Geology or drill and blast departments have less than 50% of their positions filled, particularly experienced and senior level positions. It is an issue we have come across often during visits to mining operations across the nation repeatedly.
We have heard first-hand that blast designs are taking hours if not days to complete;
“I’m currently the only engineer for both mine sites… there would normally be 3 engineers… 2 on 8-6 and me Monday to Friday”
“Engineers are sometimes doing the job of three people at the moment and blast designs are taking a few days to complete, I’m pretty overworked.”
These are common and prove the strain and pressure technical professionals are subjected to.
Collected in customer interviews by PETRA during 2021
What if the most experienced drill & blast engineer could design the best blast pattern for downstream performance every day?
An optimised blast design can turn hours of design time into minutes and can take away the need to understand the geology.
What if all it took was 10 minutes to show less experienced operators & engineers how to achieve best blast designs?
What if the need to analyse the geology when preparing blast design layouts was eliminated?
Join Dr Penny Stewart during her keynote at Open Pit Operators Conference as we unpack the answers to these questions through the lense of machine learning for mine-to-mill and pit-to-port optimisation.
Open Pit Operators Conference, Session 4, 21st June
