According to Robin Bolton, head of sustainability at IsoMetrix – a company that develops software for integrated risk management – one of the major challenges that miners face when it comes to preventing these accidents is that 79% of them use multiple tools in their risk management process. 

In his view, this fragmented approach causes operators to miss interconnected risks or ‘golden threads,’ which are the links between companies’ processes, threats, controls and events. Thus, by not having an understanding of these ‘golden threads,’ mines are more likely to ignore the early warning signs of a tailings disaster.

Operators tend to miss interconnected risks or ‘golden threads,’ which makes then more likely to ignore the early warning signs of a tailings disaster

The key is, then, using technology to continuously track an array of complex site-specific risks and detect these connections. 

“By linking datasets and asset performance data that were previously siloed through a Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) solution, mines are able to gain a deeper understanding of their critical tailing controls in line with the global standard,” Bolton told MINING.COM. “By integrating into pre-existing systems, including weather tracking, engineering control monitoring, production rates and more, GRC platforms can detect faults and alert critical stakeholder groups of a potential incident which can then be managed appropriately. Through a unified view of tailing facilities, mines can ensure its processes comply with the new tailing management standards and mitigate potential disaster.”

Besides ensuring safety and compliance while operative, Bolton said miners ought to remember that they are still liable for an array of risks, including security, safety and contamination after a tailings dam closes. This is why he is convinced that remote monitoring through a digital risk management ecosystem is essential to detect faults and alert risk managers if an action is needed. 

MDC: Do you see mining companies leaning towards a specific trend/solution when it comes to tailings management?

Bolton: Over the past year, mines have been focused on integrating new types of data collection and making it quickly available to operators. The new types of data include satellite imagery, data gathered through IoT and more. This gives mines a holistic view of its site-specific risks, allowing them to identify new controls that can mitigate incidents. By tying this data into its overall risk assessment, mines can better assess their operations against new and existing ESG standards, such as the new tailing management standards.

MDC: What, do you think, has changed for miners following the release of the global standard on tailings management?

Bolton: The new tailing management standards are going to have the largest impact on internal management and compliance processes. To meet the standards, mines must update their policies and standard operating procedures. Within these operational updates, they should determine how technology can fit into its larger operational strategy to automate monitoring the necessary controls. Through a holistic view of risk made possible by integrated technology, mines can create a universal tailing management approach to meet the new global standards, while still taking country-specific requirements into account.

MDC: Did IsoMetrix have to change/modify anything in its tailings management solution once the global standard on tailings management was launched? 

Bolton: There’s a close alignment between our tailing management solution and the requirements of the new tailing management standards, especially as it relates to understanding the risks and controls that can minimize a potential event.

However, to ensure that our solution fully equips customers with the resources they need, we are currently advancing the solution’s IoT integration capabilities to ensure that relevant data, such as monitoring and production data, and images from satellites and thermal cameras, can seamlessly flow into the platform. We are also implementing new auditing processes that capture the content of the tailing management standards, so mines can gauge how they are aligned with the requirements, and we are adding-in management of change functionality to better track a mine’s critical controls as well as the skills and training register. 

MDC: How does the solution work exactly?

Bolton: The tailing management solution is a central repository for managing all tailing related information. Through key health, safety and environmental modules, along with emergency preparedness and response modules, mines can ensure their critical controls are in place and monitored. Also, by integrating into already existing systems, the solution imports data from various monitoring modules to manage and analyze risks, such as water, rehabilitation and air quality. This allows the mine to set thresholds for particular metrics in one universal built-in dashboard.

Often, the responsible tailing managers work remotely, and through IsoMetrix’s mobile app and automated alerting system, mining organizations can capture required information in detail in real-time. Through the integrated risk ecosystem our TMS creates, mines can proactively identify missing safeguards to minimize the likelihood and consequences of a tailings incident.

Fitch asserts the pandemic will prompt a rethink of operational strategies, supply chain vulnerabilities and investment trends.

Mining and metal players are likely to accelerate the incorporation of technology and automation in operations and to explore their options to shorten and simplify supply chains, the analyst predicts.

Increased social and political risks

Meanwhile, covid-19 is also adding impetus to adjacent structural economic and geopolitical trends, increasing domestic social and political risks, accelerating protectionism, raising further uncertainty regarding future international trade and investment regulations, Fitch says.

“Taken together, these trends will impact significantly the commodities sector, from a demand, supply and investment perspective.”

“The ongoing shift to a low carbon economy and more sustainable manufacturing practices will be one of the megatrends accelerated by covid-19”

Fitch

The ongoing shift to a low carbon economy and more sustainable manufacturing practices will be one of the megatrends accelerated by covid-19, as forward-thinking governments tie post-covid-19 stimulus plans to sustainable development in the commodities sector, the analyst asserts.

Developed markets, and in particular the EU, will put a rising emphasis on this topic, Fitch forecasts. Part of the economic recovery packages passed by the EU will be geared towards climate- friendly policies and funding. Fitch highlights that the bloc is forging ahead with its Farm to Fork (F2F) and biodiversity strategies, two mutually reinforcing strategies that are meant to be at the heart of the European Green Deal.

In Europe’s mining and metals industry, players are increasingly looking at actively reducing their carbon footprint. This can be seen in the ongoing developments of new lithium extraction techniques in Western Europe and in the growing use of renewables in steel production in the EU, Fitch points out.

Metal producers will also look into vertical integration, Fitch says, adding that the mining sector will also be indirectly impacted by the economic and political aftermath of the pandemic.

The rise in international and local political risks will also boost the likelihood of protectionist trade and fiscal policies – including heightened risk of greater royalty and tax policies – as well as the incidences of social unrest, leading to potential mine disruptions.

In the mining and metals sector, Fitch predicts the long-term price outlook remains relatively unaffected by covid-19.

Australian based cloud integrator SXiQ has delivered a multi-million-dollar project to migrate Orica, an Australian-based multinational corporation that is one of the world’s largest providers of commercial explosives and blasting systems to the mining industry, from multiple datacentres around the world into the Cloud.

Orica’s impetus for change arose from several key business challenges, including:

• Ageing infrastructure requiring a large capital investment to keep current
• Technology landscape was increasingly fragmented with multiple disparate products adding unnecessary complexity with legacy support challenges
• Traditional delivery model was inflexible and unable to support global application teams’ requirement for speed and agility
• Strategic requirement to lower overall ICT costs while improving responsiveness and consistency of service

To address these business challenges, Orica made the transformational decision to pursue a cloud-first strategy and exit its existing legacy datacentres, selecting Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred cloud platform for all non-SAP applications whilst, in parallel, uplifting its traditional operating model to introduce a more modern Cloud-centric practice.

SXiQ led the solution development and delivery of both the platform and people transformation, which consisted of five key activities:

1. Rehost, Re-platform and Refactoring of over 50 key business applications and 26 infrastructure services, across hundreds of virtual machines, that support business functions including Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Commercial/Marketing, Finance and Digital into a new multi-region AWS tenancy
2. Establish Orica’s “Cloud Centre of Excellence” (CCoE) to provide the cross functional governance framework and innovation hub to enable continuous service improvement and adoption of new technologies
3. Design and Implement an Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) methodology and toolset using Terraform and Ansible to change how Orica’s Engineering and Operational teams manage the lifecycle of cloud resources
4. Perform physical decommission of each datacentre co-lo tenancy including asset inventory, environmental disposal, and removal of physical racking

Orica selected SXiQ for this project based on its experience across large-scale, complex, mission critical systems, combined with its strength in cloud and datacentre technologies, to deliver an end-to-end solution.

“We believe it’s our combination of discipline built over years of implementing large-scale, mission critical systems plus our practical innovation and agility which set us apart”, says SXiQ Managing Director John Hanna. “Orica is innovating on every front and this project will enable the team to drive their transformation at an even greater pace.  SXiQ is proud to be one of Orica’s innovation enablers,” he added.

SXiQ says it delivered this complex, global scale program, in under 15 months with the following results:

1. Cost transparency – Greater visibility of hosting costs, through the decommission of datacentre facilities and transforming 3^rd party legacy services to cloud native services.
2. Simplification – Reduction in the number of disparate technology silos to simplify operational support and provide a more consistent service to the business across each global region.
3. Improved Agility – Enable new workloads to be deployed rapidly based on defined architecture patterns, using automation tools to manage the deployment lifecycle.
4. Enhanced Security and Recoverability – Improved availability and recoverability of applications through adoption of secure builds, a multi-Availability Zone designs and cloud native recovery capabilities.
5. Cloud-First– Orica is now positioned to enable new workloads to be deployed to cloud infrastructure, inheriting the benefits of Infrastructure-as-Code, built-in HA/DR, security and operational automation associated with the new platform. Orica now enjoys a truly modern cloud infrastructure hosting environment.

SXiQ has successfully delivered a significant key pillar in Orica’s IT Digital Strategy, enabling Orica to deliver on its purpose to make their customers successful, every day, all around the world.

Orica’s Vice President – Information Technology & Cyber Security Jamie Rossato stated “This is a crucial, foundational step in Orica’s digital transformation journey. It has unlocked cost savings, business agility & unlimited potential for innovation, delivered with confidence by our partner SXiQ who have played a significant role in helping us achieve this critical milestone on our journey.”

Orica’s cloud journey does not end at a technology uplift. “SXiQ is continuing to support Orica in the uplift of skills and processes, building a new Cloud Centre of Excellence which will deliver a true Cloud DevOps capability in order to ensure the benefits of cloud hosting are realised, and protected as Orica begins to innovate on this platform. The future is looking bright as Orica moves to take full advantage of the public cloud technologies and the innovation flexibility it brings.”

SXiQ Client Principal Paul Campisi said “The SXiQ team have done an amazing job to lead Orica’s move globally, out of the datacentre and into the Cloud.”

AVEVA Group PLC, a global leader in industrial software, announces that it has reached agreement on the terms of an acquisition of OSIsoft, at an enterprise value of $5.0 billion. AVEVA is in turn 60% held indirectly by Schneider Electric.

Founded in 1980 by Dr J. Patrick Kennedy, OSIsoft is a global leader in real-time industrial data software and services. Its PI System is the system of record for customers for data capture, storage, analysis and sharing of real-time industrial sensor-based data across all operations, enabling customers to connect disparate sources of time-series data in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

The statement added: “Through OSIsoft’s PI System, customers draw insights, make better decisions, optimise operations, and drive digital transformation.” Notably it works with all of the Global Fortune Top 10 metals and mining companies. OSIsoft is headquartered in California, USA, and has approximately 1,400 employees. OSIsoft’s PI System is used by its customers across 14,000 sites in 127 countries. “Furthermore, as businesses deploy increasing levels of sensor-enabled equipment, more assets are streaming more data, increasing the need for and value derived from the PI System.

“OSIsoft’s PI System is a very scalable and robust enterprise level data historian platform, which will be a key enabler of a number of AVEVA solutions, in particular enhancing the Digital Twin, HMI/SCADA, Manufacturing Execution System and Asset Performance, with more inputs and connectivity to feed AI-infused and cloud-based solutions; AVEVA’s and OSIsoft’s solutions will combine to create a leading Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) portfolio, which will continue to be platform and hardware agnostic, meaning that it will be able to communicate with diverse devices using different operating systems; the combined solution set will optimise engineering, operations and performance, with unprecedented efficiency and value as a result of the integration of both businesses; and AVEVA will be able to accelerate the market adoption and expansion of OSIsoft Cloud Services (OCS) and other cloud-based offerings, which recently entered into an early adopter program and provide OSIsoft’s industry leading data management capability in a native cloud environment.”

Completion is expected to occur around the end of the year. Commenting on the acquisition, Philip Aiken, Chairman of AVEVA, said: “I am delighted that we have reached agreement to acquire OSIsoft. The acquisition has compelling strategic rationale with strong operational and financial benefits. The acquisition will strengthen AVEVA’s position as a global leader in industrial software, whilst a combination of the complementary product offerings of AVEVA and OSIsoft is expected to allow the Enlarged Group to accelerate growth and continue to generate significant shareholder value.”

Craig Hayman, Chief Executive of AVEVA, said: “The acquisition of OSIsoft is perfectly in line with our strategic vision and it will accelerate the Enlarged Group’s role in the digitisation of the industrial world, which is being driven by a need for sustainability, the industrial internet of things, Cloud, data visualisation and artificial intelligence. The acquisition will enable AVEVA to broaden and deepen its relationships with existing and new customers and bring a more comprehensive product portfolio to market.”

Peter Herweck, Vice Chairman of AVEVA and Executive Vice President, Industrial Automation, Schneider Electric, said: “The combination of AVEVA and OSIsoft will accelerate our AVEVA partnership with significant customer value across process and hybrid automation industries plus the building and infrastructure sectors. AVEVA’s industrial software is a key element of Schneider Electric’s IoT-enabled architecture, EcoStruxure which will be further enhanced by OSIsoft’s PI System and its support for open infrastructure. Schneider Electric is committed to supporting customers with digital solutions for efficiency and sustainability.”

Dr J. Patrick Kennedy, Founder and Chief Executive of OSIsoft, said: “Joining forces with AVEVA enhances and extends our ability to deliver on our key commitments to our customers, partners and employees. Together we will be better able to service the largest digital transformation projects in history, including across industry 4.0+ and IIoT.  The next chapter in PI’s fifth decade will be exciting for our employees and customers, and I look forward to my continued involvement as Chairman Emeritus and shareholder.”