Smart tools for haul road compliance

Mining companies want to maintain a safe working environment. Well designed and maintained haul roads are the key to minimising costs and improving productivity.

Mandated design parameters for haul roads and interest in enhanced inter-ramp compliance prompted Maptek to devise an analysis tool to report on haul road compliance quickly, accurately and visually.

Key customer requirements based on feedback included:

  • Haul road width
  • Haul road grade
  • Crossfall/camber
  • Safety berm/bund height
  • Safety berm/bund width

The Maptek approach quickly detects toe and and crest lines, crossfall grade, bund height/width and road width, providing a clear visual display of conformance or non-conformance.

Inputs require an approximate centreline for each roadway to be queried, and an as-built surface. As-built surfaces can be simple stringline derived surfaces, or data from Maptek Drive, aerial lidar or UAV models.

The haul road conformance tool can be applied to as-built surfaces as well as design models.

Results are split into various objects for each reportable metric, allowing downstream statistical calculation of conformant chainage against non-conformant.

This approach to identifying areas of non-compliance allows clear communication through to production where improvements are necessary. It also allows changes to haul road design, improving mine processes and safety outcomes.

The tool has been designed to work in both Vulcan and PointStudio to cater for users in either environment. To learn more, please contact your local Maptek office.

Downer Mining is currently using the Maptek Haul Road Tools across its mining sites on the East Coast of Australia, with great results.

From the initial set up of applying the required mine settings through to the final generated line strings, it is simple to use. We can now highlight to production what areas need attention, to provide our workforce with a safe working environment and comply with regulatory requirements. A great feature of this report is the ability to select individual CAD line strings as required.

Tony Morgan, Senior Site Surveyor OCE, Downer Mining
  • Well designed and maintained haul roads are key to minimising operational costs and improving productivity
  • A new haul road conformance reporting tool can be applied to as-built surfaces as well as design models
  • Benefits include clear communication to production teams, and improved haul road design, mine processes and safety outcomes