Tag Archives: Integrated Remote Operations Centre

BHP reaches autonomous drilling milestone at WA iron ore operations

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BHP’s Western Australia Iron Ore division has reached a significant milestone, with its drills operating autonomously for more than 479,607 hours, drilling more than 25 million metres, the company said.

WAIO’s remotely operated drilling program commenced at Yandi in late 2016 and has since expanded to a total of 26 rigs across five Pilbara mine sites.

The rigs are all controlled remotely from the Integrated Remote Operations Centre (IROC) in Perth, Western Australia.

WAIO Asset President, Brandon Craig, said: “This is an exciting milestone in WAIO’s autonomous journey and one we should all be proud of.

“The autonomous drilling program sought to eliminate the risk of safety incidents and serious injuries to our people and, by removing them from the drilling frontline, we’ve also seen an increase in overall drill productivity.”

WAIO now has one of the biggest autonomous drill fleets in the world – which is managed by 32 crew members and one engineer all based at IROC.

IPRO Control Operations Manager, Clayton Hanrahan, added: “This achievement was made possible by a huge team of stakeholders, including the original Project Team, Technology, our vendor Epiroc, IPRO, IROC Drill and Control, all of our site partners in the Pilbara Drill and Blast teams and many more.”

Congratulations to everyone involved on reaching the milestone of autonomously drilling more than 25 million metres.

The automation journey begain with Yandi completing a successful 18-month trial of three autonomous drill rigs, paving the way for a staged approach across other WAIO mine sites.

Mining Area C introduced autonomous drilling in January 2017 before, in October 2017, the technology was implemented at Newman’s Eastern Ridge mine. In December of that year, Jimblebar introduced autonomous drilling and, in March 2018, Newman’s Whaleback mine implemented autonomous drill rigs. The journey has been rounded out by, in 2020, the introduction of autonomous drill rigs at South Flank, making WAIO’s drill rig program fully autonomous.

BMA’s Palmer talks up potential for autonomous haul trucks

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James Palmer (pictured), BHP Mitsubishi Alliance Asset President, said this week that autonomous haulage systems (AHS) could become a much bigger part of the company’s operations in the future.

Speaking to attendees at a Bowen Basin Mining Club lunch in Mackay, Australia, Palmer said there was potential for 500 autonomous trucks to be introduced at BMA’s open-pit coal operations and BHP’s iron ore mines in the future.

This number of autonomous trucks first came up in a strategy briefing presentation delivered by Chief Financial Officer, Peter Beaven, in May.

Under a list of “projects in feasibility” in the appendices of Beaven’s presentation, the mining major detailed a staged haul truck automation plan that could cost less than $800 million to deliver, with the first of several investment decisions expected this year. In terms of the delivery of the project, BHP said it was estimating a staged rollout between 2020 and 2023, with AHS decisions made on a “site by site” basis.

This move follows a successful rollout of the technology at BHP’s Jimblebar iron ore operation in Western Australia, where the company, since implementation of the fully-autonomous solution, has seen significant incidents involving trucks decrease by almost 90%, according to Palmer.

It is this experience that has led to BMA and BHP Iron Ore studying widespread autonomous haulage at its operations.

“Through the study, which spans both BMA and BHP’s Iron Ore business, there’s potential to for up to 500 autonomous trucks to be introduced in our open-cut operations,” he said.

“It’s an ambitious target – that would see about a tenfold increase to BHP’s existing fleet of autonomous trucks already operating at Jimblebar today. But, like I said earlier, the results from Jimblebar – particularly the safety improvements – continue to make a strong case for change.”

In addition to talking up potential AHS operations, Palmer also spoke about the BHP Integrated Remote Operations Centre (IROC), a centre set up just over two years ago that has “created an extensive suite of training and upskilling opportunities for our people”, he said.

“Over 50% of the IROC’s mine control team have formerly operated heavy vehicles,” Palmer said. “Now, they’re helping drive our entire coal supply chain – from pit to port.”