Proactive Traffic Management to Enhance Safety at Mining Sites

Client Summary

A North American mining multinational corporation, with multiple assets across 5 continents, was in search for solutions to improve their understanding of how well the traffic management system (TMS) was operating at one of their sites. Across the global mining industry, vehicle collisions, vehicle runovers (smaller vehicles) or rollovers take place once every three days. The implications across health & safety, operations and asset management can be extremely severe.

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Client Challenge

The site’s understanding of the performance of the TMS was limited to an absence of unwanted events, limited field observations and annual audits.  They found themselves in a position of reacting to events rather than proactively addressing weak signals within their operations that would improve the performance of the TMS.

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Partnership in Review

InterKnowlogy was approached to serve two immediate needs:

1. Understand how to measure the performance of the TMS, and

2. Put a technology solution in place that could measure and communicate TMS performance to front-line operators, supervision and site leadership.

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The InterKnowlogy approach aligned with industry best practices (ICMM Critical Control Management) and relied on inputs from all levels of the organization to articulate and quantify the context of traffic management in an open pit environment, including:

1. Identifying Material Unwanted Events, Controls, Critical Controls and Performance Requirements

2. Linking data sources to an overall dashboard on TMS performance

3. Develop ongoing monitoring of the TMS

4. Communicating to site operators, supervision and leadership

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Outcome

With the ability to monitor Traffic Management System performance, the site saw the following improvements:

• 9% improvement in Traffic Management Performance year on year

• 82% of operators actively engaging with the system (a staggering upgrade from the 10-15% adoption that was expected by the company)

• 98% cost reduction vs conventional data management process

• Time to improvement measured in days instead of months

• Radical change in how operators, supervisors and site superintendents communicate about TMS performance and what interventions are required to keep operations safe, repeatable and sustainable.

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