The pace of change in the PDS (Proximity Detection System) business has been exponential over the past couple of years in terms of technology and customer expectations. This is the view of Anton Lourens, founder and MD of Booyco Electronics, a Jet Park-based company which is thought to be the PDS market leader in South Africa. “To stay ahead of the field, we invest a huge amount in research and development (R&D) and we have recently introduced the fourth generation of our flagship PDS, which sets new benchmarks in pedestrian safety and collision avoidance,” he says.
Booyco Electronics’ PDS system is assembled and tested locally at its head office in Jet Park.
Booyco has shown steady, and in some years spectacular, growth, ever since being founded in 2006, assisted by demand from a mining industry which is ever more aware of the need for safe operations. Around 55 000 workers and 6 500 vehicles have been equipped with its PDS and the system has notched up more than 200 million hours of use on machines and 2 billion man hours on pedestrians, a track record which the company believes is unmatched by its competitors.
“No one can equal our ‘footprint’ in the market,” says Lourens. “We now have more than 100 direct mining customers, as well as many mining contractors, in our client base, mostly in South Africa although we do have some mines across border using our PDS. What makes us unique is that we operate in both the underground – in either hard or soft rock – and open pit sectors. Our PDS is also intrinsically safe and can be used in the ‘fiery’ environments found in coal mining.”
He adds that over the past year Booyco has increased its complement of service technicians by 30 % and has added two branches to what was already an extensive network of service centres. “We now have eight centres countrywide serving all the main mining areas while the number of technicians supporting customers numbers around 160,” he says. “Mines make a significant investment when they install a PDS and they rightly expect a high level of backup – which is exactly what we provide. On some big mines which have service level agreements (SLAs) with us, we could have up to two full-time technicians providing support on every shift.”
He says that SLAs include monthly reports based on the data logging capabilities of the PDS. “All interactions are recorded and analysed and the information can be used to improve safety behaviour and monitor efficiencies,” he says.
Booyco’s fourth generation PDS was released in the first quarter of this year. One of the main changes is the adoption of the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus protocol in place of an older communication protocol, while technology has also been added that allows software for the PDS to be uploaded using a mobile device. “The idea is not to change hardware in the future,” says Lourens. “Instead, everything will be driven by software updates.”
Developed in collaboration with German company SELECTRONIC but assembled locally, Booyco’s PDS employs very low frequency (VLF) wave transmission. Pedestrians are equipped with two-way RFID tags – generally installed in their cap lamps – while vehicles are fitted with VLF antennae which create stable fields of a predetermined size and shape around the vehicle. The size of the field can be determined by customers to suit their specific operating environments and address identified risks. The system can detect as many as seven trackless mining machines (TMMs) and 20 pedestrians at once in the underground environment.
When a pedestrian enters the zone in which the field is established, the tag is activated and a warning signal – which consists of a light and sound alarm – is triggered and simultaneously the operator of the vehicle is also warned that a pedestrian has entered the danger zone. If equipped and configured appropriately, the vehicle can also be slowed down at a certain distance from the pedestrian, and similarly brought to a slow stop. The accuracy of the system ensures that there is sufficient reaction time after warnings are given for the operator to act, reducing the possibility of a collision.
According to Lourens, the use of VLF technology is what sets Booyco apart from most of its competitors. “When we started the business, the focus was on underground pedestrians,” he notes. “That’s when we identified VLF as the best route to follow. VLF signals can propagate through the rock mass underground, which allows a pedestrian, for example, to be warned of an approaching vehicle even if it is around a corner and out of sight.”
He adds that in 2015 Booyco added GPS technology to its PDS for vehicle detection on surface. “Since introducing our surface offering for vehicles, it has proved very popular and now accounts for a major part of our sales. Our underground and surface systems are compatible with each other and we have customers whose underground vehicles interface with their surface equipment. All units have the same controller, which we call a Booyco Host Unit or BHU.”
On the subject of legislation, Lourens points out that regulations gazetted in 2015 as amendments to South Africa’s Mine Health and Safety Act put the onus on employers to take “reasonably practical measures” to ensure that pedestrians are protected from injury.
“In essence, mine owners must undertake risk assessments and mitigate against significant risk – which in practical terms means that if there is an assessed risk they will have to install a PDS,” he explains. “The regulations further stipulate certain requirements regarding warning systems to pedestrians and TMM operators, including automatic means of retarding speed and braking on TMMs. The regulations already apply to all electrically driven machines while diesel-operated machines will need to be compliant by 2020.”
Lourens acknowledges that the legislation has been a driver of sales in recent years. “For many years now, the goal of zero harm to workers has been the highest priority for mines so we’ve never really had to work too hard to convince them of the benefits our systems provide. From the time we first started up, they’ve been receptive to the concept of a PDS. But there’s no doubt that the new regulations have provided a ‘tail wind’ for sales and allowed us to continue growing our business, even during periods when the mining industry in South Africa has been depressed,” he says.
One major trend in the PDS market that Lourens identifies is a move towards common standards. “When we first established Booyco, the industry was a free for all, with no standards in place to guide either developers such as ourselves, the manufacturers of TMMs, whose machines have to be able to respond to PDS interventions, or indeed the mining companies when putting out tenders or inquiries for proximity detection systems,” he states.
“This has now changed, due in major part to the efforts of the Earth Moving Equipment Safety Round Table (EMESRT), an industry forum first established in Australia in 2006 by a number of global mining houses, which has developed a set of specifications which details the key elements of vehicle interaction systems and the functionality which proximity detection systems need to have. There is still work to be done but we are finally seeing some order being brought to what was previously a chaotic field.”
Lourens says that Booyco has fully embraced the work of EMESRT, whose guidelines have been adopted as ‘best practice’ in South Africa by the Minerals Council South Africa.
Looking ahead, Lourens sees further strong growth for Booyco. “The legislative requirements should result in the South African PDS market remaining buoyant but beyond this there is huge scope for growth in the rest of Africa, where the take-up of proximity detection systems has been slow, mainly due to the lack of appropriate legislation, and also in overseas markets, which have also, for the most part, lagged South Africa. We are a world leader in the PDS field and believe we are well placed to take advantage of the opportunities opening up as PDS becomes the norm in all mines worldwide.
Photos courtesy of Booyco Electronics
