BHP Billiton has declared it is serious about addressing safety issues related to the operation of bulldozers at its mine sites, and in particular around stockpiles and conveyors.

The company says poor visibility, unstable ground and material falling from conveyors have led to numerous injuries and fatalities among bulldozer operators. “Across the globe, bulldozers working on ore stockpiles within the mining industry expose their operators to major safety challenges,” it says on its website.

BHPB says the global mining industry has experienced a number of fatal accidents involving bulldozers operating on stockpiles. Between 2001 and 2006, there were several incidents involving bulldozers at Escondida. “In an incident in March 2006, where the operator eventually escaped with minor injuries, one of our bulldozers was buried for five hours,” the company says.

In an unrelated incident at the end of December an employee of an earthworks contractor was killed while operating a bulldozer at Canadian company Anatolia Minerals' Çöpler gold project in Turkey. An investigation into the incident is continuing.

BHPB says its challenge was to develop an approach that allowed it to continue to gain the economic benefits of operating bulldozers in stockpile areas while reducing safety risks to operators.

“Analysis showed that the only sure way of addressing such risk was to remove the bulldozer operators from their cabs,” the company says. “We would need to have them operate their machines from a safe, remote, location.”

BHPB engaged Australian company Remote Control Technologies to develop a remote control solution for the Escondida copper mine in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert. The big miner has 57.5% of Escondida in joint venture with Rio Tinto. Annually, the mine moves about 400 million tonnes of material to ensure a continuous flow of ore to concentrators at Laguna Seca and Los Colorados – oxide and sulphide leaching facilities. Three stockpiles support ore feed to the plants with bulldozers used to move material within the stockpiles to ensure a continuous supply of feedstock to the plants.

BHPB says using bulldozers within stockpiles has “strong positive impacts on plant performance” through elimination of prolonged interruption to feedstock supply, which maximises the volume of ore processed and economic benefits from processing.

Switching to remote control operation of dozers at Escondida involved adapting state-of-the-art technology used in other mining processes and applying it to the stockpile bulldozers. “Challenges included sourcing the best equipment for our needs, ensuring it was appropriate to our conditions and operation and that it could be adapted effectively, and then training our operators in a new way of working,” BHPB says. “We undertook our first site test and completed equipment installation in early 2007 and, after operator training, began full operation in mid 2007. The remote control bulldozers have performed well, assisting us in maintaining operational continuity and improving safety.

“We believe the technology we have selected represents leading practice, is sustainable and can be supported globally. There is potential to apply this technology in other operations where operating a bulldozer involves a safety risk to the operator. Potential situations where the technology could be used include operations on unstable or soggy ground, or on drilling platforms with limited access.”

Remote Control Technologies senior business development manager Phil Goode said up to a dozen mines in the Australasian region – including Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya – were using the company’s remote control systems for dozer operation.

There was “some indication” remote dozing might be taken up across the BHPB group.

Goode said the efficiency of remote control dozer operations was “very comparable with manual [and] significantly safer as men are not in dozers and at risk of falling into crushing feeders with the conveyor running overhead”.

“It is a much more productive way of operating as they do not have to shut down conveyors and feeders to do all the clean-up work,” he said.

RCT has supplied and fitted five full dozer remote systems (for D11R and D10R machines) at Escondida and provided training for mine personnel. Service is provided via RCT’s Chile agent, Power Train Technologies.