3 Reasons to Monitor Your Haul Roads
Haul Roads in mines and quarries see heavy equipment traffic and abuse from hundreds of thousands of tons of materials moved per day. The larger the site, the more equipment is needed to maintain production and transport material from the pit to the plant. With this kind of intense wear and tear, having the ability to easily and quickly monitor haul road conditions is critical.
Adequately monitoring haul road conditions requires fast and accurate inspection and evaluation methods that immediately and easily bring decision-making intelligence to the people carrying out the operations.
With AI and digital twins, mining operations can analyze their haul roads easily and instantly without any interruption to operations or putting team members on the roads.
Using drone survey data and AI, the haul roads within the site are automatically detected, analyzed, and modeled, and key metrics (road grade, width, berm height, and cross-falls) are reported instantly.
Most mining and quarrying operations already collect aerial data frequently. Now imagine taking that same data and applying Haul Road analysis to the pit flyover, extracting even more value from the standard survey data already being collected.
3 Reasons You Should Be Monitoring Your Haul Roads
There are so many reasons you should be monitoring your haul roads why did we limit our discussion to 3? Simple, article length. The three reasons we chose? 1. Constant Change, 2. Safety, 3. Compliance.
The Only Constant Thing is Change
Change is always occurring, whether we like it or not. Haul roads on site will change due to traffic patterns, Â precipitation events, freeze/thaw cycles, and excavation, just to name a few.
Being able to monitor road conditions to see where change is occurring and maintaining proper road design will help keep the operation running. that may restrict haul road traffic to and from the extraction site.
Safety: Because the Most Important Thing to Come Out of A Mine is The Miner
Safety is a top priority within mining and quarrying operations. Putting the lives of workers and the equipment they are operating at risk can be a fatal risk to a company’s operation. Not only does it put the lives and welfare of workers at risk, but it exposes the company to increased insurance claims and rates, inspections, citations, fines, shutdowns, or even lawsuits.
Being able to monitor the safety of haul roads on site can contribute to the reduction of these incidents, paving the way to fewer recordable injuries and saving significant heartache, stress, and damages down the road.
Because You Don’t Want to be Fined or Sued for Non-Compliance
On top of monitoring road conditions to maintain a safe working environment, monitoring conditions to ensure compliance is also incredibly important to run a profitable business.
Maintaining proper berm heights, road widths, and grades not only contributes to the safety of the road conditions but also the performance of the equipment.
It’s no secret that heavy machinery is not cheap to acquire, run, and maintain. Monitoring haul roads along with the fuel consumption, tire life, and lifespan of the trucks’ cycling will only assist in cost savings through the lifespan of the machinery.
The End of The Road
All of this starts with the initiative to mine smarter, safer, and more efficiently. The tools are out there to use, and the resources have never been so abundant. Get more value from your survey data and boost your operations with frequent Haul Road monitoring and analyses.
New technologies are rapidly changing the drilling, blasting, mining, and aggregates industries, empowering them in ways never before possible. Make sure you are taking advantage of the best tools available.
Check out our 2 Free E-books on AI applications for the drilling, blasting, and mining industries to see all the amazing advances that are available.
AI Guide for Drilling and Blasting
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