With a Rolodex full of new contacts and a slide show of photos, Sudbury mining engineer Jim Gallagher wants to open up the minds of the Canadian mining industry to new ideas.
Gallagher, Hatch’s senior manager of mining and mineral processing, has spent the fall and winter of 2005-2006 globe-trotting to mine operations in the remote reaches of Australia and the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden and Finland, cherry picking new concepts of the best mining practices available.
He was accompanied by an Xstrata Nickel management team, including Hugh MacIsaac, construction manager of Sudbury’s Nickel Rim South mine.
Though sometimes difficult to change ingrained cultural attitudes at many Canadian mines, Gallagher, himself a former Xstrata Nickel mine superintendent, realizes gradual change is possible at some of the newer greenfield sites. Some ideas will be implemented in Sudbury.
At Xstrata Nickel, there was a strong desire to incorporate industry best practices at Nickel Rim South mine, now under construction in the Sudbury Basin.
It was an eye-opening experience for Gallagher in catching 21 flights, in 14 days, to tour various iron, nickel, copper, zinc and gold operations in the Western Australian outback.
The safety practices had a profound impact on him.
Australia went from having one of the industry’s poorest records 15 years ago, to one of the best today.
Using a Canadian innovation, the Positive Attitude Safety System (PASS), Australian mines encourage total employee involvement in their daily dialogue by pointing out positive acts of safety during morning shift meetings.
“Instead of having one safety supervisor at a mine, you’ve got 330,” says Gallagher. “The Canadian system is geared to audits and finding things that aren’t safety compliant, rather than focusing on the positive safety acts.”
The worker incentive system is also different. Production incentives have in many mines been eliminated, opting instead for a promotional system.
“You have to achieve both performance and quality of work in order to move up the ladder.”
A bottom-rung forklift operator earns $60,000 annually while a top-end jumbo operator can earn up to $200,000 a year. However, they all work 12-hour shifts and significantly more hours per year than the average Canadian miner.
Australia’s system is very task-oriented with dedicated operators performing one job. “It’s much easier to monitor performance because when all you do is drill, everyone knows that three headings (at the rock face) in a shift is good, and one is poor,” says Gallagher.
Several Australian mines also rely on the inexpensive block caving method of mining where large blocks of ore are undercut, causing the ore to cave in under its own weight and be easily scooped up.
Most operations have ramp access, instead of the traditional Canadian design of shafts and hoists. It enables them to haul large tonnages with 55 to 60 tonne trucks going underground.
“There’s none of the massive infrastructure (of shafts, hoists, chutes and steelwork) we tend to build into our operation. They tend to keep things much simpler.”
It means fewer electricians and millwrights, but a greater investment in load haul dump (LHD) and trucks.
Three mines that Gallagher visited each move more than one million tonnes annually with LHDs at each site.
Great care goes into the quality of underground road beds to ease the pounding on equipment and people.
Road graders are a common sight with some mines having concrete roads that are “as smooth as a well-polished garage floor.”
It’s resulted in trucks and LHDs running more than 5,000 operating hours a year, compared to the Canadian norm of 3,000 to 3,500 hours.
For ground support, most mines use shotcrete rather than screening. Though more expensive, “for the long term, safety (precautions), it really pays.”
A common theme on the trip was that many mines use fewer, but more versatile and flexible vehicles.
Both Australians and Scandinavians use large, slightly-modified surface vehicles underground.
The Australians and Norwegians, for example, are very skilled at multi-tasking their drill jumbos to install ground support.
The Scandinavians use utility carriers to perform a myriad of tasks with multiple attachments of forks, buckets and sweepers
Gallagher says the Norwegians are particularly expert at road tunneling because of high mountain ranges and coastal fjords. “They drive more road tunnels in Norway than probably any country in the world,” he says, averaging 50 kilometres a year.
“They typically drive a consistent...standard two-lane highway, eight metres wide by six metres high.”
Underground, they can drive a tunnel close to 10 metres a day, about three times the Canadian average.
Much of it is done with a heavy focus of equipment at the rock face using surface trucks to haul away muck.
On the ventilation side, they can push air down five kilometres to the working head (rock face) with only one fan, instead of multiple boosters. Automated sensors monitor gas levels to either boost or decrease the air flow.
Gallagher was especially amazed at the pristine work environment. “It’s very typical in Scandinavia to serve a hot lunch underground.”
Underground cafeterias have finished floors and mechanical shops have tile-lined grease pits. “I believe there is a connection between the quality of work environment their workers are given to work in, and the quality of work and equipment care that the workers demonstrate,” says Gallagher.
