The challenge

The mine faced the reality every South African operation does: the Mine Health and Safety Act sets non-negotiable duties, and the consequences of missing them are measured in lives, not fines. Three pressures were live at once — keeping trackless machinery and people apart (8.10.1), being able to locate anyone underground in an emergency (16.7), and controlling dust, gas, diesel particulate, noise and heat exposures. The instinct was to buy three separate systems from three vendors, leaving the control room with three screens, three data silos and three sets of compliance paperwork that never lined up — and detection technology chosen from a brochure rather than proven for the mine's own dusty, curving, metal-lined workings.

The decisive question: for collision prevention, does the system intervene or just beep? Under 8.10.1 / EMESRT Level 9 the machine must detect, warn and automatically slow and brake — a warning-only box does not comply. The same scrutiny applies to detection proven in your conditions, not a clean-demo render.

Our approach

  • One platform, not three. Collision prevention, person location and occupational hygiene on the addaNet platform, sharing one underground/surface communications backbone and one control-room view.
  • Detection fit to the environment. A sensing blend (radar, UWB/RFID, fused as needed) chosen for the mine's dust, curves and reflective metal — and integrated to the EMESRT Level 9 detect–warn–intervene standard (see proximity detection technologies compared).
  • Intrinsically safe where it matters. Person-location tags certified for the underground atmosphere, with reader coverage matched to the risk of each area rather than over-engineered everywhere.
  • Exposures in real time. Continuous dust, gas, DPM, noise and heat with alarms before a limit is breached, instead of periodic spot samples that miss the peaks.
  • Fail-safe and load-shedding-ready. Edge buffering keeps the safety record continuous through outages, and safety functions default to safe on any fault, gas alarm or comms loss.