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New approach to mine security

i to i technologies has signed a major new deal with Canadian listed diamond mining company, Rockwell Diamonds, to establish one of the world’s first turnkey security initiatives for its South African mining operations.

The multimillion rand deal, concluded in May, will encompass people, technology and processes. “This deal is significant for the future of security globally, because to date no other company has taken an holistic view of their physical risk and used one partner to drive all the desired results in the manner that i to i and Rockwell are doing,” says Ian Downie, key account and mining expert at i to i.

Rockwell, a mid-tier diamond mining and exploration company, is a relatively new player on the South Africa mining scene with four key alluvial diamond mines in the country. The company has invested in a security solution encompassing CCTV, access control, biometrics and specially trained managers, control room operators, protection personnel and maintenance teams. Many process components will be integrated in a control room environment with multiple tiers, as well as remote view control rooms that will allow the company to monitor all operations and drive holistic security processes on its mines from anywhere in the world.

Roll-out of the state-of-the-art system is already under way with teams actively working at Rockwell’s Northern Cape mines.

Downie says that the new system will allow Rockwell to improve yield, processes and management by exception. Deterrence and risk reduction will also be key factors.

Glenn Norton, minerals resource manager at Rockwell, says that the investment made sound business sense and was driven on the one hand by the need to improve security processes on its mines and on the other by a lack of skilled people to fill this role.

“There is a skills shortage in South Africa, qualified people are difficult to find so we decided to move away from the human element as much as possible and to manage the company with few, highly trained and motivated managers and employees working in combination with technology that provides a complete security efficiency solution,” he explains.

In conjunction with i to i, Rockwell will set up a training centre at its Holpan mine to ensure that employees will receive continuous, relevant and accredited training that will contribute towards their personal and career development.

Norton says the deal with i to i was also positive news for investors.

“Investors have put money into our company and we need to be able to demonstrate to them that we are protecting that investment. With the new system we are able to show them results that are driven by processes. Too many companies are not properly accountable to their investors. We are listing in South Africa in September and we want to provide that same confidence to our international and South African shareholder base,” he says.

Rockwell mines in Barkley West and Douglas will be the primary hubs in the new Rockwell security initiative. Control rooms at these two locations will link to the different mines around the country and into a central control room. Managers will be able to remotely access process control, video images, as well as automatic updates, e-mails, reports and SMS generated alarms.

Biometrics, CCTV and access control solutions are being implemented, including thermal imaging cameras, digital recorders and alarm gateway equipment. Coupled to this is the installation of an incident monitoring programme, guard tracking and the correct management of control room operators and guards. To keep things running smoothly, maintenance teams permanently on the various sites will ensure that the technology is kept fully functional. IT systems and telephony are included in the system.

There will also be an information management system to allow analysis of the efficiency of the control room operators, and furthermore the operators are well trained and continuously assessed. Operators are measured via an incident management information system, given specific outcomes to achieve and then trained rigorously by a team of experts. They are furthermore assessed in terms of performance on a daily basis. This allows efficient reporting by well-trained operators in such a manner that reports are generated for statistical analysis.

Taken together, this allows efficient reporting with managers able to view reports at any time, anywhere, which tell them how well the security is performing, how many incidents there have been, and subsequent classification to ultimately monitor the health status of their electronic systems.

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