At Heading to PERUMIN, Rolando Ardiles, manager of Osinergmin's Mining Supervision, stated that the number of supervisory activities programmed in beneficiation plants for this year decreased by 21% (69), compared to the number of similar actions that were carried out in 2017 (87).

As part of his presentation "Risk-based mining supervision", he highlighted that this year's supervisory activities in the specialty of transport, machinery and auxiliary services were also reduced by 25%, going from 111 cases (2017) to 83 cases in 2021.

In contrast, the number of supervisions in the fields of geotechnics, geomechanics and mining ventilation increased by 92%, 18% and 23%, respectively.

The State entity began its mining supervision activities in 2007 and with the passage of time its functions were better structured until only one supervision act was carried out for each specialty of geotechnics, geomechanics, ventilation, beneficiation plants, and transportation, machinery and facilities.

In each specialty, five risk management factors in mining companies are evaluated every six months: the number of fatalities, verified breaches, corrections, accident rate, evaluation by the supervising company, and major emergency event.

Osinergmin has also prioritized its supervision strategies based on the AHP quantitative methodology and the qualitative methodology of expert opinion, in order to determine the factors that cause risks in the mining components; assess and analyze the level of risks; prepare the risk ranking of the mining components; prevent the occurrence of failures in design, construction and operation; and encourage the mining units to have safety management standards and procedures for their components.

State-of-the-art monitoring

To reinforce supervision activities, penetrometers are available, whose function is to quickly and efficiently verify the degree of compaction in the tailings dam structure, up to a depth of 5 meters.

"The test consists of driving metal bars with a conical tip in the compacted tailings dam, at the same time that an electronic data device records all the information and immediately calculates the dynamic resistance of the cone", explained Rolando Ardiles.

These activities are complemented by the use of a mobile application that allows updating the location of mining components (pits, tailings deposits, waste rock deposits, processing plants, etc.) in real time.

As on land, the supervision of the mining facilities continues from the air with the implementation of drones and satellites to obtain topographic and visual information of the tailings and waste deposits, and leaching piles.

"The drone is linked to a high-tech RTK system, which allows obtaining videos in 4K resolution, and photogrammetric surveys with a resolution of up to 3cm/pixel and precision of up to 1.5 cm vertically and 1.0 cm horizontally," said Osinergmin’s Mining Supervision Manager.