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Simulation enhances preparation of mining learners

SIMULATION ENVIRONMENT
Tony Pretorius (far right) instructs trainees at the Murray & Roberts Cementation Training Academy at Bentley Park
E-LEARNING
The Murray & Roberts Cementation Training Academy at Bentley Park has also enhanced its e-learning offering

Murray & Roberts Cementation risk manager Tony Pretorius tells Mining Weekly about the Murrary & Roberts Cementation Bentley Park Training Academy’s mining simulation mock-ups.

SIMULATION ENVIRONMENT Tony Pretorius (far right) instructs trainees at the Murray & Roberts Cementation Training Academy at Bentley Park

E-LEARNING The Murray & Roberts Cementation Training Academy at Bentley Park has also enhanced its e-learning offering

1st May 2015

By: Donna Slater

Features Deputy Editor and Chief Photographer

  

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Using simulation facilities, such as mining environment mock-ups, coupled with electronic-learning (e-learning) techniques, holds significant benefits when training mining personnel, says mining services company Murray & Roberts Cementation.

Murray & Roberts Cementation risk manager Tony Pretorius emphasises the Murray & Roberts Cementation Bentley Park Training Academy’s focus on people development, adding that each individual has unique needs.

“To demonstrate Murray & Roberts Cementation’s commitment to the development of people, the academy has invested more than R40-million in the upgrading of its mock-up infrastructure,” he says.

The academy currently has four mining shaft mock-ups, representing various stages of the shaft-sinking process, which use the techniques pioneered by Murray & Roberts Cementation’s sister company Cementation Canada. The mock-ups vary in size, with depths of up to 18 m and diameters of up to 8 m.

Pretorius tells Mining Weekly that pre-sinking training is conducted in the first mock-up, while the second shaft mock-up provides for concrete lining training, which includes related activities such as shaft signalling, movement of the sinking stage, shaft re-entry after a blast, breaking, lowering, alignment, elevation, securing and scribing of the curb ring as well as the actual simulation of a concrete pour and methods to make the workplace safe.

The extension of shaft services (pipes and ventilation) are demonstrated in the third shaft mock-up. The activities covered include preparation for slinging up and down the shaft, receiving the pipes on the stage and pipe extensions. This mock-up also demonstrates the drilling of the shaft round, shaft bottom examination and charging the shot holes with bulk explosives. Furthermore, the facility also allows for the treatment of water intersection during sinking operations.

In the fourth shaft mock-up, learners are taught how to load a blast round into a bucket or kibble, and how to place kibbles around the shaft floor to ensure it is evenly loaded.

Pretorius tells Mining Weekly that the activities in these four shaft mock-ups comprise 95% of the activities involved in the actual sinking of a mine shaft.

“This places the Murray & Roberts Cementation Bentley Park Training Academy in a unique position, as it ensures that learners are adequately prepared for their working careers and ready for the mining environment.”

The academy consists of several complexes, with other mock-ups and simulators, including a trackless mechanised mining complex, and a conventional mining complex, as well as a mining-services mock-up complex which demonstrates procedures such as drop raising, raise drilling, diamond drilling and grout plants.

Further, the academy also features an engineering workshop, which provides basic engineering skills such as cutting, welding, electrohydraulic machinery training and use of hand tools.

Development and Accreditation
Pretorius notes the growth of the training academy, which was formerly referred to as the Funda Centre – roughly translated as a centre of assistance – since its founding in 2002. Traditionally, the centre offered training in basic mining procedures, he says, adding that construction of the first conventional mock-up started as capital became available.


“The academy received its first accreditation with the Mining Qualifications Authority (MQA) in 2005, and we have managed to retain our status as an accredited provider for the MQA since then,” notes Pretorius, adding that MQA have acknowledged the Murray & Roberts Cementation Bentley Park Training Academy as a centre of excellence since the 2014 MQA compliance audit.


“The academy has grown significantly since 2005, when it could provide competency in the examination and safe declaration of a workplace, install and maintain support units and blasting assistant skills. Currently, we have several skills programmes that we are accredited to offer,” he says.


The engineering and conventional shaft mock-ups were built in 2005, and construction on the vertical shafts started in 2007. However, in 2013, significant capital was invested in upgrading the academy’s shaft-sinking method from the conventional sinking method to the new Murray & Roberts Cementation method.


“The Murray & Roberts Cementation method is derived from Canadian mining methods that produce higher efficiencies in shaft sinking, lead to safer outcomes and require significantly fewer personnel being exposed to shaft-sinking conditions,” says Pretorius.

International Best Practice
The Murray & Roberts Cementation Bentley Park Training Academy applies a unique method in terms of education, training and development in that it subscribes to international best practice models, such as nonprofit association for workplace learning and performance professionals the American Society for Training and Development.

“We have, as far as possible, structured our training approach to deal with three areas that support applied competency,” says Pretorius.

Applied competency further comprises foundational competence (theory), reflexive competence (understanding reactions to learning) and practical competence.

Through implementing these competencies, he says the academy begins its training at the foundational phase. “I went overseas to investigate some of the models and concepts used in mining in different countries and brought back the best practices for the design and development of e-learning interventions,” says Pretorius.

The academy refers to a pedagogic model for the delivery of the theoretical component in an e-learning platform, which includes pictures, animation, sound and diagrams coupled with literature, he explains. To clarify concepts, multimedia is used.

A coaching phase starts once the e-learning phase is complete, whereby an expert on the subject who is registered with the Mining Qualifications Authority for that scope of training, provides individualised coaching sessions for learners.

There are two different types of coaching techniques: developmental and corrective coaching. Corrective coaching is used to realign the learner with theory, which they might have misinterpreted, while developmental coaching is used when there is no grasp or understanding of the concept, necessitating a development process.

“Following a situational leadership model, the academy encourages learners to believe in what they were taught in theory because without such a belief system, they will put themselves, and their colleagues’ lives in danger,” concludes Pretorius.

Edited by Leandi Kolver
Creamer Media Deputy Editor

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