One of the notable aspects of Equinox’s $846.6-million project is that none of this equipment was onsite by September 2006, at which time the company began training 32 of the 250 mostly inexperienced operators required to run the equipment. Most of this equipment has not been used or seen in Zambia prior to the Lumwana project commencing.

By the time all of the equipment arrives on site, Lumwana Copper mine (LMC) will be pressing hard to achieve its mine commissioning target later this year. Thereafter, it plans to ramp up Lumwana’s mining rate to approximately 130 million mt/y (ore and waste) to provide the volume of ore required to sustain production for the 20 million mt/y processing plant.

With mining ramp-up and longer lead times for new equipment deliveries remaining as an issue for many operators in the mining industry, the company adopted a completely new approach to training its workers by introducing machinery simulation. It is using a fleet of training simulators to familiarize trainees with the equipment that they will operate, and to begin the process of establishing the “best trained mining workforce in Africa” – a goal embraced by the project management team.

The company has committed to providing world’s best practice in training techniques, trainers and systems in order to develop a safe, efficient and skillful workforce, said Lumwana Mine Operations Manager Paul Willems. “The level of realism provided by Immersive Technologies AE Simulators means operators can be exposed to, and trained to be familiar with, a full range of operating scenarios—including emergency situations, our actual mine layout, equipment control stations and operating procedures, spread over typical shift periods, long before they get behind the wheel of a multimillion-dollar haul truck.”

At the forefront of this challenge are four Immersive Technologies AE Simulators, configured to give trainees not only virtually real experience of operating the Hitachi EH4500 haul trucks and EX5500 excavators, but also exposure to the developing mine environment and conditions via photoreal virtual technology developed by Immersive in conjunction with LMC.

The total mine workforce of 1,500 people, comprising both unskilled and skilled labor, will be recruited from the surrounding region. The requirement to employ and integrate skilled equipment operators for the $160-million mining fleet will be assessed as the mine develops and will be based on the success of the training team at LMC.

Lumwana Mining Manager Jon Yelland said the AE simulators are an integral part of the training program designed to develop the inexperienced and unskilled workforce. “Our new personnel have had secondary school education and are Dover (psychometric) tested, however they haven’t had exposure or experience with the operation and danger posed by operating mobile equipment. They currently walk or ride a bicycle, so our situation is quite unique compared with training programs elsewhere.

“By far the best aspect of the simulator is that you can put operators through emergency scenarios —a bit like teaching someone first aid—and they can be shown and tested on how to react to an emergency situation by shutting down the truck or driving in wet and dusty conditions. This experience is invaluable,” Willems said.

The Lumwana copper deposit was discovered in 1961 by Roan Select Trust. Its long path to development has been determined largely by poor international copper economics and by a lack of local infrastructure. However, spurred by high copper prices and strong government support, this major project is now set to become within the next 18 months Africa’s largest surface copper mine.

Australian and Canadian stock exchange- listed Equinox Minerals plans to produce an average of 169,000 mt/y of copper metal during the first six years of mining operations and more than 120,000 mt/y for the 37 year mine-life from this operation. Given the relatively low grade of the main Lumwana orebodies and the volatility of the cost of labor, consumables such as fuel, explosives, and equipment and tires, LMC has put heavy emphasis on achieving international benchmark standards and operating performance levels and costs almost from day one.

Yelland sees the simulator-based training as a key to the operation’s success in this area.“We can get the simulators faster than we can the equipment, and that will enable high-level training to start much sooner than it otherwise could. It’s crucial. With the investment in the trucks and other equipment, we’ve really got to have good operators and the shortage of tires worldwide will put additional pressure on operators to perform at a high level to minimize damage. We can’t afford with 27 trucks and six tires on each truck not to be getting greater than 5,000 hours on those tires straight up.

“So we must have, one, the roads prepared properly, and two, operators must be aware of the importance of operating the vehicles in the correct manner from the start.That is one of the things we’ve worked on with Immersive so that there is a focus on that in the training room. We want to get new personnel thinking about the way in which, and the standards to which, Equinox wants to operate,” Yelland said.

The monitoring and reporting capabilities of the simulators also gives LMC tools to pursue continuous improvement of operating and safety standards.

A former mine manager at the Geita gold mine in Tanzania, Yelland said experience with an earlier Immersive Technologies Advanced Equipment Simulator gave him an early glimpse at the potential of the technology. “The simulator gave us a good tool to test people and quite objectively show them variations in their performance over time. You could sit down with them and analyze it in detail and it was a great tool for that.

“The value for us initially is in training the operators,” Yelland said. “The simulator technology was agreed by all of us to be the way to go. It gives us a head start. How we actually refine that and move forward is the focus of detailed planning by the head trainer on site. In terms of continuous improvement, I think the simulators will give us a huge opportunity to keep our operators at the forefront of operations competence and technology.”.