Maptek geologist excited to share expertise in Australia
Wednesday, July 19th, 2017
Geologist Lance Steel has joined Maptek Adelaide, bringing a specialist knowledge of underground metalliferous mining and geotechnical applications to his 3D Laser Scanning Consultant role.
Lance started with Maptek South Africa in January 2014, working out of the Johannesburg office to provide technical solutions to mines across the continent.
He has experience with Vulcan, Eureka, I-Site, PerfectDig and Sentry and has assisted with geotechnical consulting for both open pit and underground operations along with stability monitoring implementation.
‘My aim in my new role is to get in front of our clients and ask them about what issues they’re facing on a day to day basis,’ Lance says.
‘If it’s an underground operation is it the geotechnical parameters? Are those parameters causing dilution or increasing dilution ratio which obviously is a costly thing over the long term.
‘My goal is to show them how they can optimise their designs and reduce costs.’
Lance says managing underground geotechnical parameters and drill and blast can help reduce haulage costs.
‘We’ve got some really cool features coming up in I-Site Studio 8 which could help with the drill and blast guys making sure that they can optimise their drill and blast,’ he says.
‘In conjunction with BlastLogic these features will improve the drill and blast crews’ blasting practices, making sure there’s no need for re-blasting of material and essentially optimising their operation to make it run smoothly.’
Lance’s new role is to generate business growth for Maptek products across the Australian continent with emphasis on I-Site and Sentry geotechnical stability solutions.
He says in open pit environments monitoring slope stability improves safety and can save costly shutdowns in operations.
The Rhodes University graduate (BSc Hons Geology) began a Masters of Science in Mining Engineering (Rock Engineering) through the University of Witwatersrand and is looking to pursue his studies in Australia in the near future.
After witnessing the growth of Maptek in Africa, he is excited to meet the challenges of the mining industry in Australia and help businesses take advantage of the next upswing in the market.
‘I think Australia’s got some of the leading technology in the world and Maptek is definitely at the forefront of that,’ he says.
‘For me it’s an absolute pleasure working with the team, with all the developers in Adelaide, and being able to interact with them directly and help to optimise our solutions, for example our technical reporting in Studio.
‘Most of our systems are looking at cost savings across the board, whether it’s Sentry predicting a failure which could halt operations, or whether it’s redirecting resources from one place to another to have to move material, at least operations can predict and plan for that a couple of days earlier.
‘The same goes for all of our other Maptek products, they allow people to get the job done a lot quicker and open up more time to focus on other aspects of mining.’
‘My aim in my new role is to get in front of our clients and ask them about what issues they’re facing on a day to day basis,’ Lance says.