2020 is targeted for full digitization so the mine required an integrated solution for digital transformation in a challenging gold mine environment.

The company defined business drivers and a set of systems, processes, and technologies were assessed against the company’s current and future initiatives.

Most mining projects around the world typically follow the logic of “mining the next best ore”. Consequently, head grades tend to decline over the life of the mine.

A decline in head grade combined with a decline in iron ore prices forced our customer to adapt to a new business environment and adopt new technologies to face these challenges.

The first step was to increase the confidence and reliability of the resource model. This task involved additional drillhole campaigns coupled with more detailed modeling techniques.

A new fleet management system (FMS) was needed to monitor the operation and ensure plan execution and compliance, thus capturing in the field the value of the project as forecasted in the mine plan.

A combination of planning software created many challenges, such as the translation of data from one tool to another, each one with different assumptions and levels of detail. It was difficult to reconcile plans prepared with different tools.

The mine plan called for a high profile of run-of-mine leach and total material movement. A solution was required that would allow engineers to evaluate other planning alternatives to optimize the material routing in the schedule and reduce the mining rate.

South Africa’s Department of Mineral Resources regulations, compel surface mines to enhance safety for all trackless mobile machinery (TMM), such as trucks.

To meet regulations, the mine needed a solution that would incorporate the following:

• Proven System to Level 9
• Ability to integrate with personal alert, fatigue, and radars as new safety scenarios appear

Strong working relationship between product management, local support and local distributor

Underground mine required a surface solution to improve safety. Employees must share a 19-kilometer, single-lane access road with ore haulage and freight trucks to reach the mine site.

Blind corners, darkness, fog, heavy snow, and bridges on a single-lane road are just some of the challenges employees face. The company needed a system to alert drivers to approaching vehicles out of their line of sight and as far away as 300 meters to give them sufficient time to react. No data communications infrastructure was available along the haulage road. Peer-to-peer notification between vehicles was required.

South Africa’s Mine Health and Safety Inspectorate is determined to impose laws that reduce fatalities and occupational injuries.

Our customer is also subject to rules imposed by the Occupational Health & Safety Management System (OHSAS) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO). These bodies oversee standards for easier integration of quality, environmental and occupational health & safety management systems.

Our customer’s mine accounts for 11,000 permanent and contract employees and maintains an excellent safety record. For more than two decades, it has achieved one of the lowest disabling injury incident rates in the region.

South Africa’s Mine Health and Safety Inspectorate is determined to impose laws that reduce fatalities and occupational injuries.

Our customer is also subject to rules imposed by the Occupational Health & Safety Management System (OHSAS) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO). These bodies oversee standards for easier integration of quality, environmental and occupational health & safety management systems.

Our customer’s mine accounts for 11,000 permanent and contract employees and maintains an excellent safety record. For more than two decades, it has achieved one of the lowest disabling injury incident rates in the region.

Drill and blast engineers spent significant time entering data and using paper to collect downhole profile data.

The mine needed a solution for faster turn-around and re-modeling. Specifically, they were searching for a drill and blast solution that would provide rapid design and reconciliation tools for the entire drill and blast workflow.

Customer is a world-leading resources company.

The mine business wanted to improve the tracking of material from underground and understand the original source of material delivered to the surface.

To better streamline their mine to market business and increase productivity, they also wanted to identify ore loads or waste loads delivered to the incorrect location.

Incidents at mines raised awareness of the need to effectively monitor deformation of tailing dams to prevent catastrophic environmental disasters.

Chile has a long history of mining and high concern for environmental protection and safety regulations. In 2013, mining regulations were introduced concerning the use of new technologies for the effective monitoring of non-in-pit mining facilities such as tailing dams.

This mine is characterized by a complex geometry where two small pits are located next to each other and connected by a pushback that encompasses the entire extent of the mining area.

The main areas of concern are in the two separate pits and need to be simultaneously covered.

The local geotechnical engineers’ goal is to achieve maximum coverage over the areas of concern without compromising the resolution or the sensitivity of the movement detection.

Most of the rock mechanic challenges at mines are related to several continuing and steeply dipping shear zones almost parallel to the pit slopes.

The shear zones are partly highly altered and locally heavily jointed, causing slope instability typically associated with toppling, plane and wedge failures.

One of the most critical shear zones is located on the east side of the pit, in the ore near the contact with the waste rock. This shear zone runs almost the entirety of the eastern pit wall.