areas). This is also an issue that needs to
be addressed on a site-by-site basis, as
environmental and operating conditions
may differ significantly. Sites situated in
hot regions, for example, need to ensure
that the PDS is heat-resistant, particularly
if it is inside a closed vehicle where
temperatures may rise significantly higher
than those outside.
There is also a level of uncertainty
surrounding what, exactly, is required
in terms of legislation, with opinions
differing even among DMR inspectors as
to what sites are expected to do to assess
and minimise risk. Hopefully, this is an
issue that will be addressed before next
year’s deadline.
Safety by design
Working with large, heavy equipment is
inherently risky, and companies spend a
lot of time and money trying to manage
risk and recovering from unwanted
incidents. One of the primary ways to
ensure safe operations is to ensure that
equipment – and associated technologies,
such as PDS and CAS – is designed with
potential hazards in mind. To this end, the
Earth Moving Equipment Safety Round
Table (EMESRT) was established in 2006
Anton Lourens, managing director of
Booyco Electronics.
to work closely with mining industry
OEMs to continually improve the design of
equipment at the source, making machines
safer to operate and maintain.
There has also been considerable progress
in standardisation for PDSs since late
2013, when collision avoidance systems
diesel machines; and surface mining plants
like refineries and smelters. It is the latter
two that affect quarry operators and, for
now, the law stipulates that for surface
diesel machines, only a warning system
is required, while the requirements for
surface plants are not clearly defined.
For equipment that is identified as
having a significant risk, the minimum
requirements for open cast operations
are equipment-to-equipment PDS
technologies, while surface operations will
require reasonably practicable controls to
reduce the risk from significant.
Following the risk assessment process,
other forms of mitigation may be
implemented to lower any significant
risk before moving to PDS and CAS
technologies. For example, one of the
simplest – though not necessarily quickest
or easiest (or cheapest) – risk mitigation
strategies would be to separate people
from machines.
One of the primary considerations for
quarry operators looking at implementing
PDS systems at this stage is to ensure that
the technology does what it is supposed
to, minimises risk, rather than introduce
potential additional hazards (such as
multiple blaring alarms in relatively small
TECHNOLOGY
The deadline for the implementation of PDS at quarries and other open cast sites is drawing nearer.
16 _ QUARRY SA | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018