HighGrade MINING IT March 2010 Software leaders ... results of HighGrade’s inaugural survey of Australasian mining, exploration and consulting company software preferences on p2. Page: 2 Australia still a leader in software business 3 Brief look at ISTS well received 6 IT Notebook: Gemcom, Maptek 7 IT Notebook: Maptek strikes gold; Itasca PFC3D 8 Innovation fires growth, and outside interest 10 Law passes Savage test 12 Underground scheduling software at new juncture 13 Lumps and bumps for recovering Runge 15 Short-term payback for planning software 17 Mart and co map a new course 19 Micromine makes geo-logical updates 20 MineWare plugs into BMA draglines
Transcript
HighGrade MINING IT March 2010
Software leaders ... results of HighGrade’s inaugural survey of Australasian mining, exploration and consulting company software preferences on p2.
Page: 2 Australia still a leader in software business
3 Brief look at ISTS well received
6 IT Notebook: Gemcom, Maptek
7 IT Notebook: Maptek strikes gold; Itasca PFC3D
8 Innovation fires growth, and outside interest
10 Law passes Savage test
12 Underground scheduling software at new juncture
Australia still a leader in software business HighGrade: March 24-30 edition
HIGHGRADE’S inaugural annual mining software user survey has highlighted the popularity of Australian developed products in the Australasian market. More than 230 responses to a survey completed over six weeks from the start of February to mid-March this year put acQuire ahead of Maxwell GeoServices’ DataShed as the leading geological database management (GIS) software on the market, while Maptek Vulcan (and MineSuite), Micromine PITRAM, Gemcom Surpac, ASX-listed QMASTOR’s Pit to Port, Mincom
Australian miners buying soft- ware locally. Image: Ventsim
Ellipse and Ventsim are other Australian-developed products rated highly by Australasian-based mining, exploration, consulting and contracting company executives, managers, engineers and geologists.
The Datamine/GijimaAST-sold Mine 2-4D was also partly developed in Australia.
If there was an overall winner in the survey it was South Australian-based Maptek, which was judged a clear leader in the general mine planning software fields of resource/reserve modelling and surface mine design/planning, and had the second most popular underground GMP software.
The MineSuite mine production reporting system is another popular Maptek product and the company is enjoying considerable success with it in North America as well as Australasia.
The Western Australian-based acQuire and its namesake, flagship product have been around for 14 years, with the company claiming to have a presence at about 400 sites worldwide. A good number of these are in its backyard.
PITRAM has been through a strong domestic and international sales growth phase in recent years, while the Pit to Port supply chain management product has won over major Australian bulk mining companies and is now spearheading QMASTOR’s drive into the American and African markets.
The popular Surpac software suite was a major attraction for Canada’s Gemcom when it bought Australian-based Surpac four years ago. Similarly, Mincom’s marquee EAM solution, Ellipse, helped make it a target for US-based private equity firm Francisco Partners in 2007.
Craig Stewart, a mining engineer and former part-time designer of underground-mine ventilation modelling software, now has multiple distributors of his Ventsim product, which continues to win accolades as an advanced niche design tool which is helping to save mine operators a lot of money.
GoCAD 3D modelling software, described by one survey respondent as a “really powerful tool for helping [us] to understand the 3D architecture of geology”, was developed by a consortium of 18 mainly global oil and gas companies and more than 120 universities, and commercialised by a Cayman Islands-registered company called Paradigm Geophysical.
It is licensed to, and is being further developed for the minerals sector in Australia, by the likes of Perth-based Jigsaw Geoscience.
Just over half the respondents nominated software in all categories, while most tabled products in four or more categories.
Popular nominations not listed below include Runge’s Talpac mine haulage evaluation software and XPAC mine scheduler; Cube Consulting’s GCX grade estimation and reporting product; and Gemcom MineSched.
Best geological database/geoscientific information management, software. 1. acQuire. 2. DataShed Best resource/reserve modelling software 1. Maptek Vulcan. 2. Gemcom Surpac Best mine design/planning software (surface) 1. Maptek Vulcan. 2. Mintec Minesight Best mine design/planning software (underground) 1. Datamine/GMSI Mine 2-4D/Datamine EPS. 2. Maptek Vulcan Best production management system/software 1. Micromine PITRAM. 2. Modular Mining DISPATCH Best surveying/mapping software 1. Gemcom Surpac. 2. Adam Technology 3DM Best enterprise level management software/tools 1. QMASTOR Pit to Port. 2. Mincom Ellipse Best niche product 1. Ventsim. 2. GoCAD
Survey respondents: 41% Western Australia; 29% Queensland; 16% New South Wales; 6% Victoria; 2% Indonesia/Papua New Guinea; 2% South Australia; 2% New Zealand; 1% Tasmania; 1% Northern Territory.* 42% Mining companies; 18% exploration companies; 28% mining/development companies; 7% consulting firms; 3% contract mining companies; 2% ‘independent experts’. *Where companies are based. Includes companies working in other offshore locations.
M I N I N G I T
Brief look at ISTS well received HighGrade: March 24-30 edition
DATAMINE’S openpit Interactive Short Term Scheduler (ISTS) software was favourably received by mining industry attendees at last week’s product briefings in Perth and Brisbane. HighGrade Mining IT joined them on the first leg of the tour.
The product developed over about nine months by Datamine and personnel from Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines (KCGM) – after the Barrick Gold/Newmont-owned Super Pit operator decided the market didn’t have the software it needed – ISTS is a new planning and scheduling medium that gives mine planning engineers a detailed (moving) 3D picture of production schedules and scheduling parameters which can be readily integrated with the Gantt chart-type project views of Datamine’s Enhanced Production Scheduler (EPS) and similar reporting tools.
In KCGM’s only public statement on ISTS, senior mine planning engineer Andrew Payne said the company needed to factor mining fleet “constraints”, and results of real-time haulage analysis, into its operational and short-term scheduling, and couldn’t do so with existing software. It was happy with the outcome of its collaboration with Datamine.
The software firm is understood to be searching for a partner to work with in the same way on an underground version of ISTS.
“We think the haulage analysis would be very handy for an underground operation as well,” said Datamine Australia general manager Brad Barker.
“This product as you see it today basically took about nine months of developing. We’re at the point where we want to start getting this out to the market, because we know that KCGM has obviously got a lot of benefits out of it, and getting that market feedback. And then we actually want to look at going to the next phase of development.
“We do have a consulting company that we can start working with now. I’m basically giving them a relatively open scope to continue with further development of the product.”
Mark Chesher, principal mining engineer with AMC Consultants, said the firm had worked with Datamine in the past to develop tools that allowed it to “solve problems across a range of mining environments”.
“I see ISTS fitting into our suite of openpit mine planning tools to enable us to remain in the Datamine environment where our planning skills have traditionally been strongest,” he said.
“ISTS was created for short term scheduling on mine sites, but we are looking for it to fill the gap between optimisation, with NPV Scheduler, and our detailed costing system, OPMincost. Linking these programs will give us the benefit of rapid analysis of options, linked with the detail developed in our cost models. There is still some work required to get all steps running smoothly for all of our studies.
“Presentation tools, including animation, will allow us to readily audit our schedules for mining and waste disposal. We are looking to get more reporting functions in future versions. Now that a version of ISTS has been released we will be working to see how best to adapt our planning systems to make use of the tools, and to provide feedback to Datamine on useful amendments and additions required to enhance the product.”
Mining engineer and independent consultant Henk Elferink told HighGrade Mining IT he saw ISTS as adding something new to the capabilities offered by existing software.
“Mine 2-4D for the openpit comes to mind as a competing product, however, it is a more ‘life-of-mine’ strategic tool, than a shift-to-shift scheduling tool,” he said. “The great strength of ISTS lays in the fact that it can call on all the proven underlying Datamine funtionality and its easy exchange of data with other software packages.
“ISTS, sitting on top of Datamine Studio 3, gives a direct visual link between the mine design and the proposed short-term extraction sequence. Using Enhanced Production Scheduler to report the physicals per time frame, changes in the schedule can instantaneously be seen in 3D. The pit, stockpiles and dumps are visualised in this way. Scheduling bottlenecks can easily be spotted and costing of the different processes can be done using the real and derived physicals.”
Elferink said the pre-release version presented during the briefing had some holes.
“Some functions had not been fully implemented yet,” he said.
Tracking of material on a truck-by-truck basis when building stockpiles (to be re-mined at a later period) and final dumps, by being able to construct on-the-fly block models, was one missing feature. Elferink said a final dump could turn into an ore source again in the future, and any environmental liabilities should be able to be tracked.
“Acid mine drainage water comes to mind,” he said. “With the GPS technology in place a 3D block model of these stockpiles and dumps should be generated easily.”
In terms of ongoing ISTS development Elferink said fine tuning of mining parameters which influenced haulage productivity on a day-to-day time frame, such as weather changes influencing the maximum speed attainable for a shift, or stretch of haulage road, and wet/dry season changes, would have to be calendar driven and “transparent to the scheduling engineer”.
“Its [ISTS’] core market currently will be existing Datamine equipped mine sites,” Eferink said.
“The mine plan for the shift can be updated and transferred to the production department, to be uploaded into any dispatch system, ready to run at the start of the next shift. A pre-shift visual presentation – in the form of an animation of the work area – can show all operators the objective for the shift, and allow for a well informed workforce. If savings can be demonstrated, nothing will stop a rapid uptake in cost driven mining operation.”
Peter Lock, mining engineer and principal at consulting firm MiningPlus, said he also the ability to interactively select mining blocks and link with a schedule as a positive feature of ISTS.
At this stage, the “inability to link directly to an underground schedule or handle actual mining data” was a negative.
What needed to come next?
“I would say derived activities,” Lock said. “However, I believe they are already developing this.”
The ability to split a dump building section out as a separate module would open up the software to use by operators/planners of large underground mines, he said. Linking ISTS output to production management databases such as PITRAM for daily/weekly reporting was another promising development.
“Since the introduction of Mine 2-4D in the underground environment mines have been able to produce schedules from short term to long term with relative ease,” Lock said. ISTS offered the user a different tool, allowing schedulers to “predict and report potential variances in either equipment utilisation or production sooner – or any other key driver”, he said
Datamine’s Barker said at the briefing the launch of Studio 3 versions of Mine 2-4D and EPS was about 2-3 months away.
IT Notebook: Gemcom, Maptek HighGrade: March 24-30 edition
BLOCK caving expert and Gemcom software author Dr Tony Diering is heading to Perth, Western Australia, next month for the Caving 2010 block and sub-level caving conference run by the Australian Centre for Geomechanics. Delegates will hear more about recent modifications to Gemcom’s PCBC block cave planning and scheduling software, used at many of the world’s existing block cave mines. Diering, Gemcom vice president advanced technologies, gave a presentation at the SME conference in Arizona, USA, earlier this month in which he described PCBC – his 20-something-year-old “baby” – as currently the world’s most widely used software for planning and scheduling of block cave mines. Users included Rio Tinto, Freeport Indonesia, Newcrest Mining, De Beers, CODELCO, and leading mining consultants, with Newcrest’s Cadia East project in New South Wales, Andina in Chile, and Freeport’s Grasberg block cave among recent applications. All very big mines, or planned operations, but Diering said the market for PCBC was a small niche and it was therefore vital for him/Gemcom to have close working relationships with key customers. Some of the recent software changes have included:
• The CMS (Cave Management System) was upgraded to provide a completely new GUI via a modeless dialog. “This allows the users to control the daily draw order process more effectively than previously,” Diering said. “Every day – or every shift at some mines – the user has to use CMS to generate the daily tonnes to be mined from each draw point for the next day or shift. The new version of CMS (inside PCBC) allows for the order to be previewed before being committed to the database files. Better display of the order tonnes, draw point status and recent draw compliance can be displayed as well.”
• Another area in which PCBC has been upgraded is in the playback tool. Upgrades include the ‘Map’ format option which provides a dynamic map of draw point conditions displayed directly in Excel which can be updated using ‘next’ and ‘previous’ buttons as the user scans through the scheduling steps. An option was also added to allow display of seismic data within the PCBC playback display area, said to be useful for correlating with the forecast cave back position.
• Another useful addition, says Diering, is the Erosion option, which allows for better simulation of the draw cone erosion process in which the draw cone radius increases with time (and tonnes drawn) from each draw point. “The Erosion tool was already in the template mixing algorithm in PCBC, but has now been made available together with the pre-vertical mixing tool,” he said. “This allows for easier and faster run times, but still takes the erosion mechanism into account in a realistic manner.”
AUSTRALIAN mining software company Maptek has continued its five-year support arrangement with the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in the US, which will continue to turn out geologists and mining engineers well drilled in the use of Maptek software. Maptek’s latest move is to team with PCS Mobile, a Denver-based mobile communications specialist, and Xplore Technologies, a supplier of industrial-use computers, to supply three tablet computers (image below) for training geology and mine engineering students.
The Australian company, which has a strong presence in the US mining software market, said it had been a supporter of
programs at the South Dakota school since 2005, sponsoring its mining software lab (opened in March 2008) and supplying Maptek Vulcan software for mine planning, design and scheduling courses. The mapping tablets are to be used by the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering, which runs a geomechanics investigation and engineering design project as a part of its geological engineering field camp. The course provides experience in rock structure mapping, the application of the latest LIDAR/laser scanning technology, and the use of Maptek Vulcan 3D geoscience visualisation and analytical software. The school’s Professor Ziggy Hladysz said laser scanning was “an accepted technology in mining, and even more in tunnelling”. “Virtual geology is gaining momentum, particularly in large size excavations,” he said. Maptek provided its I-Site laser scanner and technician for rock mechanics projects, and linked the school with PCS and Xplore for the field mapping technology. “This is the best way for students to learn high tech engineering applications,” said Dr Nuri Uzunlar, director of Black Hills Natural Sciences Field Station, Geology and Geological Engineering, who oversees the course. “We're eager to introduce the tablet mapping program by mid-2010.”
M I N I N G I T
IT Notebook: Maptek strikes gold; Itasca PFC3D HighGrade: March 16-22 edition
AUSTRALIAN mining software company Maptek says it has entered into an “enterprise agreement” with major gold producer Newcrest Mining to provide “flexible deployment of Vulcan for mine planning and geological modelling across existing sites”. The company is understood to have beaten off a long list of rivals to clinch the deal. Newcrest sites include Telfer in Western Australia, Cadia Valley (including Ridgeway, Cadia and Cadia East) in New South Wales, and Gosowong in Indonesia, as well as its head office in Melbourne, Victoria.
Vulcan software model.
Maptek said the Cracow gold mine in Queensland, 70% owned by Newcrest, already used MineSuite for production monitoring and fleet management, while Vulcan was employed for ongoing investigations at the Namosi project in Fiji. ‘BLAZINGLY fast’, is how Itasca describes the 3D graphics-generating capability of its latest distinct element modelling software, due for formal release in May this year. The specialised geotechnical consulting and software firm said it would offer a demonstration version of PFC3D, with enhanced visualisation (EV), at the time of the pre-release. The 64-bit version of PFC3D (Particle Flow Code in 3 Dimensions) features the “blazingly fast” OpenGL-based 3D graphics and provides project management access, data file editing, and “all-new visualisation tools”. “Computers based on a 32-bit architecture can process 232 memory address locations of any information in virtual memory (RAM),” Itasca says in its latest public release on PFC3D. “Any memory not used by the computer's operating system is free for use by software applications like PFC3D and represents the maximum possible model size – approximately 2-3GB, depending on the available hardware. While this is sufficient for most PFC3D models, in cases where many hundreds of thousands of particles are
required, model size begins to quickly outpace available memory.” Itasca put up the example of synthetic rock mass model requiring more than 800,000 particles to achieve the required particle resolution. “This model was too large to be modelled on a conventional desktop computer and required the newer 64-bit architecture. A 64-bit computer can process 264 addresses (16 billion GB) and is limited, for all practical purposes, only by the available hardware.” PFC3D is described by Itasca as a discontinuum code used in analysis, testing, and research in fields where analysis of the interaction of numerous discrete objects exhibiting large-strain and/or fracturing is required. “Because PFC3D is not designed to examine a particular type of problem, its range extends to any analysis that examines the dynamic behaviour of a particulate system,” the firm said. “In PFC3D, materials may be modelled as either bonded (cemented) or unbonded (granular) assemblies of particles. Though the code uses spherical particles by default, particle shape may be defined in a PFC3D model through use of the built-in clump logic. The efficient contact detection scheme and the explicit solution method ensure that a wide variety of simulations — from rapid flow to brittle fracture of a stiff solid — are modelled accurately and rapidly.” Itasca said PFC3D used an explicit solution scheme that provided “stable solutions to unstable processes”. “It can describe non-linear behaviour and localisation with accuracy that cannot be matched by typical finite element programs,” it said. “This makes PFC3D, along with its two-dimensional counterpart PFC2D, the only commercially available codes of their kind.”
M I N I N G I T
Innovation fires growth, and outside interest HighGrade: March 9-15 edition
THE developer of “the world’s most advanced” mine fuel management system – a description seemingly endorsed by BHP Billiton’s major mining divisions – is ready to hand over control of his growing business to ensure its technology edge and market lead are maintained in future. Stephen Birrell, whose company Mining Industry Resources (MIR) developed AdaptFMS hydrocarbon monitoring and reporting hardware and software with BMA Coal five years ago, is speaking through a broker with at least two large companies and is also investigating other funding options.
MIR is based in Bathurst, New South Wales, has offices at Rutherford near Newcastle and Mackay, Queensland, and has about a dozen staff.
“I’m just the boss, I don’t know any of the technical bullshit,” Birrell tells HighGrade Mining IT by way of introduction. Of course the former automotive mechanic and long-time fuel system business owner is being modest. He, as majority owner of MIR and the AdaptFMS technology, wouldn’t have pumped $A500,000 of last year’s turnover back into research and development if he didn’t have a good understanding of the TB.
“Look, we employ the people with propellers on their heads who speak a language I don’t understand – we’re very lucky to have them,” Birrell said.
“We have a fantastic team of people. For a small company we have done very well. Just on the software development side we’ve probably got two of the brightest developers in the world for
the software platform we’re using. We kind of fluked that, but it’s worked out very well. I wouldn’t like to lose any of them.”
MIR has deployed AdaptFMS to more than 20 client sites in the past few years, including BHP Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) coal sites throughout Queensland’s Bowen Basin, coal mines in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, and iron ore mines in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. Recent implementations include Lihir Gold and a new deal has been signed with an Indonesian coal miner. Other key clients include Rio Tinto and Anglo Coal.
Birrell got involved in mine hydrocarbon product management “using older technology” (he ran the SMART system distributor in Australia for nearly 10 years before buying the SMART IP) and realised he needed to upgrade to stay in business.
“We have the only web-based application fuel management system for the mining industry,” he said.
“It’s been deployed across all of BMA. We’ve done much of [BHPB] iron ore. We’ve got a lot more to do, but resources don’t allow us to do it all as quickly as we would like. We have an enormous amount of work on so everybody is fairly stretched at the moment, which is a good thing but we really haven’t gone after a lot of new clients and there are areas of new business with existing clients that we haven’t tapped into yet either. There is a huge amount of potential out there for this system, which has proven to be what we hoped it would.
“It is the smartest bit of gear of its kind in the world.”
How so?
“First of all it’s web based,” Birrell said.
“Secondly, it’s the only system that monitors fuel from cradle to grave. We monitor deliveries when they come on site; we monitor the tank levels, and this is a fully integrated system so it’s not reliant on any other components; and then we monitor and record all the fuel that’s dispensed across the site.
“So we have a complete audit trail from when it hits the gate to when it is consumed and now you can reconcile the complete hydrocarbon usage – and that includes fuel, the largest volume product, but also oils and coolant, all of those things – on site.”
Or remotely: more ‘mine-of-the-future’ talk?
“Yes, we monitor all the tank levels remotely and we can actually, because it’s a web based system, we can use the AdaptFMS remote fuel tank monitoring module to schedule all the fuel deliveries. A fuel and hydrocarbon products supplier can be allowed to have restricted access to the system and they can view all the tank levels and then they schedule their deliveries from that.
“That doesn’t sound like a big deal but it’s probably been the greatest innovation for the mines.
“It relieves their warehouse people from having to dip their tanks every single day; it means they can pass on that responsibility to the supplier and it becomes their total responsibility to make sure their storage levels are at the 60% or whatever it might need to be. And they can do that all offsite.
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PCBC is used by virtually every major mining company involved in block caving, who rely on its comprehensive functionality to assist with feasibility studies, design and production management.
“So we’re basically a data gathering business, and we provide all of the hardware and the software to do all of it.”
Birrell said the power of information was clear. Not only was the data able to be used for diesel fuel rebate audits and energy efficiency related reporting, but sites and site-clusters could quickly and accurately analyse fuel use in any number of ways for strategic decision making. Where mine operators didn’t have their own high-capacity servers and data storage capabilities, MIR could manage data securely for clients and provide analytical assistance.
“The potential is huge,” Birrell said.
“We’ve probably got a two-year break on the competition because it took two years to develop the product. We don’t lose too many tenders ... but to be fair to the opposition, they are all based on that old 90s technology, both hardware and software, so we’ve got a fair gap.
“It doesn’t mean that somebody won’t see the opportunity and decide to throw some money at it and come up with something.
“But there is a window and we’ve got to establish ourselves as the preeminent system and that’s our objective at the moment.”
Birrell said the company was also developing the “next generation” product, focusing on further advances in hardware and software.
Another reason the time is right for outside financial assistance. And for Birrell to prepare himself properly for what he knows can be a “tiring and painful” process – that of bringing on board a major investor.
M I N I N G I T
Law passes Savage test HighGrade: March 9-15 edition
THE Australian developer of new software used to calculate life-of-mine trucking requirements in openpit mines is weighing up a suitable commercial release date after a beta version demonstrated its worth at the Savage River iron ore mine in Tasmania.
Ledcap Pty Ltd principal Simon Law said the software had helped simplify previously complex and time-consuming scheduling and long-term planning tasks at the Grange Resources-operated magnetite mine.
The mine used Gemcom Surpac and MineSched for general mine planning and scheduling, with the vendor noting Savage River’s Minesched implementation was “amongst the best in the world”.
“However, these software tools do not provide a means of rapidly evaluating the life-of-mine trucking requirements,” Law said at a mining technical conference late last year.
The current life-of-mine schedule at Savage River had 13 mining phases and delivered waste to three waste dump areas in 16 separate phases. The waste dumps would be constructed from seven waste material types, in a specified manner, for environmental and other reasons, with clay used for encapsulation of potential acid-forming material only available in weathered zones at the top of mine cutbacks. Material earmarked for other roles in the dumps similarly had to come from certain parts of the mine and the “complex constraints” presented serious challenges to waste movement scheduling.
“MineSched’s performance in scheduling this detailed and complex LOM plan has been good,” Law said at the conference.
“But during the development of the mine plan and schedule the truck requirements have not been calculated for more than a few years beyond the scheduled start date. As Minesched is determining the dump location for the various waste types it was a very large job to derive typical haul routes the further the schedule got from the start date.
“Also, over the life of mine there are a large number of possible haul routes.”
Law’s Haul Path Generator had been written to create period-by-period haul paths. It created a haul path from the average position of source blocks mined in a period, to the average position of dump blocks the material was delivered to.
“The original plan was to analyse these paths in third party haul time calculation software ... but as the available software will only process a single path at a time and has unsuitable reporting capabilities for this type of exercise, an Excel-based haul time calculator, Haul Time Calc, was written,” Law said.
Haul Path Generator was written in Visual Basic and resided in a Microsoft Access database, he said, because the database was the most efficient way to deal with the large number of mine and dump blocks created in a Minesched schedule.
“Access is usually available in mine planning computers and has very powerful inbuilt database support functions,” Law said.
“The development of software for LOM trucking requirements at Savage River has allowed trucking requirements to be integrated into the long-term mine plan as a routine part of the mine design and scheduling cycle.
“It has also forced the detailed review of pit and dump bench access to be undertaken following any design changes.”
Law told HighGrade Mining IT he wasn’t sure about a commercial release time.
“I am still developing the software and have numerous issues to overcome before it is suitable for commercial release,” he said.
“I am hoping it will be later this year, but as it resides in Excel and Access there are security issues I have yet to resolve.
“No-one other than Savage River is using the software but it is now an integral part of the budgeting and planning cycle at Savage. It is also being used to compare waste dump options in their current search for an optimal final waste dump design. They are very pleased with the software as the alternative of using Talpac or [Caterpillar] FPC to analyse hundreds of haul paths at each budget is daunting.
“It has been designed around MineSched and Surpac but as the input files are ASCII csv and string files it would be usable by any scheduling package that works from a mine block model and is capable of building a waste dump block model as part of its scheduling capabilities.”
Law said he had no intention of creating a cost modelling capability.
“The sole function is to create haul paths from pit and waste dump block models and then analyse the travel time over these paths,” he said.
“My experience is that engineers and estimators use only the travel time from other haulage simulation packages and have their own cost modelling workbooks. This was an approach I wanted to provide an efficient front-end for, but not attempt to compete with past this point. There is not scheduling-package [item of] independent software in the market place that is capable of analysing multiple haul routes in a single run and is built around the expectation that haul route data would come from screen digitised mapping data.
“The latest version [of Ledcap’s product] allows rolling resistance to be a function of scheduling period – seasonal rolling resistance – and the next implementation is automatic speed adjustment for cornering.”
M I N I N G I T
Underground scheduling software at new juncture HighGrade: March 9-15 edition
WORK on new underground mine design software overseen by the head of mining engineering at the Western Australia School of Mines, Professor Erkan Topal, is progressing with the aim of producing a tool comparable to those available to opencut mine engineers. But a key advance still has “a bit way to go”, according to Topal.
The professor’s supervision is now a long-distance exercise after he recently moved from the University of Queensland to WASM’s Curtin University campus in Perth. His chief collaborator in the software development, PhD student Jade Little, is based at UQ.
“That affects the [development] process a little bit,” Topal told HighGrade Mining IT.
“But we have a full long-term scheduling model which can schedule large-scale underground mines optimally and we have a short-term scheduling model which can dynamically look at the optimal short-term schedule,” he said.
“We are currently looking into integration of these schedules dynamically but we have a bit way to go. Also, the short-term scheduling model needs to be refined as well.”
Topal and Little authored a paper presented at last year’s CRCMining Australian Mining Technology Conference in Brisbane in which the pair asserted that “underground mining operations are lacking in the processes and tools available to produce optimal and reliable mine plans, compared to their opencut counterparts”.
“More specifically, while a number of techniques have been developed for stope design optimisation and progress is being made in the area of production scheduling optimisation, to date underground operations still predominantly rely on manual techniques for mine planning with some computer-aided input.”
Topal said there had also been “no consideration” given to increasing the scope of optimisation through integration of the two areas into the one planning process. Integrating them by using one optimisation technique would enable more accurate consideration of the interaction and influence of each planning area on the other, “thus resulting in more profitable, reliable and globally optimum mine plans”.
“It is being increasingly acknowledged that as deeper deposits amenable to underground mining become more valuable, there will be greater demand for underground optimisation techniques,” Topal and Little said in their paper at the October mining technology conference.
“Further development and improvement is required in this area.”
Topal and Little went on to outline their theory for a mathematical model that used “MIP”, or mixed integer (linear) programming, techniques to simultaneously optimise stope designs and production schedules for sub-level stoping operations, which they said was the first of its kind.
“The model maximises the mine’s NPV by simultaneously identifying the optimal size, or sizes, and respective locations of stopes as well as the optimal timing for preparation, extraction and backfilling of each stope,” they said.
“All sublevel stoping operational constraints relating to timing, resource and sequencing are satisfied.”
The model had been applied to a conceptual 6x6x6 block model, with results showing no overlapping stopes. Production of all stopes selected was completed within a specified time.
“Furthermore, the model did not necessarily select the highest cash flow stope to begin production,” Topal and Little said. “Rather it considered producing stopes in different configurations to maximise the mine’s NPV and thus proves its ability to generate truly optimal designs in three dimensions.
“[That is] although the model has only been applied to a conceptual 6x6x6 block model, it demonstrates an ability to select the optimal stope sizes and locations of stopes in three dimensions while simultaneously generating a production schedule.”
Topal told HighGrade Mining IT work on dynamic integration of the schedules, and the short-term scheduling model, was continuing.
“Once we achieve these targets we might start talking with software companies, and some mines to convince them about the methodology that we have developed,” he said.
“We haven’t made any commitment yet [to any party].”
M I N I N G I T
Lumps and bumps for recovering Runge HighGrade: March 2-8 edition
A SOON to be completed large-scale implementation of its mining enterprise software could help clear the blockages in Runge’s sales pipeline, managing director Tony Kinnane said after the company posted 14% lower first-half revenue compared with a year ago.
Runge’s overall ‘technology services’ revenue was down from $A19.2 million for the first half of FY09, to $A18.6 million for the first half of the current year, with software licence sales dropping to $A3.9 million from $A4.4 million in the half a year ago, and from $A6.1 million in the second half of FY09. This was as the effects of the GFC set in, however, an improved result reflected better traction for Runge’s Mining Dynamics enterprise software.
The company said the $A26.5 million of current sales prospects was a record level “in the pipeline” but it highlighted the deferral of expenditure by mining companies in calendar 2009.
“It was a constipated 2009 and we’re looking to do two things,” Kinnane told HighGrade Mining IT.
“One is to find and maintain about $A1 million a month of year-in-year-out type software sales, and on top of that we’ve got some large software sales that have been pregnant for
quite a long time and we’re anticipating a minimum of one of those will be realised [in the second half of FY10].
“We’ve got a sales team in place and we’ve strengthened that with another person here in Brisbane and another person in Denver who are very experienced in doing the big deals, so we’ve hired people to help clear the backlog. To be honest I don’t know how much of that $26 million is going to fall within a particular period because almost every individual [customer] company has its own rules of engagement. Some people can spend half a million dollars without blinking, whereas others have a long process. So I wouldn’t put a time on that, but I’d be hoping we’ll be recording $10-12 million of software revenues in the second half of the year.”
Kinnane said a second large enterprise software implementation was due to be completed in May.
“I think as we get a reputation for execution we will smooth it [the currently lumpy nature of enterprise software sales and profits],” he said.
“We’re working on one at the moment where we’re doing a pilot for a very big sale and our previous success in South Africa with this style of thing has proved effective. So I think a few runs on the board to demonstrate that we can actually do what we say we’re going to do will help people have confidence it can be done.
“Quite a few companies are gun shy. Other companies have tried to do it for them and it has failed. It’s a bit like 10-15 years ago with monitors on draglines and trucks and stuff; yeah, well we tried that and it didn’t work, why the is yours any different? You tend to get a bit of that in the software world as well. We’ve got to get our credibility out there by actually delivering and we’ve done it in South Africa and we’re well on the way with this particular company in another country.”
Asked if there were any signs miners were not embracing the enterprise level management software systems, Kinnane replied: “No, quite the opposite.”
Runge’s latest half-year net profit was $A1.2 million compared with $A4.7 million in the first half of FY09. The company reaffirmed previous guidance for $A5.5-10 million full-year FY10 NPAT.
Kinnane said mining consulting revenues were stronger in the second half of 2009 and the outlook was much improved.
“The low point was July,” he said. “The pipeline of consulting work in front of us is also quite large. The nature of the jobs, instead of being $40-50,000 jobs, is now $1-2 million feasibility studies on large projects. So the nature of the jobs and the frequency of them have definitely increased.
“But we’re still getting delays in decision making. Back in the heady days decisions were made and you started on the date they nominated. We’re still getting one week, two week, three week deferrals, so there’s still a bit of uncertainty in the market. But we are heading in the right direction there. I would imagine it’s going to be choppy for a little while but if we can continue to market and broaden the customer base that we’ve got that will stand us in good stead.”
Runge plans to open new offices in Moscow and Ulaanbaatar in the next three months.
It is also assessing at least three potential acquisitions.
“The GFC has shaken the tree,” Kinnane said.
“Stuff has come in as late as a week ago that we would never have expected to be being flogged around the industry, so that’s changing dynamically. We’ve probably got three on the hop at the moment ... and they vary in size from small to large, and large can be 50% of the value of Runge.”
M I N I N G I T
Short-term payback for planning software HighGrade: March 2-8 edition
DATAMINE’S aggressive product roll-out will continue this month with the formal launch of its new Interactive Short Term Scheduling (ISTS) software, developed with input from Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines. Launches and briefings are planned for Perth and Brisbane on March 22 and 25, respectively.
View of mining area showing current face position.
Datamine worked with KCGM, which was casting around about a year ago for a short term/operational scheduler but couldn’t find one that was suitable, to incorporate real-time haulage analysis into the ISTS module. The interactive scheduling tool is designed to assist with operational and short-term scheduling decisions for open-pit mines “based on machine constraints”.
According to Datamine: “ISTS allows the user to consider several operational aspects in order to build a mining plan. It is able to build the mining process from pit to plant, considering any material re-handling that may be required. Ore can be fed or reclaimed from stockpiles and grade changes can be tracked at any point in time. Ore from external sources such as from other mines or from underground can also be taken into account. Multiple machines such as loaders, drills or even crushers can be used to build up or limit the production, based on historical utilisation data. Real-time haulage analysis is made possible by building haul routes and exploring alternatives.
“All ISTS features allow the planning engineer to spend more time building multiple scenarios and testing planning alternatives that can be easily reviewed through animation. It prevents time-consuming tasks that are usually related to searching for information, feeding spreadsheets and building complex reports every time when the plan changes.”
Datamine worked with KCGM for about nine months on developing the product, which has since been put through its paces with other mining companies and a consulting company working in iron ore and coal mining.
Datamine Australia general manager Brad Barker told HighGrade Mining IT the company’s suite of openpit planning products were primarily strategic planning tools that didn’t produce schedules to the level of detail of a shift-by-shift plan.
“We had a very good look at the market and found operational planning is a big gap in most mining companies’ software portfolios and we at Datamine felt we were the best company to fill that given our extensive planning back ground,” he said.
“Instead of working on a product in isolation, we figured it would be best to partner with an actual operation to develop this tool so it could be considered ‘best of breed’. KCGM was the first company that we approached and they agreed to work with us, but not before they assessed the rest of the market.
“KCGM really wanted something that could schedule graphically and interactively, but at the same time take into consideration equipment constraints and parameters and detailed haulage analysis.”
Waste dump view showing dump blocks.
The miner’s requirement list grew as it and Datamine worked together and ultimately the final version included Datamine’s Enhanced Production Scheduler (EPS) for Gantt chart reporting and scheduling, plus dump creation and scheduling. “We’re aware of others moving into this space,” Barker said.
“One product will allow blocks to be selected manually but does not do haulage analysis or have a Gantt chart reporting tool; one will do haulage analysis and equipment constraints but does not do anything else; and one will have a Gantt chart schedule but does not work with a graphical interface.
“We are the first to combine all aspects of this into one system.”
ISTS is expected to allow KCGM to better allocate equipment and come up with a credible schedule that matches plant requirements with trucking capacity at the vast Kalgoorlie Super Pit gold operation.
“Getting better utilisation of equipment by improving your planning will benefit any operation,” Barker said.
“We truly believe that this fills a big gap in the industry right now and that this product will bring a genuine return on investment by allowing operations to better plan the utilisation of equipment and their plants and stockpiles more efficiently.
Barker estimates that return on investment could mean a payback of less than a month, typically.
“Training for ISTS is less than a week depending on your competency and what you want it for, but otherwise, it is an off-the-shelf, all-in-one product which delivers big benefits,” he said.
Andrew Payne, KCGM senior mine planning engineer, said the company, jointly owned by Newmont Mining Corp and Barrick Gold Corp, had been searching for a tool that was both graphical and interactive, but one that could also take into consideration equipment constraints – especially haulage.
“We knew that we could not find a product that was off the shelf and that some development would need to be done with whoever we chose,” he said.
“Datamine came up trumps and the end result is Datamine ISTS.”
M I N I N G I T
Mart and co map a new course HighGrade: March 2-8 edition
THERE are many small operators on the fringes of the pack fighting it out for big chunks of market share in the global mining software business. Seldon Mart has been there, on the sidelines, for nearly 40 years and he’s seen a lot of changes. Now he and his partners have got a second wind.
After more than 30 years without a major upgrade, Mart’s MineMap is about to formally launch the second version of the company’s namesake general mine planning product. The extensive overhaul of the software started in 2006 and, true to form with many small outfits, tedious work such as rewriting manuals has been drawn out.
Mart expects the work to be completed in the “next couple of months”.
He says MineMap, the product – which is looking for a new name – is a complete mine planning package, with built-in Lerchs Grossman optimiser, which could be integrated with all other application software on the market.
The company saw an opportunity to update the software during the recent mining boom, though Mart maintains MineMap has always looked to provide a value-for-money option for mine planners and engineers, and while being among “the earliest entrants into the mining software world” never set out to dominate it. Hence the small MineMap team with its mine engineering, resource geology and GIS/database geology background has been more of a consultancy providing services – with its own software toolkit – over the years than a technology company.
Mart is quick to point out though that MineMap’s Express haul road optimiser is a cutting-edge design tool and one that has been used by companies such as Rio Tinto, Teck, Barrick Gold Corp and AngloGold Ashanti, and “probably 100 other mine operators”.
“MineMap [the software] was introduced in the 1970s/80s and was originally designed for coal mining but now it’s a total mining design package,” he said.
“Previously it had an old [Windows] 3.1 type of look and we moved it into a single window so that instead of having separate modules which we’ve had before it’s all basically available through the one single interface. Now if you want to bring in accounting information or data from the various types of survey equipment, it can be brought in or data can be exported out very simply.
“It has all the modelling and design capabilities of other software; graphically it is on a par. So it does all the things and has all the elements of other software, but it’s easy to use. It’s not complex – you know, let’s just get in and get the job done and do it very well.
“We’re mining people and that’s who the software is designed for.”
Apart from Mart, MineMap’s principals include founder and the original developer of the Optimum Planit (or Express) software, Peter Clifford, Geoff Markey and a “silent partner”. Clifford’s bio says he created Optimum Planit to “take advantage of evolving graph theory and linear programming technologies which have a significant role in improving mine design. In its first year of operation, Optimum Planit secured 25% of Australian opencut metalliferous mines as its client base”.
“Ours [haul road optimiser] can work with anything and it is a true optimiser in that it works with dollar values. There are other packages that give you a haul road design capability but not this type of optimisation,” Mart said.
New MineMap environmental, OH&S and maybe other modules are in the development pipeline. Mart doesn’t like the word ‘holistic’ but wants to ultimately offer miners a package that “allows them to encompass all the various aspects of mining and has the ability to integrate other modules”.
Meanwhile, the company has been engaged by a Western Australian-based gold miner on a long-term consultancy contract under which it will employ Express and MineMap to re-optimise, essentially, a previously mined gold field using revised cut-off grades, new gold prices, some fresh drill results and “all the computing power that is available today that wasn’t able to be used 10 years ago”. “We’re using our expertise to help optimise the field because Express hasn’t been run over it before. This was an opportunity to look at something from a different perspective,” Mart said.
More about the field and results of the work will no doubt emerge in the coming months.
Micromine makes geo-logical updates HighGrade: March 2-8 edition
STRONG sales of its flagship MICROMINE software in the past four months have given Western Australian-based Micromine the ideal lead-up to this week’s general market release of MICROMINE 2010.
Speaking to HighGrade Mining IT prior to this week’s official launch at SME in Arizona, Micromine managing director Graeme Tuder said the company had posted “record Micromine sales ... mainly in Australia” in each of the past four months. The company has 16 worldwide offices, including a strong presence in China, Central Asia and Russia, but is currently generating about 50% of its sales in Australia.
MICROMINE is accredited by the China Ministry of Lands & Resources, and Mongolia’s Mineral Resources and Petroleum Authority, for reporting resources and reserves to local standards. Hence the software is said to underpin the company’s growing consulting business in these countries, and also Indonesia, Central Asia and parts of Europe.
Tuder said MICROMINE 2010 was an important new release for the company at a time when key competitors were trailing with updates. Enhancements added functionality but would mainly increase the appeal of the software in areas where MICROMINE already had advantages, such as its “friendlier interface” for importing data, general usability, and reliability.
Paul Hooykaas, Micromine’s Brisbane-based product strategy manager, said the new software offered important plotting, “geolinking” and Vizex section and fly-through enhancements.
“We’ve rewritten plotting, or the way that we handle plots, in MICROMINE,” he said.
“Conceptually it hasn’t changed much and in truth, conceptually, it was always ahead of its time in the way that it handled things. I do a lot of training and I get feedback from people I’m training who have used other products and certainly I get the feel that our plotting – whether you’re looking at the new one or even the older one – is far more powerful than any of our competitors.”
Hooykaas said one of the world’s major mining houses had provided direct feedback on MICROMINE’s geolinked windows feature, which kept plan views or any other window synchronised with cross-sections during sectional interpretations.
“We did a demo with this large miner and one of the things that they wanted to do was to be able to take two block models that they had – they’d model the same data twice, or multiple times, using different parameters – and be able to see the differences in the result of the block model depending on the algorithm used or parameters used,” he said.
“The [MICROMINE] geolinking allows you to do that in the sense that you can have one block model displayed in one window, and one block model displayed in another window and you can look at them in sectional view; so you can see a slice of the blocks and just step through it and both windows will move at the same time. The same section of the different models can be seen side by side and you’re able to compare, or it will really neatly highlight the differences between the two.
“We were told that no other product could do that.”
The MICROMINE Vizex sections window, section control file and sections toolbars had all been improved to make pre-defining and browsing between sections easier, irrespective of their spacing and orientation, while MICROMINE Vizex fly-throughs could be used to create fly-through animations using any combination of recorded viewpoints, or a manually drawn line. On-the-fly smoothing meant only a few viewpoints were needed.
Hooykaas said MICROMINE was a mature, robust geological exploration and mine design tool that had been refined over 13 years.
“I think that the way to differentiate between MICROMINE and the competitors is the productivity, and the productivity relates to things you do on a day to day basis,” he said. “It’s just easier to learn and use.
“The new features, including a thing we call Formsearch which saves all your parameters and makes it much easier to organise your form sets, the interface aspect, and the consistency across the board just makes a user far more productive on a day-to-day basis.
“Why do something in five mouse clicks when, if it’s properly designed, I can do it in two?”
What’s next for MICROMINE? The word is scheduling is one area still under development.
M I N I N G I T
MineWare plugs into BMA draglines HighGrade: March 2-8 edition
THE Queensland-based company MineWare has claimed the turf of a highly-credentialed former Australian-owned company in winning a preferred supplier agreement with BHP Billiton-Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) to supply its dragline monitoring and intelligence solutions across all BMA sites.
The deal means MineWare’s Pegasys dragline monitoring solution will replace the former Tritronics (now Leica Geosystems) product at BMA coal mines in Queensland.
“We offer a unique, highly-consultative partnership approach to working with clients, understanding their operations and investigating long term business improvement solutions,” said MineWare chief executive officer, Andrew Jessett. “We are extremely proud to be associated with BMA and secure our long term relationship with them.”
Jessett said in a MineWare press statement the company’s “vendor engagement model” was also a key driver in securing the BMA partnership and other new client contracts. Since its establishment in 2005, MineWare had enjoyed a “significant relationship with BMA”, developing and installing its dragline monitor systems for a number of the company’s key sites. The Pegasys dragline monitor had also been adopted by BHP Billiton Energy Coal South Africa.
Jessett said MineWare’s sales model enabled the company to stay focused on core areas of specialisation such as technology, development, training and business intelligence.
GPS and wireless ethernet technologies, mobile functionality and enhanced system integration contributed to the effectiveness of the MineWare product in capturing, analysing and interpreting production data from draglines and other heavy mining equipment.
The company’s latest remote, mobile monitoring systems collected and exposed a range of dragline information for on and off board analysis including mine plans, GPS stamped
production data, delay reporting, detailed PLC information, strain gauge data and video camera footage, MineWare said.
“We are delighted with this outcome and look forward to supporting BMA by delivering enterprise wide improvements in production, capacity, safety, staff training and communication,” Jessett said.
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