ConsMin Woodie Woodie Mine Pilbara, WA, Australia

The Woodie Woodie mine was operating on a dated analog radio set-up with lots of coverage black spots. The mine had twice started investments in radio upgrades to fix coverage issues, but the roll-outs were not successful. In one case, the gear was simply not up to the environment.

Besides issues with coverage and ruggedness, there were also concerns over the fact that there was no single channel across the entire site. This meant issues with getting authorization to enter an area, and potentially serious delays in the event of emergencies because the response team was on a separate channel.

The new Tait DMR Tier 3 system provides full coverage across the mine and allows supervisors to monitor their areas from anywhere on site. The new radio system is set up to closely resemble the way the analog system was organized, so user training was minimized.

The migration to Tait DMR has enabled the mine to review and often simplify its emergency planning and safety procedures, because many of them were based on the limitations of the old system, which needed quite complicated workarounds.

The integrated lightning alerts and GeoFencing safety features are two of eight feature enhancements the mine has planned as a result of the new system's capabilities. Tait EnableFleet has enabled Woodie Woodie to roll out any updates to the radio network much faster and more efficiently.

Because of past failures, this time it had to be right – the project had no other option but success. Full communications across the entire site, safety, ruggedness, reliability, ease of transition and the system’s ability to support future safety and efficiency initiatives were all elements in the decision for a Tait DMR solution.