Page 24 Contd on pg 24 By Kevin V incent Modern workplaces often struggle with the amount of time that an em ployee can use their smartphones In fact many workplaces ban phones during working hours altogether and many that don t geofence block timewasting social media sites like FaceBook So when you think of your smart phone the last thing that comes to mind is using it three kilometres under ground After all cell phones are virtually useless three kilome tres above ground in an aircraft un less you are just above the runway on landing or takeof The same would hold true in an under ground mine That limited philosophy didn t stop one of the world s most innovative mines from thinking outside the box In the early 2000 s Glencore Kidd Operations used its technology bud get and engaged Nortel Networks to develop an under ground communica tion network that included a number of stationary analog telephones that under ground staf could acce ss for a multitude of purposes More recently General Manager Steve Badenhorst ordered the pur chase of cellp hones for every un der ground employee According to Manager of Mine Operations R yan Roberts the frst crew started using the phones this spring and supervisors are using table ts The phones are kept in employee lockers where char ging stations have also been install ed Rob erts says the tablets are used mostly for data entry rather than communica tion The main driver for us with the phones was for texting explains Roberts Whe n it comes to radios if youre not in the reception zone and youre trying to get a hold of some one you can t send and receive mes sages at all Whereas with a cellphone as soon as you are adjacent to a cov erage area that message will execute and get through to the intended recipi ent W ere not the frst mine in the world trying to get communication to the face he adds W eve been chal lenged like any mine but this is a pret ty good system that weve got now Roberts says it took a long time to make a decision but once General Manager Badenhorst gave it the fnal green light implementation began and took about three months The system uses POE Power of Etherne t so the company only needs to run a 100me tre cable out to the heading screw in a connector and wireless connectivity is instant W e wanted something simple ex plains Kyle Buckoll Sr Projects Paste Engineer And a phone that was relatively inexpensive because youre not working in a mall youre working in a mine where it s obviously a harsh environment The tablets for supervisors gives them a mobile workstation adds Buckoll They can enter tonnage metres or our VOD ventilation on demand data So it allows them to have access to live data as well as en tering data live themselves Buckoll says the time savings are sub stantial Supervisors can submit the data under ground where before they had to wait until they got the surface and to a computer work station The information is now shared with the next shift or crossshift in a much more timely fashion eliminating the usual delays It benefts the engineering and tech Page 22