BDT Connectivity and Communication Panel Kick Off

Neha Singh: 0:03

Welcome to the beyond digital transformation podcast! A platform for results driven mining industry leaders, to share their stories of transformation in deploying people- focused technology practices that deliver meaningful, measurable impacts for their mining operations. This podcast features experiences and opinions from established mining industry leaders and influencers who have participated in the beyond digital transformation mining technology conference series since 2018. Learn from these and other industry leaders, on how to mitigate the obstacles of deploying mining systems that help you get on the path to a digitally enabled mining operation with a people- first philosophy. Welcome everybody to our connectivity and communication kickoff event here on LinkedIn live. We are joined today by Martin Provencher, Greg Sandblom and Charles Nyabeze and, basically Happy International Women's Day to all the women all over the world. and to the two most important, Women in my life, would be my grandmother and my mother, because I wouldn't be here. So thank you for making BDT happen. And, just a quick introduction to the beyond digital transformation conference, which started in 2018. BDT is a platform for results driven mining professionals who want to deploy systems that deliver measurable impacts to their mining operations. Each stream brings together three unique perspectives. Greg's here from Glencore Sudbury INO representing the mine operations perspective. And Greg, do you want to do a brief introduction to yourself and tell us what your unique perspective brings to the table today?

Greg Sandblom: 2:00

Sure. Thanks, Neha and thanks to you and your team for allowing me to be the co-chair or one of the co-chairs for, for BDT 2022 and, to be on this panel. So personally, I began, my career in Glencore, 25 years ago. So it's been a while now, I began as a software developer at our corporate office in Toronto, and moved back to Sudbury along the way, and, to my present position, which is superintendent of, innovation and technology. So in 2018, we began our journey, to build the mine of the future at our on upping depth project, in the west end of the Sudbury basin. the challenge with, mining at depth is that, it's, deep long way to that work face there's, there's challenges with, transportation, with ground control and so on. And, communication and connectivity is key to all of the technology we're putting in at depth, whether that be, deploying better electric vehicles, running those vehicles, remotely from surface and also, to be able to keep the miners away from the hazardous, locations at the face of the mine. It's a passion, within the innovation team to get that connectivity to the face, and connectivity outside of the mines and be able to work remotely rather than, working in isolation.

Neha Singh: 3:01

Awesome. thank you, Greg and welcome. Thanks for joining us today. So next we have, Charles Nyabeze. Charles, is representing the mining ecosystem. And if you are in mining and on LinkedIn, you must know Charles because he's always, in the know about all things of mining that are going on. So Charles, tell us about the unique perspective that you're bringing to the table today.

Charles Nyabeze: 3:26

Excellent. Thank you for that. Yeah, look you guys I'm right here in a Atikameksheng Anishnawbek territory and a Happy international woman's. month. And I just want to say that, today's actually, the day one openings are for, nominating top 100 women in mining. So if you know a woman in mining, that you can nominate come on LinkedIn to the link. You can actually nominate somebody. I used to have too many women to nominate. So I'll nominate a couple for sure. Again, my job is vice president of business development and commercialization with the center for excellence in mining innovation. And look, we're all about the ecosystem. Okay. We're all about the ecosystem for mine operators, SMEs, academic institutions, government institutional organizations, incubators, accelerators, colleges, universities, different mining industry associations. So we really want to be trying to build the capacity of that whole ecosystem to make sure that it's working together so that we can all reach that goal that we all want, which is to bring forward the mine of the future. So, especially as I'm bringing forward, really the voices of the ecosystem, from what they tell me what I hear, what I learn on my media searches when I leave from conferences. So I'm really excited to be on this call. Cause I think, the, whole idea of connectivity communications is really where the future is at. So I'll leave it at that for now. And we'll talk more as, as we open things up

Neha Singh: 4:35

Thank you Charles appreciate that introduction. And, next, we have Martin Provencher. So Martin is, representing some deep global expertise in connectivity and communication. And, Martin works with AVEVA and he's going to do a brief introduction of himself. So go ahead, Martin.

Martin Provencher: 5:01

Yeah. Thanks Neha. And thanks for having me here. My role, actually I'm global industry principles or for mining, I'm working with mining companies from all around the world. my background a little briefly, I've studied the it artificial intelligence, almost 30 years agonow. Of course, back then it was, early stages. I then worked in as an IT automation manager, worked as a production director also for the largest aluminum smelter in the Americas. So I've been in charge of operations and maintenance. back then, I've also worked with IBM. I went back to technology after that. I wanted to work with technology, to help organizations improve their efficiency. So I went to work with IBM as their mining and metals leader, in Quebec and worked with the engineering company after that. And, now, working with AVEVA as the global industry principal, for the mining industry, again, I'm also vice chair of the maintenance, engineering and reliability society of the Canadian Institute of mining. So I'm happy to be here. And what I'll try to bring is as much as possible: What is it that mining companies are doing with technology? from a remote perspective, remote operations perspective, but also from a general perspective, from a digital transformation perspective, what is it that companies that are succeeding? What is it that they're doing in a nice way. So happy to be here. Thanks again. Neha

Neha Singh: 6:22

Excellent. Thanks. Thanks, Martin. Appreciate that. So everyone here at the table is providing something unique to the table and, Martin talked about digital transformation and I have a bit of a video here today from AVEVA when we talk about digital transformation in mining and what that means to us. So I'm just gonna play a short video from AVEVA right now. And we go from there. Let's continue on with the Q and A, but before I get into the Q&A, some quick little announcements, we do have our BDT in-person kickoff event happening March 22nd. we only have about 50 odd tickets available to sell. And so we're trying to offer it to people who've supported BDT in the past, we currently support BDT. Of course, after our sponsor tickets are taken in and our speaker tickets are taken. And then, April 18 Millan Herce and Martin Provencher will be guests of, Greg Sandblom, who is going to be hosting a panel on how to access operations data in remote first mining. So that being said, I'm going to ask our first question to everybody. And the question is, From your perspective, what are the challenges and opportunities as they relate to connectivity in communication for remote first mine sites? So who wants to take that away?

Greg Sandblom: 10:31

I can start. From my perspective, the biggest challenge from what we're facing is that underground connectivity, the underground wireless, in sudbury operations that are on a big depth mine, we're moving towards partnering with, Ambra to deliver underground private LTE to overcome the challenges of getting, that wireless connectivity to the face of the mine and really, for remote operations to work, the information needs to travel from where the work is located, to the various levels of the mine. And, whether that's remote, whether that's, a CCR that's distributed, or whether that's, even a supervisor or a miner working at the face of the mine, everybody needs to be connected. So that underground wireless is essential to have to work. So that's for us, one of the bigger challenges that I think a lot of, underground mining companies are feeling right now.

Neha Singh: 11:15

Awesome. Thanks for that perspective from the operations, Greg. Martin, do you have any thoughts on that?

Martin Provencher: 11:20

Yeah, of course. as Greg was saying, of course, the network connectivity is a big thing now, although, we see more and more companies that are leveraging all those new technologies. wifi, satellite communication, cell network LTE, 4g 5g, mesh networking is also very popular. So from a networking perspective, I think. the technology is there. It's just a matter of having it installed now. And from an opportunity perspective, I think there's a lot of opportunities available. For example, Baffinland iron mines here in Canada, they've used the leverage to satellite communication to be able to connect with their whole trucks. Of course, it's an open pit mine. So they were able to connect with their whole trucks and get the data from their trucks to improve efficiency. A lot of companies like Boliden, for example, in Sweden that I worked with quite heavily, they've implemented a 5g network, for their autonomous operations or remote control features of their drill rigs. So this is a great improvement. Kirkland Lake Gold also in Canada, they've implemented a 5g network. So from a technology standpoint, I think the technology is there again from an opportunity perspective, I think there's a lot of opportunities. A remote operation centers is a big thing. ArcelorMittal, for example, they've implemented the remote operation center more than a thousand kilometers away from the mine sites. So of course, having people on site is a challenge, but having people in cities is more easy. So now they're operating the mine remotely and they're even monitoring the road condition. For example, they're getting the data out of their trucks at the mine site to bring that to their remote operation center. And they're analyzing that data. And of course, they're able to see that there's a road that needs that maintenance activities. So this is a great example from ArcelorMittal, so I think from an opportunity standpoint, there's a lot of opportunities that are available. Of course, it's just a matter of having the right technology implemented in place.

Neha Singh: 13:18

And the link that I put on the screen is that the case study from ArcelorMittal.

Martin Provencher: 13:22

Yep. That's it. Exactly.

Neha Singh: 13:23

Okay, perfect. So if you guys are interested, take a peek at that case study, that's loaded on the screen. Charles, tell me from an ecosystem perspective, what are your thoughts on the challenges and opportunities?

Charles Nyabeze: 13:37

So from my perspective, I think definitely is the SME perspective that I want to take and it's the ability of trust that the technologies that are being presented by the SMEs would actually do exactly what it promises to do. And then the other piece is trusting the information. This is a big opportunity. There's a challenge in making sure that the information is trusted as information has been produced. The other area too, that I think is a big challenge is that there already is, as most of are created by existing companies that have already have ingrained themselves into operation. And now when you're trying to bring in a new technology into an existing system where there's already so incumbent technologies in place, they can be a big challenge for the SMEs. Now looking at the challenges, I think the skills that are necessary for remote first, they're more accessible in terms of being able to find those expertise wherever they are. So for example, if the expertise is in Australia or an expertise in British Columbia and expertise in overlanding and the miners in Sudbury, you can tap into those other skills that you otherwise wouldn't be able to tap into. Some of the benefits I think will come up to those opportunities are things like, enhanced safety is definitely something that's coming more first and things like optimization of operations. and also, this kind of end to end connectivity, which is now becoming more of an opportunity for mining because of remote first, where you have more understanding of what's happening throughout the entire operation. So that's an opportunity that's coming with remote first.

Neha Singh: 15:00

Okay. Awesome. So Charles, just to qualify some acronyms, you use one of them, you said SME and for podcast listeners who may not necessarily be part of our, mining community or ecosystem, what do you mean by SMEs specifically?

Charles Nyabeze: 15:13

Excellent. Look, first of all, I'll start by saying an SME can be an OEM. So there's one more So an SME is a small to medium size enterprise and small is 0 to 99 employees. Medium is 99 to about 500. So Small to Medium is less than 500 employees, larger companies, obviously 500 plus can fall into the MNE as another term, which kind of multinational enterprises, but the OEM is really anybody who is an original equipment manufacturer. So you could be a two-person SME and still be called an OEM because you are an original equipment manufacturer, however, in industry, sometimes when people say OEM they think they're talking about the big companies. When really it just stands for original equipment manufacturer.

Neha Singh: 15:55

Okay. Excellent. thank you, Charles. We appreciate that. Now this one, this question is for anyone who wants to help answer the question and who feels inspired to answer the question. Remote first is about people first and that's really what remote first is about. So if you had a magic wand and you could change one thing in mining, when it comes to connectivity and communication, what is that one thing you would change that, that you think would make the biggest difference in the world? So if I don't see any volunteers, I'll pick one.

Charles Nyabeze: 16:34

Yeah. I'll volunteer. I think, the ability to be able to have almost like the cell phone experience on surface underground, wherever you are would be a big jump from for mining. And the reason for that is just because communicating with people at the face for example, is a big deal, right? So if we can have communication happen anywhere instantly, that will be, I think, ultimate for mining.

Greg Sandblom: 16:54

I'd like to expand on that a little bit. and I absolutely agree the challenges is user adoption always, right? And to bring those collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams or others, to every employee underground in the mine, where they can share video, share pictures, send quick instant messages to each other. It opens, it brings people to their device, people that didn't have that technology in the past, it brings them to that device as an essential part of their PPE. And then we can add on to it, right? We can deliver all kinds of information, deliver KPIs, deliver, statuses of shift to them. but ultimately we need to get them to the platform, the mobile platform and, these collaboration tools, are essential to that. And I think we've seen, many of you have probably seen the video at our kid operations in Timmins, how they've been so successful using Microsoft Teams. and I think that's essential for any underground mining operation to get the devices in the hands of everybody.

Neha Singh: 17:43

Awesome.

Martin Provencher: 17:43

if I may add yeah, maybe it's just one last comment on this. I would say providing the right data to the right people. of course, a reliability engineer has to have access to all its operational data. whether he sits at the mine site or remotely, he has to have access to that data, process engineers the same, environmental specialists, all those people, they need to have access to the right data and all that data. And that's one of the main challenges that I see.

Neha Singh: 18:10

Awesome. So my next question is basically, what is the most challenging aspect from a technology standpoint as it relates to remote operations?

Martin Provencher: 18:24

I can take that one. as I said earlier, now with the cell networks and all the network, capabilities that are there, LTE, wifi, mesh networking, things like that, network communication is no longer a big issue. And now with the cloud, it's even easier to get access to the data. So the thing that I see that is the most challenging is really to have access to all that data. So we need to bring all the operational data into one placeholder and when we're talking about operational data, I'm talking about, for example, pressure, amperage, speed and things like that. This is information, this is what's happening in real time on the assets. So all that data needs to be captured. This is one thing. It needs to be brought into one placeholder so that anybody can look at that data. But it also needs to be contextualized. For example, if I get a value of 120, what does it mean? Is it the pressure? Is it voltage Is it the speed? So we need to know what equipment it comes from, what it represents and things like that. So this is all the context that goes with the data, because if I'm working remotely, I need to get access to the data but also to the whole context of that data. Was the equipment up and running. when I got that data? So all of that is part of the context, and this is probably the most challenging aspect that a lot of organizations are not taking into consideration, quickly enough. So because of course you can have access to the data, but you have access to all the contexts, but again, once you have access to all that data and the context that goes with it, there's a lot of opportunities that it can represent in terms of, improvements. as I said earlier.

Neha Singh: 20:03

You make a really good point around data, Martin. I have a question. and maybe Greg or Charles might know something about it. Maybe you probably also do, but I'm more curious about interoperability of data. Back in the day, like I'm a programmer from the healthcare days and I did change management, that's based on a hundred percent agree with you, giving the right data in the right hands, leads to better, safer, more informed decisions. And that's really our definition of digital transformation at Pace. It's a very simple definition. My question, is, do any of you see any efforts in the mining industry around, data standardization, where there is a sense of efforts being put into the interoperability of data? So equipment, putting some standards around the data that equipment is putting out and then, standard nomenclatures and things like that. I don't know if any of you have any experience in, hearing about any data standardization activities or something like that when it comes to access..

Greg Sandblom: 21:02

there's specific applications for interoperability that, are required. So one of the key projects that Glencore has and, many underground mining companies have right now is collision avoidance systems and, interoperability of data between equipment, around, proximity detection and collision avoidance is a key factor, for maintenance, for vehicle, to sharing information around, proximity location and so on is key. How they would run and from a performance perspective, we're not seeing as much of an opportunity to, take advantage of interoperability, but some of these systems that are overlay over top that required all the vehicles to interact, for safety and protect. that is important. And, from the work we're doing, we see that's a that's happening within the industry, even though we're a bit away from having a collision avoidance system that, works in an underground mine as effectively as we need, all the, the OEMs, there's the OEM thing again, recognize the fact that, that connectivity has to happen.

Neha Singh: 21:49

So if you had that magic wand and, the connectivity was perfect and seamless, then you would have good collision avoidance systems underground and things like that.

Greg Sandblom: 21:58

I mean, it's an essential aspect of collision avoidance. There's a lot of complexity with that system, that needs to get resolved, but we're moving in the right direction at this point.

Neha Singh: 22:05

Okay. Awesome. Thanks Greg. Anybody else having something to add? Charles?

Charles Nyabeze: 22:09

Yeah, I can just say that. I think, the work that's been done by Heather, talk about the international women's month at women in mining, Heather Ednie from, GMG Guidelines. The GMG Group is working on things like, standards and guidelines for interoperability. And I think, those efforts are so important. And the reason I say they're so important is that, when an SME, when a company and innovator, I will say SME, when an innovator is creating an innovation, they need a place to go to, to understand what are the standards for that industry? What kind of guidance should I be following when I'm trying to develop something? So I think entities like that, are making a dent and I think as time moves forward, we're going to see that those standards and guidelines will become more common practice for different operations. It'll make things easier, but I wanna also go back to something One of the biggest technical challenges with connectivity and communications is the blind spots. I think being able to eliminate blind spots is so critical, especially in a world that's moving towards a fully autonomous mining, And one of the best examples to give is that, if you look at an open pit, for example, you're not in for the truck that is hauling Ore when it's an autonomous truck, that truck needs connectivity all along the path. But unfortunately, when you look at what's happening in the underground mining environment, nowadays, the connectivity is sometimes sparse so I think one of those challenges is eliminate those blind spots so they can truly have the connectivity that you need on a full-time basis.

Neha Singh: 23:21

And by blind spots, Charles, you mean the spots where there isn't connectivity?

Charles Nyabeze: 23:25

Exactly.

Neha Singh: 23:27

That's my blind spots of actual connectivity. That's a good point, cause sometimes you learn things the hard way as well. Cause one time in one of our implementations, we learned that those blind spots of disconnecting and connecting of them. Apple iPad at the time only had 60 connections that they could handle. So the iPads stopped working underground and it was because of those blind spots that you're talking about. So those are things to really keep in mind. Anybody else have anything around interoperability and they want to share right now?

Martin Provencher: 23:53

Yeah. I can. I'm happy to share. I'm working with a lot of, OEM vendors. I was actually in Sweden again, working with large OEM vendors there. And, of course, OEM vendors, they all realized that now they need to share the data they need. Actually, they need to share the data from their assets, but they also would like to have access to the data from mining customers. So we're engaging with lots of OEM vendors, again, OEM the OEM word here. but with manufacturing vendors, if I may say, that our manufacturing equipment parts and things like that. And basically the idea is to come up with kind of standard approaches. And for example, the best example I can provide is with Caterpillar, because this is public information I can share. Caterpillar has launched a product called the product link elite, where they can send trucks data into the operational data platform, like the PI system and the beauty of it is that they're now providing templates. So they're providing truck templates, standardized truck templates. So any company that has such types of truck, Cat or non-Cat trucks can get a template for their truck and it's a standard template. So this is something that is getting very popular and with all the OEM vendors, or when we think about crushers, when we think about conveyors, when we think about ball mills, those are all standard equipment and we are now getting to having templates standard templates for mining companies to work with those templates. So again, this is a step that, that OEM vendors are taking, not all of them at the same speed of course, but we are definitely working with all of them, trying to bring that up to speed. And again, like Charles was saying the GMG Group is doing a great job in making sure that the data becomes available to anybody. It's just now a matter of, as a mining company, do I accept sharing my data to my OEM vendor? This is another topic.

Neha Singh: 25:54

That's a really good point, Martin thank you for bringing that forth. Charles, I think I have a question for you cause I'm getting a little tired of these blind spots, there's a ton of these blind spots and things like that. So what's going on in the ecosystem out there, what's going on when we talk about, connectivity and communication solutions, is there anything out there that is promising on the verge of helping us eliminate these blind spots, So like you have little drones that just fly, that tag along to make sure that the conductivity is last. So what is going on there?

Charles Nyabeze: 26:21

Yeah, look, I think the most exciting thing I've heard. some may think this is a pie in the sky idea, but it's real. Being able to identify your location underground, exact location underground is very difficult because really technically is not nothing really out there like an underground GPS, but there's a company that is looking at, the gravity of the earth and rotation of the earth and using those two variables sort of pinpoint where you are underground without any external instrumentation. So I think things like that will make a huge difference because then one of our challenges is, okay, where exactly is that piece of equipment underground? And what speed is the trapping at what direction is it going? So technologies like that didn't come online. I think that'd be really important to be able to have that. and then the other piece that I'll say is it's an emerging thing, is that whole idea of edge computing, right? The idea of the machines to have the level of smarts that are necessary so that they can make decisions by themselves without relying on the external network is also really important. I think, look, we can learn lessons from what NASA is doing now. And I saw NASA sent a couple of drones out on Mars to do some exploration, some mineral exploration, by the way. And, while they're out there, there is a lot of edge computing in order to make decisions about whether they should go left or they should go, right? Whether it should be digging here or digging there. So I think those kinds of things are emerging in the industry. And I think they'll make a big difference once it's fully fleshed out and fully de-risked, because we must de-risk before we adopt to the mining.

Neha Singh: 27:39

For sure. So thanks for answering that question. Cause I know I put you on the spot there, Charles, but that's why I don't give you the questions ahead of time. Otherwise it's not fun to attend all these Q and A's. The other question I have, cause our focus is, remote first mining. So really taking people out of harm's way and it could be, on surface it could be a hundred feet away, it could be in a different city, what have you. But my question here is around, How do you mine remotely when you're at site? are companies doing that right now, anybody know of any of those examples of people mining remotely while they're at site

Greg Sandblom: 28:16

I can talk about that a little bit. And that's exactly what we're developing out. The Onaping Depth Mine is. Remote doesn't necessarily mean you're a thousand kilometers away from your mine site. I think the ability to deliver information to anybody on site, anybody off site, we have the advantage of, being in the Sudbury Basin. There's a great ecosystem of, support here, whether it's OEMs and, specific technical companies. And, it's a wonderful opportunity for us to live within this ecosystem. But, being able to mine remotely means that we can take advantage of the cloud technology. We can take advantage of worldwide technology. Some of the things that, Martin and Charles are talking about, they become accessible to you no matter where you are. So for us, mining remotely at site means that we're removing people from the face. You just talked about that Neha. Especially at depth, it becomes increasingly difficult to mine safely at the face. And we're, working with, partners around, load wire fire technology, to be able to do it robotically, to keep people a minimum of four meters away from the face. That's a key tenant of our innovation program is to keep people back four meters from, the face of the mine unsupported ground. Connectivity and communication is essential for all of these projects, and without it, we just can't do it. And, by implementing LTE, underground, the private LTE system, the latency becomes less of a factor. You've talked about the dead zones or the dark spots, the hand over of devices and equipment for going from one place to the otherand the mine becomes much more manageable. And we need to get to the point where, the network is like any other service. We don't mine without electricity. We don't mine without ventilation. And we don't mine without connectivity to the surface, which allows everybody, whether you're underground at the face, whether you're a supervisor on their beat, whether you're a management on surface, or whether you're working in a remote, location, centralized CCR, to be able to get that information, real-time information back to anybody. And Martin says it's gotta be the right information. It can't be just blowing people away with all the information that's available. It's gotta be specific KPIs, specific, statuses, for those individuals to be able to make their decisions and, edge computing, it is a wonderful example of that. Is that, how much of the data can we keep at the work location, to deliver that information to the worker, to make decisions for autonomous vehicles? To me, that's a wonderful challenge with, the availability of the data is how do we use it? How do we deliver it, in real time to the people who need to make the correct decisions, at the appropriate level. So I think, it's for us mining remotely, it means that it'd be able to bring the information to the right people

Neha Singh: 30:28

That's awesome. And, what I like about what you just said, Greg, is just a point that you hit on, which is, when you think about utilities, that's, water or electricity, but connectivity is a utility of the future that we might not be able to live without. So whoever's coming to bear that seamless connectivity to underground mining operations is really going to be that next mining utility provider,

Greg Sandblom: 30:52

Martin gave the example, I believe who very successfully implemented traditional wifi with access points. But, it's a bear to maintain and, what we find with LTE is, it rolls out so very similar to leaky feeder, but you've got the, ability to have your high bandwith, wifi connections, wireless connections, underground. So that's where it can become a service like electricity like your leaky feeder was in the past for radio communication

Neha Singh: 31:14

Excellent. Thank you, Greg. When we talk about data, I'm a database administrator by trade. So I used to be a program or a database administrator, and I'm extremely skeptical when, people say, We're going to go AI and there's machine learning and there's this and that. Cause we can't even get like basic data right We can't even get data quality up and running. So Charles, do you know about anything about, when AI and machine learning fits into the journey, does anybody else know anything about, when we talk about mining and I'm not talking about processing operations, cause I know that processing has a certain level of data accuracy that we find, but when we talk about mining, underground mining operations, where's AI and machine learning, fitting into the journey?

Charles Nyabeze: 31:54

My comment on that would be like, look, mining is a complex system, And not only is there a complex system, but this is a system with so many other subsystems and, a long time ago I had a one mining see or say that, running a mining operation is like playing multi-level chess, where there's so much happening all over the place. and that it's very difficult for any one person. You know, a long time ago the shift boss could maybe have all the answers because there wasn't the complexity that was there, but nowadays, it's so complex and so many moving parts, so many moving pieces of equipment. So many fans turn on and off, so many inventories in motion. There's so much information, right? So I think, the advent of AI and machine learning is going to allow us to be able to zoom faster to the decision point, right? Because of all this variables that are coming together. So I think the need for AI and machine learning is actually going to accelerate the speed at which you make the decisions that we should without wasting our time looking at all the Non essential information because as it is right now, you know what, it's very difficult for the human brain to distinguish which information is relevant, not relevant when you're getting all the same information coming at in real time. So I think that's where it's coming from. And also the other piece too, is that, I think what's happening with mining is that, we actually missing out on getting the insights that are necessary to truly optimize operations, simply because we haven't been looking at the data and we haven't been crunching it properly. And I think some of the things that AVEVA is doing as Martin and I were talking, a little bit earlier last week, just talking about how, the fact that the information is brought and it needs to be activated It can't just sit there and collect dust the data can not collect dust, but it needs to be activated so that the insights can be drawn out of it. So that's one thing that I'm observing, from some of the ecosystem approach.

Neha Singh: 33:28

So Martin, do you have any thoughts on that particular topic when it comes to AI and machine learning?

Martin Provencher: 33:34

Yeah, of course. we have lots of customers that are leveraging, that from an analytics perspective, again, it's a journey, the analytics, journey, Gartner describes it as a continuous, intelligence, improvement perspective. Really, you have to think about it that first, you have to leverage the knowledge, the expertise that your people have and implement condition-based monitoring process, monitoring maintenance, condition-based maintenance, condition-based environmental monitoring, all the things that people already know, we should leverage that. This is the first step. Next step is really to start thinking about using those advanced analytical tools to be able to predict so predictive analytics, for example, to predict failures, to predict potential, process deviations and things like that. If we take the failure example, well, it's great to predict a failure. Now how much time do I still have left available? So this is where machine learning will come into play. So it will be able to identify based on previous historical situations, how much time does the system thinks that we still have before the failure happens. And then of course the AI platform will be able to help us provide recommendations. So based on historical situation, with such a failure coming in the next three weeks, for example, this is what the AI system would recommend. For example, reduce the truck speed so that you are able to extend the life of the truck, bearing or whatever, that's going to fail. There's a lot of potential use cases when we think about leveraging AI, machine learning, predictive analytics and all of these. But what I do recommend companies is look at the Gartner recommendations and think about leveraging it, step-by-step. It's important to make sure that we are taking everything that people have in terms of expertise. like I said earlier, reliability engineers. There's a lot of information they already know. When I visit companies typically reliability engineers, they work with huge Excel spreadsheets and they've identified lots of those conditions. Now, the idea is bring those conditions into that real-time operational data platform so that it can be monitored automatically in real time. So this is the first step. And then of course, after that, there are lots of opportunities that are still remaining predictive AI and machine learning. Yeah.

Neha Singh: 35:52

Yeah. I can see that, but Greg, I want to touch base with you cause when it comes to change management, I'm always preaching to the choir when we talk about it. And I always say if you want to, really get good at change management, you should just avoid trying to implement technologies that require a human behavior change. So the reason I'm such a skeptic on the AI and machine learning, when it comes to the mining operating environment is there's so many technologies that still require human behavior change, and I totally agree with Martin in terms of machine learning, and, when we talk about wear and tear on equipment and things like that makes a lot of sense. Cause if you can get sensors, reading that, of course, you could have predictive maintenance and things like that, that really changed the face of the mining operation. But what are your thoughts?

Greg Sandblom: 36:35

I think I can give a specific example of a beyond the fixed plant and, there's opportunities in the hoist and instill the fixed plant within the mines where AI becomes fairly obvious applications, just like it doesn't in our fixed plants. As many know, on being DAF will be a fully electric mine, right? There'll be no diesel equipment, below our wind shaft, which means we are, we're running the entire mine, with battery electric vehicles, for our major hauling trucks or our scoops and so on. and we need to learn how to run these properly, right? We're going to be working closely with our OEMs and with other partners to understand how the battery performance, is, and, we need to learn as we go to understand, driving behaviors, charging behaviors, how often we need to charge, what kind of, situations they're getting into as far as the moving uphill, downhill across ramps, the type of loads that they can carry to be able to be most effective. And it goes beyond being productive. It's also a massive safety, aspect of it, To be able to predict failures of batteries and so on. So for us, an immediate need for, AI underground is to be able to start analyzing the batteries and understand, the right way to run better electric vehicles underground. And that's just going to be built up along the Back to the connectivity, aspect is we've never had that, real-time stream of data coming off equipment before. and we know that we need this real time stream of battery data, to understand that goes, some of it goes directly back to the CCR for analysis of safety and other it's more of a classic AI approach, where we're delivering data to the analytics companies to really try to put a spin on how we can run the most effectively to be most effective in our production lines.

Neha Singh: 38:02

Yeah, I think that's a great point. So there's a really interesting video here, that, and it's directly related to what Greg was talking about and it's about the Onaping Depth Project and the work that they're doing there. And I think for our listeners on the podcast and for our viewers, I think, understanding, this particular case study it's a five minute case study is really useful to understanding connectivity and communication in a mining operation and, and the challenges associated with that. So I'm just going to play that in a second. Right now.

AVEVA Video: 38:38

Onaping Depth, it's the pioneer project to take the Glencore mining camp to a depth that we've never gone before, down to 2,400 to 2,600 meters underground. We're taking innovation with us. We're embracing it like we've never done before. I've known about the Onaping Depth body for, many. it's always been a bit of a challenge for us to make the economic case for that or body. We couldn't get it off the ground because the technology wasn't at the forefront to get it off the ground. Building a new underground mine is a significant undertaking. It takes generally eight to 10 years, the significant outlay of money to build a mine. That's a lot of excavation of rock just to get to where the ore is. We're starting with an existing mine, Craig mine, and then we're traveling another kilometer underground. And then we're starting another mine. The entire mine we're building from underneath an existing mine. And where we stand today is we're getting ready to go to depth. It will be hotter. It will be more, seismically active. There'll be a number of challenges logistically and practically operating these new mines. And so what we've undertaken to do is simply design out those constraints versus. Our key clarifying criteria for innovation program is mine designed for depth. Words: designed for depth, came from adapting to depth. Can't be,"I'll just adapt","learn","I'll gradually". You don't have time. Designed for depth actually means we're anticipating issues. We're dealing with the issues where we're resolving the issues before they've come up. Very early on, that project team recognized that they had to commit to battery electric technology that didn't quite exist for the industry at the time team. My team and I were 100% convinced that battery electric vehicles were going to be able to replace diesels. With the commitment to battery electric vehicles, it creates a significant reduction in the amount of air that we require underground.. We could make our ventilation plant smaller, a refrigeration plant smaller, so much smaller openings, much smaller fans, which saves us a ton of capital dollars and will greatly reduce our operating costs when the line is running. Yeah. At the same time, creating a healthier work environment for our workers. It really has been one of the key factors in driving that project forward. The face is the active part of the mine. It's the farthest part of the tunnel where we're creating new tunnels and going farther, going deeper. The face is definitely one of the more dangerous places in the mine. With our safety development program we're moving people at least five meters from the face. If we're operating these machines, we don't worry about protecting a person because no person's there, If we can keep people away from the face of the mine we keep them safe.

Greg Sandblom: 41:30

Although the digital backbone to deliver wireless communication to the face it's unachievable, you cannot move people from the face of the mine to surface, to run teller remote equipment, or to monitor autonomous equipment without that backbone. Autonomous vehicles tell a remote location, tracking, getting telemetry information off your vehicles and heavy equipment. None of that can happen unless you have wifi throughout your mine. It now opens the door to analysis, real-time data analytics that we've never been able to achieve before. The ability to exploit the connected mine technology by providing wireless coverage to the entire mine, allows us to have digital devices in every employee's hands. This will allow that connectivity to collaborate throughout the shift, to share information and feel connected to what's happening and feel the pulse of the mine.

AVEVA Video: 42:25

We're learning every day. Every time we make a connection, every time we do a test, we learned a bit more Change is always a big factor in implementing technology. So one of the huge benefit of testing, some of the technology is to basically go through the problem, find a learning, what do we need to be successful at implementing that technology and all that learning can be applied for the success of Onaping Depth project.

Greg Sandblom: 42:50

Then ultimately. Mining the way of the future.

AVEVA Video: 42:54

Onaping Depth will certainly be a great leap towards that ultimate vision. We certainly have a grand aspiration of what that might a future will look like. In fact, we're building elements of that mine of the future today. I think like most things in life, those that are hard and challenging are the ones that are most memorable. I think that's what brings a lot of satisfaction to everyone that had a hand to play. We've always had to be a bit scrappy. it becomes part of the DNA and the culture of who we are though. Many of the individuals that end up on projects want to take on tough challenges. They want to be trail breakers. They want to be pioneers and going to the exciting new places. There's a special group of people that are making that commitment to get us to the next level.

Neha Singh: 43:46

Excellent. So we do have an audience question here, so I'll just promote the audience question. And the question is: have mining companies begun, or considered adopting cloud platforms, cloud computing for storage to help with data storage, AI, data sciences, et cetera. What are your thoughts on this? So who wants to take that away? Martin?

Martin Provencher: 44:12

I can take it with a good example here. North Skydrol actually in Brazil. they've presented it lately. They're leveraging the cloud quite extensively. They have, three mine sites in the north of Brazil. They have their center or headquarters in the south of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro. And they're actually leveraging top technology to make sure that they're collecting real-time operational data from the mine sites, through the cloud, bringing it in to their headquarters so that their engineers can analyze that. Of course, they're using Azure analytics, from, advanced analytics perspective to analyze all that data and bring some feedback to their operations people. So this is a very good example of leveraging cloud technologies. The other example I can think of is, the example I talked about earlier is with Caterpillar, for example, leveraging trucks, data, to be able to connect that, to collect that data. And of course provide predictive maintenance services or prescriptive maintenance services to their customers. So there's a couple of companies that have started leveraging the cloud. Of course, cloud can be a great way to share data with vendors with OEM vendors, but also for companies to leverage their people's expertise like the north Skydrol example I gave earlier.

Neha Singh: 45:31

Yeah, I'm going to just interrupt, the flow, because I forgot to mention that the video that we just watched was produced by February. I know in 2020 and 2021. So some of the team members as the world goes, have changed roles and moved around just like Greg's moved into a more advanced role and, Glencore of course appreciates all of their involvement, but, that's just something I wanted to put out there sorry, I didn't say that when we started the video, everybody, so that's fine to make that note. Greg, tell us a little bit, cause this makes me a little scared about cybersecurity, paranoid, but I don't know why would I put my data on the cloud just to open it up for someone to hack it? I don't know.

Greg Sandblom: 46:12

Absolutely. So I think one of the key things that all companies who started taking data outside of their firewalls is to ensure that, cybersecurity is a key aspect. And whether it's, putting your OT firewalls in place, education of our users, all those kinds of things are essential aspects. I think it's, the responsibility of the it folk, in the room to convince management teams that we need resources for IT security, that we need bodies to be able to maintain processes and so on. And from a cloud perspective, having management systems around cloud adoption and ensuring that, the partners you have, in the cloud, have the same security standards or even higher security standards that you employ in your organization. Just because you're pushing data outside of your firewall, you can't assume that they have the same standards of, data security of backup disaster, recovery plans, all those things that become a high profile within your company, you have to have processes to evaluate your cloud partners. And, we have a pretty strict, process in Glencore around that it can be frustrating to our users because it takes time to go through it when they want to. It should be so easy to start using a cloud service provider. and two months later we're still working on getting approval to use them. That's just part of it. but the advantages of using cloud services are so overwhelming around the, the question from George around the compute power and the using the being able to, take on the expertise of a world wide resources is clearly, is worth it. I don't think we want to take for granted that, just because you're sending the data out that it's being, secured properly and that's just part of a good cybersecurity, process that needs to be in place.

Neha Singh: 47:39

That's awesome. I think we're at the close Just wanted to see if anybody had any closing thoughts, any closing comments as we're partying. So I'll start with you Charles. Go for it.

Charles Nyabeze: 47:54

Thank you. Yeah, I guess my closing thoughts are really to link back to a presentation I was a part of a couple of weeks ago, and it was a little panel talking about powering mining with advanced computing and, the advanced computing resources are present at most mine sites, and the only way to really access advanced computer resources is to ask into the cloud. So I think, if a mining company wants to get the best out of their data and most of the data they're going to have to establish a pathway for that data, the right data, not all of it, the right data to make it to this advanced computer resources, which can be analyzed. So places like salsa and Compute Canada, places that, resources that are available for things like that. Thank you for allowing me to be on the panel and I'm leaving at that.

Neha Singh: 48:35

That's awesome. Thank you, Charles. Who wants to go next? Martin or Greg?

Greg Sandblom: 48:41

I can go next. First of all, thanks again, Neha for allowing me to be on the panel. I think, the takeaway for me is that, over the last two years, I think it's been very difficult to expand our ecosystems. I think the ecosystems we had heading into the pandemic were maintained as much as we could, but more difficult to maintain them. But they certainly haven't expanded. And just in the conversations, I've learned so much about what Martin is doing, what Charles is doing today. And I think it's just, hopefully the start of, collaborating again and learning what other mining companies and what other, subject matter experts that are doing in the industry to help us all move together, going forward. So I think, I'm hoping this is just the start and I look forward to, to getting together, for future virtual events and hopefully more in-person events, school.

Neha Singh: 49:21

Excellent Martin.

Martin Provencher: 49:22

Yep. I would end with, the statement bring the right data to the right people. I think that's, what's really important to make sure that people have access to the data, but not only the data, but all the contexts that goes with their data. This is what will help people take the best decision. I worked with companies that were collecting only data without context, and they were taking bad decisions because of that. The whole context that goes with the data is very important. So that's really the main takeaway that I would like everybody to remember is make sure you are leveraging that data, but also the whole context going with the data.

Neha Singh: 49:59

Awesome. That sounds great. And if, hopefully you're listening to this, on the podcast as well. So if you're listening to it to listen to the podcast, thank you for joining our podcast. Just a quick call to action, to join our podcast at listen, dot BDT dot network. And, we just wanted to do a shout out to all of the upcoming sponsors and chairs. So I put a little call out on the chat to say, Hey, that we have a talk coming up April 13th, where Greg's hosting the talk and really we are missing, someone that, that claims to provide seamless connectivity in an underground networking environment. So if you claim that we will put you on a panel discussion with Mila and hers who is going to be representing the operational challenges perspective. And, of course, here Martin will be here. They're talking about his expertise in, creating and integrating the connectivity and data to get the right data in the right hands to make the right decisions. That's really what digital transformation is about. So just a quick acknowledgement, to our sponsors, our patron sponsors, Redpath and Pace.Global and our other stream chairs that are going to be, announced on March 22nd, you'll see them, actually talk about the various streams. So we have Heather Ednie from the Global Mining Guidelines Group, who is co-chairing the power and possibilities, stream of course, there's it's about power. So we have to have some women there not just on women's day, but in general. And, BBA is a sponsoring our development and design stream. So thank you BBA for being gold sponsors in that particular stream. And the Centre for Smart Mining is, working on organizing our methods and machinery stream, which is quite appropriate. So Steven's participating in that. And Anthony Downs from Vale and yellow Milner representing CIM are hosting the people and partnership stream. So we're looking for a sponsor for the people in partnership stream. So if you have a unique people in partnership solutions, we would love to have you as a sponsor on there and last but not the least, Samantha escalate is co-chairing the collaboration and community stream. So we're looking forward to hearing from you and, yeah, definitely put in more questions and reach out. So thank you everybody. Have a great day. Bye bye.