Our speaker was Club member Chris Bijsterveld, Business Manager for North America, Ground Probe, on the products and customers of Ground Probe. Chis began with a summary of Ground Probe history and products. The original and primary product was conceived 14 years ago in a Pub in Australia – a radar system to scan the wall of an open pit mine to determine if the walls have moved. This primary product uses a 6 ft. dish mounted in a truck to provide the mobility necessary to meet the needs of a mine as is expands/evolves. Today GP is in 28 countries and the original product has evolved to track wall movements including vibrations which may indicate that a mine wall is about to collapse. The GP office for the US was established 10 years ago. In the beginning GP was unique; however, over time competitors found opportunities.
Today GP provides both the radar movement detection product and a monitoring service to evaluate real-time data. For some customers this evaluation is to augment/confirm the evaluations made by the customer mining engineer. Other customers contract with GP to provide continuous monitoring and evaluations. The primary purpose of the evaluation is to ensure the safety of the open pit mine with respect to both employees and equipment in the pit by reliably predicting significant movements or collapses. Chris recited a specific experience where a mining engineer observed areas of movement in an area where they did not expect movement. GP confirmed the engineers evaluation and made a prediction when collapse would occur – evacuation was successfully accomplished and the wall did collapse within a few minutes of the predicted time. The largest collapse experienced in an open pit mine occurred in Utah – GP predicted collapse and news reporters were on site when it collapsed – however, the collapse was more extensive than predicted and some equipment was destroyed. In a closed mine in Africa the GP equipment indicated an issue, the workers in the pit did not pay attention to the data, the mine collapsed and at government direction GP now monitors data for mines in that country.
GP now has a laser based product for underground mines. For underground mines approximately 25% of the cost is in supporting the mine shafts. In the past, shafts would have been encased whenever the possibility of movement/collapse was present. Although the primary value of the GP product is in safety for the employees, the GP product has the resolution necessary to identify the area of the mine shaft which is moving such that simple reinforcements can be made to the shaft. This capability can make a big impact on the operating cost of underground mines.
Thank you to Chris for an informative presentation.
There being no winner in the weekly raffle, the meeting was gaveled to a close at 8:00 am.