Keeping track of truckies’ alertness

BHP Billiton will use new fatigue-risk profiling technology on truck drivers at its Chile copper mine before introducing it in Western Australia, according to the technology’s developer.

BHP has been using Optalert’s fatigue-detection technology for several years at its Escondida site in Chile.

Developed in Australia, the device, worn as sunglasses with a sensor attached, measures driver alertness 500 times a second and looks for indications of the onset of drowsiness. It can alert a driver about 30 minutes before the real effects of fatigue.

Optalert chief executive John Prendergast said a new capability, known as OptAlert-FRP (fatigue risk profiler), would allow companies to watch online the current state of a driver’s alertness.

“This is something that BHP Escondida specifically asked us to develop,” Mr Prendergast said.

“So their control room in Escondida now is able to see in the blink of an eye their entire risk profile with regard to all their drivers on the road or on the mine site.”
He said earlier versions of the device allowed drivers to mostly manage their own fatigue levels during a journey.

OptAlert-FRP still feeds data to a driver inside the cab as well as to Optalert’s servers, which make it visible to customers online.

“A couple of our customers feed this data through their own telematics inside their trucks, so they have communications systems from a truck coming back into a control centre, but not everybody has that,” Mr Prendergast said.

He said BHP wanted a technology that told them how safe and how alert their drivers were.

BHP, the first user of the new capability, is expected to start using the profiler in Chile in the next few weeks.

“We will also offer this to all of our Australian customers by the end of August and it will become part of our core product offering,” Mr Prendergast said.

He said BHP would also look at introducing the fatigue-risk profile capability at its Mount Whaleback mine site at Newman in Western Australia.

Melbourne-based Optalert operates in Canada, Latin America, and South Africa.
Its mine-operating system costs $14,000 each. The road-transport market uses a different Optalert device for highway trucking companies, which cost $4000.

“In the long run, it helps a business to understand the risk profile across a working shift,” Mr Prendergast said.

“It identifies the best performing drivers; it helps to identify if their investment in shift rostering and education of drivers is money well spent.

“It also allows them to really understand that profile and adjust their rosters and how they work to ensure they are as efficient as they can be because most measures in this space are done on the machines not necessarily the people.”

He said BHP placed great value on being able to determine how alert their workforce was.

A BHP spokeswoman declined to comment on the OptAlert-FRP rollout.

“It is a matter of policy that we don’t discuss ongoing contractual relationships with other companies about products,” the spokeswoman said.