C

urrently convergence seems to be the

new trend in mining software. By
incorporating separate entities into one
program, software companies are making it
easier for mining engineers to compile, assess
and update valuable data that will eventually
reduce costs.
Software for mine operations has advanced
recently with Rajant, a provider of portable,
reliable and adaptable wireless networking
solutions, entering into a partnership
agreement with Carlson Software, an
independent developer of surveying, civil
engineering and mining software. This
agreement will, according to Bruce Carlson,
President and founder of Carlson Software,
offer an easy-to-setup, self healing, portable
network that is ideal for our mining
customers. This newly incorporated wireless
facility could add increased accuracy and a
regular stream of updated information to the
engineer, which as Carlson says, is key for
implementing remote monitoring, productivity
analysis, digital updating of change orders, and
other applications.
Rajant BreadCrumb

wireless networks
benefit from not having a root node, central
access point or LAN controller; eliminating
extra network latency and single points of
failure. Combined with Carlson programs such
as Carlson Grade, a Windows XP machine
control application for dozers, drills, motor
graders, scrapers, excavators, loaders and even
bucket-wheel excavator, Carlson SurvCE, a
data collection application which drives the
majority of GPS and total station equipment;
and Carlson Field; a data collection product
which brings full CAD capability, large image
file and aerial photo backdrop capability. Both
parties, seemingly, have much to gain from
each other.
This will mean that Carlsons software will
benefit from a reliable, constant network
connection that allows the user to update,
relay, and collect the most up to date
information about the mine.
Micromine is
planning to integrate its mining systems into
one large system, called MasterMine. It
currently has separate systems for different
aspects of the mining process with
MICROMINE (mine design and modelling
tool), GBIS (data management system),
PITRAM (mine production control
system) and DOME (mine
production management system).
However, due to three grants from
AusIndustry, the most recent grant
of $5 million being awarded in
June, it is planning to incorporate
all of the individual systems into its
prospective MasterMine system.
These grants from AusIndustry, will
be used over the next three years
to help develop MasterMine into a
single-vendor solution that will
facilitate strategic enterprise
management.
The projects main aim is to develop a
platform that will increase the effectiveness of
companies IT infrastructure, whilst utilising
skilled human resources. Essentially, savings
could come from a reduction of data
management costs - a characteristic that
Micromine, as well as leading domain experts
will have at the forefront of their development
ideas. The technology is currently being
developed in close consultation with the
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial
Research Organisation (CSIRO).
Through automated underground production
control, MasterMine will be able to provide
operators with advanced production control
features that are currently only available in
open-pit mines.
Insite coming onsite
Gemcom Software recently won an award
for its Insite program; a piece of software that
integrates many aspects of the mining process
in one platform. In May, it was awarded the
Software CEO Software Innovation Award for
Most Innovative Vertical Industry Software by
the Computer Technology Industry Association.
According to the company, Insite can
deliver planning and production information
through a highly flexible web portal that draws
upon a single, validated source of integrated
data. This characteristic ensures that the
benefits of the system are felt from all over the
mine. Its individual programs within the
software cover mine management,
maintenance, plant management, mine
engineering, supervising and data
management. The fact that all of these integral
issues are covered within the confines of one
piece of integrated software could make the
process of monitoring a mine situation much
easier and more efficient.
Gemcom also has its Minex program,
which is currently encountering strong demand
from the industry. Minex is a comprehensive
geological modelling and mine planning tool
for coal and other stratified deposits such as
lignite, phosphate, bauxite, iron ore, and
platinum. Developed in partnership with the
SOFTWARE
SUITE
IM explores recent developments in software
and how some of these will affect the mine of
the future
MINE PLANNING
The partnership between Carlson Software and
Rajant will enable Carlson to benefit from a reliable,
constant network connection, allowing users to
update, relay, and collect the most up to date
information
OCTOBER 2008 International Mining 49
SOFTWARE:proof 2/10/08 10:14 Page 1
mining industry, the software is employed by
exploration and mining companies, including
the world's largest operators. It has been
particularly successful with coal mining
operations and has therefore found a huge
market within Asia and Indonesia.
Jon Barber, Gemcoms Vice President of
Minex said that in particular, Minex offers
more comprehensive, deposit (coal) specific
functionality and [it] easily interfaces with
other business and technical software. Minex
is not converted hard rock mining software but
a fully integrated system designed by mining
professionals to deal with the specific
challenges posed by stratified deposits. It is
useful for developing accurate resource
calculations in areas with complex geology
including reverse and normal faults. With
features like pit optimisation and scheduling
built-in, it provides support for key mining
companies with both strategic and tactical
functions such as material movement that can
significantly impact efficiency and profits.
Joshua Cochrane, Technical Manager for
Straits Asia Resources said: Minex is the only
mining software product that can provide all
the tools we need for geological modelling,
strategic planning and mine planning in one
package. We have adopted Minex both at a
corporate level and site level, and are
implementing at the current time with the
assistance of Gemcom support both locally in
Indonesia and from Australia.
Mincom catering for all
Mincom has recently signed a deal with
Gindalbie Metals and Ansteel to implement its
Ellipse program in their joint venture at the
Karara iron ore project in Western Australia.
Ellipse itself, according to Mincom, is a fully
integrated enterprise asset management
application suite providing complete visibility
and management of assets to capital-intensive
industries [such as] mining. The features it
accordingly offers include:
Increased asset utilisation
Reduced operating costs
Delivers quality products and services
Meets regulatory standards for audit
compliance
Ensures supply chain availability and
visibility
Allocates skilled resources appropriately
Mitigates risk
Improves productivity.
It fulfils these characteristics by using
modules of Asset and Work Management,
Supply Chain Management, Financial
Management and Human Resource
Management as integrated foundations,
delivered from a Service Oriented Architecture
platform. These foundation modules are
complemented by business analytics, advanced
maintenance and planning and mobile
workforce solutions, offering broad
functionality and a robust solution in the
Enterprise Asset Management market today.
Ellipse is not the only integrated program
that Mincom has to offer, it has Mincom
Exploration, which has three specific features;
the exploration data portal, exploration data
automation and exploration mapping. These
three features work in tandem. They help to
browse and edit data, execute import and
export tasks on demand, identify problems and
quarantine them in the work flow at the
earliest possible stage and allow users to map
preconfigured layers.
The recent agreement to implement Ellipse
for Karara will deliver to Gindalbie a set of
preconfigured mining business processes
allowing rapid system deployment to support
its expansion program.
Garret Dixon, Chief Executive Office of
Gindalbie explained that we were on the
lookout for a solution that not only suited the
scale of operations today, but one that could
easily grow with our expanding business. We
chose Mincom because they offered a solution
50 International Mining OCTOBER 2008
MINE PLANNING
A plan of boreholes
pictured on the Minex
program
Measured
Indicated
Inferred
SOFTWARE:proof 3/10/08 08:31 Page 2
that best met our business requirements and
because of their ability to move quickly and
provide an implementation in a short time
frame.
This quick turnaround is a result of years of
experience with mining companies, something
that helped when preparing a proposal for the
joint venture. One of the options that we offer
medium to smaller sized miners such as Gindalbie
is the installation of a solution built on repeatable
processes that addresses typical mining business
requirements. This allows for an extremely fast,
and therefore affordable, installation while
offering a full ERP system to mines that would
not traditionally consider it as an option.
The whole process will take less than six
months with Mincom installing an express
version of Ellipse; that covers finance, payroll,
HR and maintenance modules of the program,
as well as also acting as the foundation for
future installation of the Mincom Intelligent
Mining Solution.
Mapteks Vulcan is a program that has
been helping mines all over the globe for
many years. Since 1981 the program has
found homes in projects all over Australasia,
North and South America, Europe and South
Africa. The list of companies it has provided its
services to include BHP Billiton, Codelco, Rio
Tinto and Xstrata.
One such project is BHP Billitons Olympic
Dam expansion project in South Australia. This
is to be a large open pit operation using
Vulcan for geotechnical investigations and
geology resource modelling. The model
produced by Vulcan will also be used as the
basis for the prefeasibility study.
Olympic Dam is Australias largest
underground hard rock mine, and therefore
expanding the existing operation required a
comprehensive mine development program,
something that Vulcan was able to provide. It
was able to generate a single model of the entire
Olympic dam orebody with all the data being
integrated into Vulcan, site geologists were then
able to view a single resource model and test its
robustness as new data became available.
As the biggest hard rock mine in Australia
this project represented a huge task. The ability
to carry out such a job displaying Vulcans
capabilities, however this integration into
MINE PLANNING
Chronos and Vulcan are designed to integrate with
each other, resulting in a mine scheduling program
that also provides a detailed 3D orebody
representation
52 International Mining OCTOBER 2008
Geosoft simplies the life of todays earth
explorer by providing access to data and a
powerful set of mapping and analysis tools,
within one dynamic environment.
Find out why more and more companies are
exploring with Geosoft by emailing us at
explore@geosoft.com or by visiting
www.geosoft.com/start-exploring
Simple. Powerful. Made for earth explorers.
SOFTWARE:proof 2/10/08 10:14 Page 3
mines would not be possible without the
integrated Chronos system; an addition that
can generate a scheduling model suiting the
requirements of any particular mine.
Citect gives Ampla coverage
Citects Ampla suite has gained most
accolades within the mining industry; a
configurable product that utilises nine
modules. This program allows users to keep up
to date with the material flow within their
mining operation. The Ampla inventory has
been designed to help mining organisations
manage, control and understand
their inventory. The tasks that the
program is designed for include:
Asset optimisation and
productivity improvement
Constraint identification
Production reporting
Material movement analysis
Quality analysis
Cost tracking
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
presentation and data
aggregation.
Citect, who has a strategic
business partnership with Schneider
Electric, has recently released Ampla
4.0, the newest version of the
software, which was launched at a recent
mining, minerals and metals seminar, held by
Citects partner SoftBrasil in Sao Paulo.
The additions to the program include: new
tools such as an inventory module that helps
provide manufacturers with metric-based
information, such as KPIs, needed to increase
productivity and profitability. It shares real-time
data that enables all levels of management to
make decisions based on the same reliable
data. The new version also introduces the
chance to host Ampla on several application
servers, distributing the processing among
many users to improve stability, query
processing and fault finding. It is also easily
integrated with many ERP (enterprise resource
planning) technologies, including Microsoft,
SAP and other Java-based applications.
These factors may well have contributed to
the partnership between Citect and Anglo
Platinum. This entails, over the next three years,
an implementation of Ampla into Anglos South
African process division, including
concentrators, smelters and
refineries. The program will be
deployed over this term, focusing
on nine key areas: modelling,
event-based integration,
operational reporting and analysis,
metal balance at plant level,
maintenance management and
execution, production planning,
plant scheduling and blending and
material tracking, genealogy and
energy management.
Geosoft has been in place at
Eaglecrests San Simon project for
around a year now. The program
was selected by newly appointed
President Hans Rasmussen in order
OCTOBER 2008 International Mining 53
MINE PLANNING
The Ampla suite is a configurable product utilising
nine modules
R o c k M o r e
I n t e r n a t i o n a l
Rockmore International
Wilsonville, Oregon USA
Tel (503) 682-1001
info@rockmore-intl.com
Judenburg, Austria
Tel +43 3572-86300
austria@rockmore-intl.com
Rock Drilling Tools
For more than 60 years, Rockmore
International has provided innovative drilling
solutions, with manufacturing centers in
two hemispheres and a global distribution
network. Rockmore high performance
drilling tools exceed the toughest
demands in mining,
construction, and
water-well percussive
drilling applications.
Drill More
www.rockmore-intl.com

SOFTWARE:proof 2/10/08 10:15 Page 4

to update the software being used on drill
projects. Geosoft produced a 3-D model,
which enabled the team to discover that the
gold was concentrated in vertically-oriented
high-grade gold shoots - something they were
unaware of, even though a team had been in
place there for more than 10 years. The
capability of Geosoft has undoubtedly
improved results onsite, and along with Target;
a program that simplifies the processing and
visualisation of subsurface drillhole and
borehole data it has enabled the team to
progress forward.
Rasmussen himself believes having one
platform for working with exploration data
and GIS data in three dimensions gives core
strength [to] our exploration. He continues,
we can incorporate GIS data and exploration
data from technical information to
topographic data and view it all in three
dimensions within our platform. The program
will also grow and evolve as the project does,
giving the team at San Simon a reliable
platform that can aide decision making.
Minesight in the dunes
Mintec and its MineSight mine planning
software is helping Namdeb Diamond Corp
with both conventional and unconventional
diamond mining challenges in Namibia.
Namdeb mines a diverse group of alluvial and
Aeolian diamond deposits, ranging from open
pit operations to surface mining of shallow
wind transported deposits. There is no typical
Namdeb diamond deposit. Rehabilitation,
dredge stripping control, earthworks design,
contract control and mining development
simulations in environmentally diverse and
sensitive areas are all out of the ordinary ways
MineSight has been used to add value to these
various operations.
Namdeb has open-pit operations that use
MineSights newly upgraded full spectrum
mining software suite, MineSight 3-D (MS3D),
specifically offering greater detail for more
interactive short-, medium- and long-term
planning. Additional Namdeb mining projects
closer to Namibia's coast create more unique
challenges that include carefully planned
accretion mining processes.
Namdeb open pit projects rely on MineSight
3-D's Pit Expansion tool and MineSight
Economic Planner to interactively design
incremental financial pit shells and create viable
long-term production schedules to maximise
NPV. At a coastal accretion mining project,
Namdeb was able to use MineSight 3-Ds
modelling tools to create detailed dredging cut
development plans. MineSight has also been
used by Namdeb as an effective communication
tool for presenting 3D mining simulations to
non-technical personnel to ensure the
understanding and timing of mining processes.
New developments to MineSights
integrated tools are focused on a strategy for
more automated, detailed and accurate short-
term mine planning. MS3D, MineSight
Interactive Planner, combined with the
powerful and secure MineSight Planning
Database, perform initial feasibility studies,
laying the groundwork for MineSight Activity
Planner and MineSight Operations to finalise
detailed activity-based production schedules.
MineSights interactive modelling tools
helped us prepare the minimal impact mining
method required to fast-track environmental
agency approval and keep us on our
production schedule, said Kim Pitcher,
Namdeb Mine Planner.
MineSight Haulage offers increasingly
detailed and precise methods for calculating
truck/shovel requirements and optimal cycle
times for material
routing destinations.
By using numerical
methods such as
mixed integer linear
programming, newly
released MineSight
Schedule Optimizer
optimises short-term
plans by scheduling cuts according to targets and
constraints as well as calculating and reporting
comprehensive economics. At the core of
Mintecs short-term planning tools is the
MineSight Planning Database (MSPD), a well-
defined repository for data which allows for
queries, reports, and summaries; provides easy
importing and exporting of external data; and
ensures data integrity. Short-term data regarding
schedule periods and equipment has been added
recently to the MSPD, making it more versatile.
One of our focus areas in MineSights
development is to provide more interactive,
detailed, reliable and accurate short-term
planning tools, said John Davies, President of
Mintec. By expanding and optimising
MineSights short-term planning tools, profits
are maximised and project production timelines
stay on target, according to Pitcher.
Another unconventional application of
MineSight at a coastal Namdeb project was for
environmental rehabilitation requirements. In
our 90-by-0.5-km mining project area, our
problem was that environmental rehabilitation
guidelines required that any surface slope in
excess of 15 must be sloped to encourage plant
growth, said Pitcher. After contacting Mintec's
professional services team, they quickly provided
the solution: using MineSight's grid slope
function and the contour and extrude/drape
tools. Slope angles were calculated from
elevations in the primary gridded surface file.
These slope angles were loaded back to the
surface file and then the same was done for the
topography map file. This allowed Namdeb to
rapidly and accurately locate every instance
where rehabilitation was necessary.
Other MineSight tools that will soon be
introduced or have recently been upgraded
include MineSight Drillhole (MSDH), MineSight
Strategic Planner (MSSP) and MineSight Data
Analyst (MSDA). MSSP now offers increased
54 International Mining OCTOBER 2008
MINE PLANNING
The resource model, created by Geosoft, which
shows these high grade gold shoots
The modelling tools of
Mine Sight 3-D can create
detailed dredging cut
development plans
SOFTWARE:proof 2/10/08 10:15 Page 5
grade handling limits and enhanced reserve
calculation tools. MSDA has improved the
precision and diversity of its variogram tools
and offers a new box plot tool that is easier to
use and more stable. The goal of this new
drillhole management system is upgraded
functionality and performance, eliminating
software limitations and utilising a more
modern open database with SQL
query/reporting capabilities.
Mintecs focus has always been on our core
technology: geo-modelling, mine design,
planning and scheduling, and operational
support. With this strategy, we are strongly
positioned to assist our clients with the
increasingly technical and complex aspects of
their jobs, said Fred Banfield, Mintecs founder.
Datamine delivers
One of the significant factors contributing to
Datamine's success is its ability to implement
bespoke solutions, delivering business benefits
and measurable improvements in value to each
individual customer.
MINExpo 2008 saw the launch of
Datamines unique collaboration product,
MineTrust, and the fully-integrated version of
Sirovision. Also unveiled were product
upgrades to NPV Scheduler (V4), Geological
Data Management System (Fusion 2008) and
Datamine's flagship product, Studio 3.
Mining packages were previously single-user
workstation systems, enabling mining
professionals to model orebodies and design
mines effectively, but falling short when it
came to enabling multi-user collaboration.
Drawbacks generally revolved around the
confusion, duplication and corruption caused
by data sharing.
Datamines MineTrust platform provides data
governance for multiple users with a
proprietary Role Control access system. It
allows spatial searching, data sharing, check-
in/check-out of data
and it has a unique
publishing portal for
each group within the
enterprise. Exploration
can hand the resource
model to Geology and
Geology can hand the
mining model to Planning - all with the
complete confidence that there is only one
version. MineTrust is integrated into Datamine's
own products and has data source drivers
that make it compatible with all major products
on the market.
Sirovision was developed in Australia by the
CSIRO and uses the power of digital
photography and computational geometry to
determine geotechnical properties of
underground and open pit rock faces.
Sirovision builds a 3D model from multiple
images of the rock and then interprets the
jointing, plane
orientation and other
geotechnical features
directly from the
model, giving an
accurate and
unbiased view. The
system is now also
fully integrated into
Datamine's solution
footprint.
NPV Scheduler is
the definitive strategic
mine-planning
package for open-pit
mines with Version 4
including new
algorithms, improving
the likelihood of a
mine design based on
the highest net
present value, the
best blend of
products or the
maximum extension
of resource life. The
program creates
practical, mineable
pushbacks from
Lerchs Grossman
phases, and V4 now generates an optimal
extraction sequence of the entire model after
every step in the design process. New
animation functions show every block being
removed in its schedule sequence within each
phase, pushback or year.
NPV Scheduler also includes a new Material
Allocation Optimizer (MAO) module, which
determines the best mill process for each block
to maximise economic value, as well as the
new Geological Risk Assessment (GRA) module
that generates a range of risk-rated pits from
conditionally simulated models.
Datamines Studio 3 is regularly used for
resource/reserve management, within the
industry, and the latest version builds on
Studio's reputation. New grade estimation
functions use dynamic anisotropy to ensure the
best possible geostatistical interpretation of
biased orebodies, with dynamic model
evaluation methods allowing instant evaluation
of grade and tonnes of any mining shape.
Mesh data control includes a new DTM
wizard and an updated wireframing engine,
increasing the performance of Boolean and
plane operations. The virtual reality window
provides quick visualisation of rendered
geological models and the ability to spawn
multiple virtual objects from the same
underlying dataset. IM
MINE PLANNING
OCTOBER 2008 International Mining 55
Sirovision builds a 3D
model from multiple
images of the specific
rock, interpreting the
jointing, plane orientation
and other features
directly from the model
SOFTWARE:proof 2/10/08 10:15 Page 6