Decoda’s latest technology solution is raising the bar for mine safety and productivity.
When you’re dealing with a high-pressure environment like a mine site, vigilance and a proactive approach to safety is paramount to reducing incidents.
But with sites often spanning hundreds of kilometres, it’s next to impossible to station someone at all points of a mine at all times. That’s where technology comes into play.
“When it comes to safety on-site, the biggest value item is being as proactive as possible,” Decoda analytics and technology manager Kurt Pidgeon told Australian Mining.
This mindset led Decoda to develop BundAware, a tool to help sites prevent accidents from an unstable or below-regulation bund wall.
Bunds are used on mines as places into which operators dump their waste ore. These large pits have walls of impervious material around them to form the perimeter, and must meet specific height requirements in accordance with recognised regulatory standards.
Reversing trucks into bund walls that are either too low, damaged, or at an incorrect angle poses a grave risk, with the potential for significant injuries or even fatalities due to the elevated danger of encountering a substantial drop-off beyond safety bunds.
Using remote-sensing light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology, as the operator reverses, BundAware scans the height and width of the bund, as well as the angle at which the truck is coming in.
“BundAware scans the area behind the truck to alert operators that something isn’t right,” Decoda lead systems engineer Morgan Chen told Australian Mining.
“It then creates a 3D model that can be seen by operators and supervisors so they can follow up and either repair the bund or provide more training to the operator who might have come at the wall too fast or at the wrong angle.”
According to Pidgeon, training the operators not only makes an operation safer but also more efficient.
“It means you can have those one-on-one conversations with the people that are making the mistakes and coach them through it,” he said.
“You can also have more constructive conversations because you have the video of what went wrong and actually show them physically how to correct that for next time.”
While safety was Decoda’s number-one goal in developing BundAware, mines that implement the technology have the added benefit of remaining compliant.
“Certain legislation sets out the minimum height and width for a bund wall, and it varies state by state,” Pidgeon said.
“If you have an incident and the bund wall is found to not be within compliance, a site can get shut down until it’s rectified.
“The loss of productivity can sometimes be more costly than the fines that might occur.”
Decoda presented BundAware to an impressed audience at the International Mining and Resources Conference and Exhibition (IMARC) in November 2023.
“We had a lot of people come through and tell us that they had had bund wall issues but they weren’t able to find many businesses that were looking to a solution,” Pidgeon said.
“We could see how beneficial it would be to put the control back in the hands of the operators and empower them to stop and readjust as needed.”
By measuring the speed and angle of the truck as it approaches the bund wall, BundAware helps to ensure mistakes are corrected before an incident occurs.
“There have been instances where a bund wall was used as a break, and in instances like that it’s good to have the data stored to go back to,” Chen said.
“The supervisor can match the data up with their fleet management data to figure out which driver was in control at the time and then they can educate that operator directly.”
Decoda is currently testing BundAware at some of its clients’ sites, and the feedback has been nothing but positive.
“Our clients usually don’t have visibility on what happens at a bund wall in the middle of the night or in really remote areas of their sites,” Pidgeon said.
“So to give them that visibility has been a game-changer, and we’ll continue to use their feedback in our path ahead with BundAware.
“We follow the voice of our customers when it comes to developing the right solutions for their sites.”
This feature appeared in the March 2024 issue of Australian Mining.
