From safety, to health: Technology and mining in 2018

The mining and industrial workplace has continued to undergo a transformation during the last 12 months as technology plays an ever more crucial role both in employee safety, and boosting production and workflow.

Heading into 2018, there are a number of key areas which bosses and workforces should be looking at and here, Glyn Jones, CEO of Trolex Group, looks ahead to identify what will be the biggest changes and what new technology will have the biggest impact on the mining sector in the new year.

A change in emphasis from safety to health

When it comes to worker wellbeing, the historical focus has always been around making workplaces safer. Whether this is avoiding injury due to falling equipment, reducing injuries sustained from trips or falls, or even fatalities, keeping employees safe at work has been – and will continue to be – a major part of industrial workplaces.

However, what we are now seeing is a shift from general safety to concentrating more on employee health, especially long-term health due to working in hazardous environments.

The fact that the Health and Safety Executive has begun to shift its focus more towards worker health shows that this is going to be a major issue in 2018 and it will be interesting how this changing emphasis plays out as the year goes on.

Dust monitoring in particular is becoming the primary technology that is focussing more on long term health than imminent safety. Respirable dust exposure is one of the greatest hazards experienced by miners, even today, and can cause serious long term health implications.

In recent years, dust monitoring and ventilation to keep environment as clear of particles as possible has become more the norm for operations, but 2018 will see this practice become much more important.

Increasing use of Real-time Strata monitoring in mines and tunnels

Real-time Strata monitoring is something that all mines and tunnels should already be implementing to prevent accidents and deaths in mines, especially when it comes to rock falls.

There is no excuse for a mining operation not to utilise real-time Strata monitoring as it does not cost a lot to bring in and indeed will increase efficiency and production uptime and typically bring a full ROI within a few months.

No one should be dying or being injured in mining operations from rock falls because all the technology is now available, and the safety components exist to remove this as a safety issue. In 2018 we can expect to see more mines taking advantage of Strata monitoring and this technology will play a much bigger role in operations in the future.

Connectors

We can expect the rise of fibre optic connectors to increase in 2018 as it becomes a much more widely used piece of technology.

Fibre optic connectors allow for much safer and efficient connections throughout an operation, and bring into play a much wider range of equipment that can be deployed and maintained easily within a mine or industrial operation. They minimise signal interference and in their new form, can now stand up to being used in hazardous environments.

We are also likely to see an increase in the use of connectors, like those provided by Trolex which can be connected rapidly and without the need for special tools as efficiency and ease-of-use of heavy duty connectors becomes an increasingly important selling point.

For the most part, these connectors are more typically used in offshore platforms and rigs, but the improving technology plays into the wider emphasis on health and safety that we can expect in 2018.

These are, of course, just some of the things that we can expect to see impacting the mining and industrial arenas in the next 12 months and undoubtedly there will be many more things happening throughout the year.

Either way, we are all excited about the future holds for our industry.