TECHNOLOGY
PDS – WHAT DO
YOU HAVE TO DO?
By Eamonn Ryan
If surface mines do not have
a risk assessment and a
traffic management plan,
they could be served with
section 54 notices.
L
egislation promulgated by the
Department of Mineral Resources
(DMR) requires all mines to take steps
before 2020 to physically prevent contact
between mobile machines and humans or
to install proximity detection systems (PDS)
on trackless mobile machinery (TMM)
for effective collision management. These
measures need to be in place by no later than
December 2020, failing which severe action
will be brought against responsible parties
and mine owners.
The process at Aspasa, explains the
organisation’s director Nico Pienaar,
commenced two years go (approximately
December 2017), at a time when few people
had any understanding of what PDS meant.
Prior to that, government wrote legislation
requiring the implementation of PDS, “but
there was nothing to implement, as the
technology did not exist,” says Pienaar.
There are a number of parties involved
in the process, including PDS suppliers and
the OEMs that prefer to have the system
integrated into their vehicle at manufacture,
rather than the post-manufacture addition
of a third-party system. End-users are also
involved. This process is continuing, with the
many OEMs and third-party suppliers all at
different stages of completion, with certain
OEMs attempting to accelerate the process
by providing machines to PDS suppliers.
There is an increase in the number of lab
scale tests conducted by the University
of Pretoria (UP). Pienaar notes that the
UP tests have acted as a game changer
in the PDS industry with a well-defined
evaluation process. “So far, all the PDS
22_QUARRY SA| MARCH/APRIL 2019
suppliers that have been evaluated have not
met expectations and are modifying their
solutions with the objective of retesting.”
“We have frequent meetings with OEMs
such as Bell, Komatsu, and others who must
build it into their machines. The system is
an extension of systems that many newer
cars have, which warns you if you’re about
to reverse into anything. The PDS stops the
vehicle and to achieve this, requires an off-
site base to monitor proximity and to cut
the motor.”
Anyone buying a vehicle by now for use
on a mine should have the black box PDS
in place, says Pienaar. However, in terms
of what a quarry owner can and should be
doing ahead of the development of PDS,
and the more important step, says Pienaar,
lies in operational changes taking place
on surface mines in the form of traffic
management plans.
Traffic management plans
“Proper risk assessments — and I emphasise
‘proper’ — need to be done first in order to
know how to comply and it is precisely for
this reason that Aspasa is holding workshops
and developing documentation that will
guide our surface mines in future.” Pienaar
explains that in order to comply, mines’
management teams need to understand
how to do effective risk assessments. These
should be dynamic plans that require review
at regular intervals to identify additional
risks as the mine progresses. From these risk
assessments, traffic management plans are
devised and staff training held.
Quarries also need to understand PDS
control systems’ effectiveness and how to
implement traffic management plans that
remove people from harm’s way. They
must understand that by the time TMM
or alternatives become mandatory where
risk exists, the technology will still not be
foolproof and mine owners will still need to
look at other ways to reduce the risk.
With fatalities on mines increasing —
though not on quarries — there is no way
the industry can ignore the requirement
www.quarryonline.co.za