Mining services company Rosond is in the process of acquiring a new fleet of exploration drill rigs that will increase the safety of operators, and lead to the recruitment of their first all-women drilling crew.
According to Rosond’s Operations Director Ricardo Cravo Ribeiro, the new drill rigs are fully remote controlled, with operators working while housed within an air-conditioned control room.
This approach provides a much higher level of safety because there’s a lot less manual intervention into the operation of the drill rig, says Cravo Ribeiro. As such, there is substantially less chance of operators being injured on the job. “Rosond already has an excellent safety record, and we’ve achieved zero harm on several sites over a number of years running. Nevertheless, this remains a critical issue for us and the mining industry generally, and so we are continually looking for ways to further improve on safety.”
“The new rigs are fully remote controlled, so a lot of the work that previously had to be done manually is now automated,” he says. “Usually this job takes substantial physical strength, due to the handling of rods and heavy equipment that must be loaded onto the machine. It’s intensive physical work. Up until now, this has made it difficult to employ women in this capacity. Now that we are in the process of implementing this technology, we will soon be looking to recruit our first all-female drilling crew.”
The new machines are primarily exploration drill rigs, used for core drilling, percussion drilling, and reverse circulation. They provide a more comfortable environment for operators, which should also enable better concentration and higher productivity, and make simulation training possible.
“We’ve committed to our clients at Anglo American that we’ll have an all female drilling crew by 2019, so we will start recruiting for this early next year,” says Cravo Ribeiro.
