The Project
As one of Australia’s largest undeveloped copper deposits, the project will be a 4.25 Mtpa underground operation with an estimated mine life of 20 years. The turn off to the Carrapateena Site is 75 km north of Port Augusta along the Stuart Highway. The site is accessed via an unsealed Southern Access Road (SAR), approximately 90 km from the Stuart Highway. This SAR is critical to the operation of the mine and the currently the only route used for exporting the copper concentrate and importing bulky supplies to the site.
In addition to the SAR, the mine is supported by a number of bores surrounding the main operation. The SAR and Access tracks to these bores are vulnerable to heavy rain and subsequent flood damage. If large rain events occur then the mine operations are impacted shortly thereafter.
Technical Solutions
WGA were engaged initially to undertake safety and design assessments of the SAR and Bore Tracks. As a result of the assessment, a number of recommendations were made to Oz Minerals to improve the safety and resilience of the assessed areas. These recommendations included treatments such as geometric improvements, drainage improvements and removal of hazards.
Following this assessment, Oz Minerals engaged WGA to undertake design for 17 sites to improve the safety and resilience of both the SAR and primary bores to ensure uninterrupted operation of the mine.
Given the remoteness of the site and the distances required to address, WGA undertook the survey and Geotech investigation in house using the latest developments in drone aerial surveying RTK GPS technology and geotechnical assessment to provide a timely, cost effective and pragmatic design for OZ Minerals.
The engineers undertaking the design undertook this site data capture ensuring adequate coverage for the critical sites was captured. Conventional methods would be to undertake expensive and time consuming conventional survey for the entire SAR and tracks.
This innovative approach reduced the data collection period from weeks to two days!
Additionally the outputs from the drone capture in the form of normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) images also informed our flood inundation modelling by mapping vegetation over a massive area which provides the key inputs required. This enabled WGA to collaboratively determine with the client the risk profile for each site and quickly determine a number of differing cost effective solutions tailored to the location and risk profile. In the past a ‘cookie cutter’ approach would have been used as this level of confidence in the treatment required would be unable to determine unless extensive and expensive flood plain modelling was undertaken.
Client Focus
WGA’s core team working on this project all attended the mine site for several days to undertake the site investigation and data collection. This wasn’t just to undertake the site visit but also to engage with those responsible for the day to day operations of site and those tasked with cleaning up the mess after a flood as their input and feedback is instrumental in developing the right solution given the lack of data that was available. WGA was able to undertake the problem assessment, site assessment, development of concepts and then detailed designs for construction within 12 weeks from our initial engagement, providing significant time and cost savings to the client.
The Oz Minerals Carrapateena Site is included in the following sectors & services.
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