A remote team is no obstacle to safety and efficiency.
In harsh environments, enable communication & collaboration.
The Minerals Council of Australia states that the mining industry depends on flexible and resilient workers, and is becoming increasingly data-driven and reliant on advanced technical skills such as in robotics and communications.
Your team is in the field, but not out of contact
Mining and oil & gas workers can be
very far into regional and remote Australia. This means frequently
out of mobile coverage, even setting up camps without a cellular tower nearby. Ikonix Technology can establish radio paging for
sites, as well as integrated duress or man-down alerts. Even where the field has mobile coverage,
this cannot be relied on in the event of emergency, making radio as a backup
the strongest option.
Supporting every site from a single portal
The mining and resources sector needs to communicate with urban and suburban operations controls, regional and remote camps and production, and even international locations. Taking a best-fit approach to the types of communication we deploy allows Ikonix Technology to create a bespoke solution to meet your unique needs and manage these without fixed location requirements.
Automate environmental alerts for a safe team
When producing or refining, the
workplace can be home to dangerous substances. Frequently this means you’ve set
up a suite of environmental sensors to alert to gas build up or other hazards
that can cause occupational illnesses. By automating these systems
communicating with the right response teams, your on-site people can focus on
getting to safety, and your specialists can get there sooner.
Keep everyone in the loop or access specialised assistance with Ikonix Connect
Fieldworkers with Ikonix Connect can quickly find the right specialist with role-based messaging. That could be health and safety, maintenance, or other advisors, to ensure the task is done right.
With quick response actions in Connect, publish information from head office or a work camp, and have the team respond or acknowledge the data. In WebConnect you can set up on-call rostering to manage coverage of specialists and Connect users can hand- or takeover shifts, and ensure uninterrupted production and team safety.
Overcome distance with radio paging
Mines and oilfields are in the most remote of locations. From offshore oilrigs to FIFO-only sites, short of erecting a complete mobile phone network for the entire exploration region, communication becomes difficult to do at scale. With a solution as robust and proven as radio paging, Ikonix Technology can help you deploy a paging network across your sites, and then connect this back to your base of operations, for seamless integration.
Integrate productivity and safety sensors with Ikonix Messenger
Extracting resources has become a technologically advanced endeavour. Organisations now use a wealth of internet connected devices. This includes optimisation and performance monitoring on equipment, processing and distribution, and the safety of your personnel. Having assembled a string of solutions in your value chain, Ikonix Messenger can connect these to your communications stack, and get that information delivered to your decision-makers.
BYOD or assign hardware to your personnel
By ensuring interoperability, Ikonix Technology supports either assigning assets, or allowing Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). This becomes especially useful when engaging networks of contractors for different roles. Exploration teams could communicate via Ikonix Connect as part of the broader team, receiving important alerts from base, even when not formally part of the organisation. Operational teams can effectively communicate with all personnel by the most appropriate mechanism, sending information to any output methods, be it Ikonix Connect, SMS text message, or even paging, and always ensure consistent communication.
Frequently Asked Questions
The IUMS can be adapted to any type of environment. As this is a bundle of communications technologies, selecting the appropriate inclusions depends on your unique needs. For example, Ikonix Connect, our smartphone app, will be able to communicate wherever it can access internet, either 3/4/5G cellular, or by Wi-Fi.
While this might be the solution for many field services, the nature of some work types mean that this is not sufficient. In such cases, using the example of the NT’s Police, Fire and Emergency services, we have deployed paging networks to continue unbroken critical communications. At a site level, both technologies could be the appropriate response, as we found with BHP’s Carapateena mine.
Production management and safety technologies are deployed throughout many resources sites. These can be simple IoT sensors detecting particulates or gas buildup, or something much more comprehensive. In most cases these will output a signal to those in the immediate area, or to a station on-site or back at base.
By integrating that output into Ikonix Messenger, we can broadcast that information to wherever the information is needed. That could mean SMS, an Ikonix Connect message, a radio pager message, or to all mediums at once, to ensure the message gets through. We work with customers to establish customised workflows, to appropriately direct your information, and can have notifications escalate if there’s no response, or be routed around offline, or unavailable or unresponsive personnel.
Mine sites are frequently in remote locations, but a significant part of the administrative or organisational resourcing is located in an urban area.
An operations centre in the middle of a city can monitor and communicate live with remote personnel through the integrated system between Ikonix WebConnect and Ikonix Connect. Like a hospital switchboard in a different part of the hospital, the desktop-based operational staff liaise directly with smartphone-carrying personnel, and dispatch assistance, or route information as they need. Your operations controllers need not be on-site, or even in the office, as Ikonix WebConnect works in a browser, utilising any internet-connected computer to perform their duties.
Mining and resources projects operate 24-7. This means a larger team to cover all hours, and many on-call personnel not actively on duty. This is further complicated with FIFO workers, meaning half the team is off-site, and not on duty.
Through Ikonix Connect you can roster personnel to be on-call, published to your intranet so your team knows who is available, and that status is easily visible in-app. As people depart or arrive for shifts, rosters can be taken over or handed over between them, ensuring coverage needs are met without gaps.
When rosters change over and whole teams fly out, they can go offline inside the app, and ensure they are not contacted during their downtime away from site.
Mine sites have a fluctuating workforce over time. From early exploration, major increases during construction, then declining through production and finally when the deposit is exhausted, your personnel will change significantly over time.
Ikonix Technology works with every client to develop an enterprise model that meets your needs. As Ikonix Connect is a smartphone app, new users are quickly onboarded downloading from their relevant app store, with customised training materials provided to ensure they’re quickly inducted into its use.