Ian Carr, Managing Director of Team Simoco explains why reliable radio communications are essential in the remote operating environments of the mining sector. For the staff working in mining, dealing with environmental extremes is par for the course; storm-battered sites and sun-blistered deserts in some of the world’s most remote locations are the places of work they sign up to. In these remote outposts, staff depend upon having the right technology and infrastructure in place to be able to do their job, and to provide them with the safety mechanisms and support they need. Central to this is effective communications – it’s the linchpin that unites field engineers with an unseen operations centre far over the horizon.
So what factors do you need to consider when looking at when deploying a communications system, and how can you ensure it will stand up to the demands placed on it?
These outposts act as mini self-sufficient villages with their own services and essential infrastructures, such as airports, helipads, rail and sea terminals through to medical facilities, power generation systems, water supply and sewage treatment. All of these require reliable communications if they are to function effectively, however, the important difference from a normal environment is that no public communications infrastructure exists, meaning a private mobile radio (PMR) network is often the only viable means of supporting these essential operations.
In some larger and more remote locations, satellite may provide the core bearer network, but the cost of this, and more importantly the reliability of the network and line-of-site issues mean that PMR can offer a more flexible and reliable alternative. Even for sites which have a fixed satellite network in place, PMR technology such as TETRA can be added on to give staff more flexible communications – its duplex speech capability enables the extension of PSTN services to portables anywhere on site.
Helicopters, planes and ships all need to land or dock at mini airport and seaport terminals, and a key benefit of PMR is that ground-to-air and marine radio communications can be integrated into the PMR system to enable incoming and outgoing flights to liaise with ground staff for more co-ordinated activity.
Man-down technology is also essential, with in-built tilt-switches in radio terminals or microphones raising an alert if an individual remains horizontal. Integrated into a PMR network, man-down technology not only ensures timely assistance, it can also promote more preventative protection for staff. The Bluetooth functionality on TETRA PMR handsets can be used to identify and monitor the exact location of any worker if they are in need of help, and also if they have entered a hazardous zone – staff can then immediately contact the individual worker via his TETRA handset to alert him to the danger.
The threat of terrorism is another important consideration, and one which no country is immune from. Combating terror requires an organised and timely response, and so being able to communicate between sites and reach engineers on the ground is essential, wherever they are working.
A wider responsibility is duty of care to the environment. In the event of a leakage, rapid response is vital, in order to minimise the impact on the environment, on adjoining wildlife and population centres. A co-ordinated response in conjunction with the appropriate emergency services teams requires the ability to communicate across multiple locations and to different users and user groups.
Reliable voice and data comms are also essential for the smooth running of all business operations. Avoidable downtime will have serious economic impact in the always-on operating environment of mining, and so it’s important to maintain business-as-usual wherever possible. Co-ordinated communication between the company headquarters, site operations and field engineers and the ability to easily send and receive timely voice- and data/based information will help to ensure the smooth running of day-to-day operations, keeping revenues flowing.
PMR is a more cost-effective alternative than Satellite phone systems, and is not affected by issues such as line-of-site, which can impact upon the reliability of satellite communications. PMR is also more reliable than commercial GSM mobile networks, which are not suited to the remote operating environments of the industry, and which cannot guarantee the level of service and security demanded in the mission-critical energy sector.
It is for precisely this reason that PMR has been favoured in a number of operating environments, where guaranteed channels of communications are needed for emergency situations, such as within the police, anti-terror and airport security sectors.
The advantage of PMR is that it is a bespoke system, tailored to meet specific communications needs, across a defined geographic area. This gives mining companies the reassurance that every square inch of the area operated in – no matter how remote – will have the radio coverage to communicate effectively in any scenario.
An additional advantage of PMR is that it can be effectively managed remotely, removing the need for any on-site maintenance. PMR technology has plug-and-play functionality, IP compatibility and software configurable standard components. By combining the low capital cost and flexibility advantages of analogue PMR with the system management and low cost-of-ownership benefits of IP technology, users can connect to a base station via the Web and reconfigure a controller without having to send an engineer to the wilds of the Russian Steppe.
