Canada’s Kinross Gold joined forces with acQuire, a geoscience data management software provider, to update the latter’s GIM Suite and add a new mobile data capture solution for blasthole sampling.
In detail, a team from Kinross Gold Round Mountain open-pit grade control operations in Nevada informed acQuire of the data challenges experienced in mining every day and how to gear the solution towards the industry’s needs.
Round Mountain is located in Nye County, had a gold-equivalent production of 361,664 ounces in 2019 and recently brought its Phase W project into production, which is expected to extend mining by five years and increase life-of-mine production by 1.5 million Au oz.
Among those challenges was the fact that the team still logged on paper so they wanted something that allowed them to speed up the time it takes data logged in the pit to become available to downstream grade control processes like modelling and ore blocking.
A digital solution to the logging issue, however, had to be done in a way it could function offline because connectivity in the pit is unreliable. Kinross also asked for the application to minimize inadvertent errors caused by transcribing handwritten data logs and to reduce the lag between users logging data in the pit and capturing the data in the GIM Suite.
In a press release, the companies said the collaboration resulted in a mobile app called Arena being enhanced for blasthole sampling for open-pit grade control, including all the above requirements.
“The project team, consisting of key stakeholders who are involved in the site’s data systems, not only provided input into requirements but also engaged in the beta testing phase of GIM Suite 4.2 and the Arena mobile app to ensure the solution worked for grade control requirements,” the media brief states.