Benefits

The outcomes…

The company’s work has repeatedly demonstrated that the best outcomes for both dumping economics and the environmental legacy of a waste dump can be mutually inclusive. With good planning, which includes optimisation, design and scheduling, it is possible to develop a win-win solution. The best economic outcome can be achieved and the environmental impact of the waste dump can be minimised.

Compared to manual landform designs, waste rock dumps designed by DumpSolver have resulted in:

  • Lower cost
  • Reduced environmental impact
  • Improved safety
  • Improved sustainability

All these are real and measurable

Cost Benefits

Direct Cost Benefits

DumpSolver’s optimisation, design and scheduling work has shown measurable and sustainable reduction in the cost of constructing the waste landform. These include:

  • Reduction in dumping costs typically between 5c and 30c per cubic metre.
  • Savings when benchmarked against manual designs usually in tens of millions and occasionally hundreds of million of dollars
  • Lower truck hours and better fleet utilisation. This means that trucks can spend less time hauling waste and either more time hauling ore or even be stood down
  • Reduction in fuel consumption
  • A dumping strategy that will minimise costs, maximise NPV, minimise greenhouse gas emissions or even smooth the haul truck fleet requirement over the life of a mine

Indirect Cost Benefits

Along with the direct cost benefits there are also several more intangible benefits from the work. These include:

  • Better understanding of the economic cost of constraints to dumping.
  • Quantitative evaluation of benefits of alternative dumping strategies such as backfill versus external dumps to reduce disturbed area and reduce haul costs
  • Reduction in close-out costs – the dump plan allows management to evaluate risk and select lowest risk option
  • Better decision making through improved information on waste haulage
  • Provides and audit and review process to understand potential problems before they occur
  • Model final waste landform which identifies where various material types are to be placed and a review mechanism to ensure objectives are being met
  • Improved operational flexibility with multiple tip-heads

Environmental Benefits

A waste landform design is unsupportable unless it takes into account all the environmental requirements. DumpSolver’s waste landforms have been shown to be more environmentally friendly.

  • Lower fuel consumption will lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions (the predicted reduction can be quantified)
  • Final landform profiles that have:
    • Better aesthetics
    • Generally flatter, and therefore more stable outer slope
  • Incorporate all encapsulation requirements to protect the environment from acid rock drainage both in the short and long term
  • Preferential placement of specific materials (e.g. rock armouring and growth medium) on the external faces of the dump
  • The ability to engineer (i.e. contour) and cost a final landform to be more sympathetic to the existing topography features
  • Landforms that are easier to rehabilitate which generally feature wide berms that promote:
    • Better topsoil retention
    • Improved water management strategies
  • Control formation of final dump slopes and therefore become available to meet progressive rehabilitation requirements
  • Higher level of planning provides greater empathy with best-practice environmental outcomes

Safety Benefits

A waste landform plan can only be considered good if it can be achieved safely. DumpSolver’s waste landform layouts are safer because there generally have:

  • Lower tip heads which provide a more stable landform and reduced potential for slumping
  • Detailed stage designs with access ramps provide an opportunity to understand traffic movement and evaluate potential haulage issues before they occur in practice.

Sustainability Benefits

DumpSolver’s work can substantially assist in improving the sustainability of mining. Our planning has shown that:

  • Waste landforms, which are usually the most obvious visual legacy of a surface mining operation, can be made to be less intrusive and have greater stability
  • Resources (fuel and equipment) to construct the waste landform can be reduced
  • Reduction in deleterious water borne emissions from the mine through improved landform planning

Good planning and execution will build confidence amongst all stakeholders that all effort has been taken to ameliorate potential adverse impact on the environment.