March 4, 2019, London, UK – Knight Piésold UK has teamed up with Inmarsat, world leader in global mobile satellite communications, in delivering a remote tailings dam monitoring solution with complimentary audit consultancy services.

The team will combine Knight Piésold’s industry-leading tailings and water management expertise with Inmarsat’s satellite-enabled IoT (Internet of Things) solution. This offers a new approach to auditing and managing tailings dams, enabling smart decision making for improved, safe operations, while supporting regulatory compliance.

Monitoring tailings dams is typically carried out manually and at infrequent intervals, with mining operators and consultants, walking along the perimeter, visually inspecting the exterior and taking instrumentation readings. This process is inefficient, requiring time and resources, and does not deliver a continuous and accurate assessment of the integrity of these waste storage facilities.

Inmarsat’s solution involves working with instrumentation partners to connect to an array of sensors to collect data on dam performance. Data collected is displayed to a single dashboard that enables mining operators to gain a comprehensive view of dam status with granular metrics, such as pond elevation, piezometric pressures, inclinometer readings, and weather conditions, allowing data analysis in near real-time and reacting to events, issues, and alerts. Data is stored in the cloud and can be shared among accredited users anywhere in the world, enabling on-site audits to be supplemented with advice and recommendations from off-site engineers. Data can be shared among organizations as well, from operators to regulators, allowing more organizations to oversee dam effectiveness.

“The current tailings auditing and management business consists of semi-annual or annual site visits with recommendations based on these visits,” said Richard Elmer, Regional Manager of Knight Piésold UK. “Instrumentation data is often collected on-site and mining companies are largely reliant on human activity for the collection, storage and analysis of the data. Our collaboration with Inmarsat provides our clients access to the latest and best available technology for real-time data collection and analysis. We see this as a game changing improvement in how companies monitor their current tailings storage facilities and we are proud to be at the forefront of this latest industry innovation.”

The solution is a result of a two-year collaboration between companies to support smarter, safer, and regulated mining practices. “Following successful trials we are pleased to be able to bring what we believe to be a truly disruptive solution to market,” said Paul Gudonis, President of Inmarsat Enterprise. “We know that the industry is committed to zero-harm and by teaming with Knight Piésold to launch this tailings dam solution, this is another step towards achieving complete health, safety and operational success in the mining sector.”

Mining companies now have one partner to manage all of their remote tailings dam monitoring, with extensive expertise from independent, industry-leading auditors. The solution will be available to all of Knight Piésold UK’s clients immediately.

For more information, connect with Richard Elmer at london@knightpiesold.com.