Aggregates Manager Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/945822
AGGREGATES MANAGER / March 2018 3 March 2018 Vol. 23, No. 3 aggman.com /AggregatesManager /AggManEditor Editorial Editor-in-Chief: Therese Dunphy Editorial Director: Marcia Gruver Doyle Senior Editor: Kerry Clines Online Editor: Wayne Grayson editorial@aggman.com Design & Production Art Director: Sandy Turner, Jr. Production Designer: Timothy Smith Advertising Production Manager: Leah Boyd production@aggman.com Construction Media Vice President, Construction Media: Joe Donald sales@randallreillyconstruction.com 3200 Rice Mine Rd NE Tuscaloosa, AL 35406 800-633-5953 randallreilly.com Corporate Chairman Emeritus: Mike Reilly President and CEO: Brent Reilly Chief Operations Officer: Shane Elmore Chief Financial Officer: Kim Fieldbinder Senior Vice President, Sales: Scott Miller Senior Vice President, Editorial and Research: Linda Longton Senior Vice President, Acquisitions & Business Development: Robert Lake Vice President of Events: Stacy McCants Vice President, Audience Development: Prescott Shibles Vice President, Digital Services: Nick Reid Vice President, Marketing: Julie Arsenault For change of address and other subscription inquiries, please contact: aggregatesmanager@halldata.com. 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(See DMM 507.1.5.2); NON-POSTAL AND MILITARY FACILITIES: send address corrections to Aggregates Manager, 3200 Rice Mine Road N.E., Tuscaloosa, AL 35406. Peek into the Future of U.S. Mining by Therese Dunphy, Editor-in-Chief, tdunphy@randallreilly.com EDITORIAL A new report, 'BDO's Energy 2020 Vision: The Near Future of Mining,' from BDO USA LLP, an advisory, audit and assurance, and consulting compa- ny, makes some bold predictions about the future of the mining industry. While the report reads a bit like science fi ction, it highlights the rapidly changing nature of mining. Consider some of the report's predictions and what they might mean to your operation. 1. Mineral X. The report cites President Trump's Dec. 20, 2017, executive order (Presidential Executive Order on a Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals) as the impetus for signifi cant new minerals explora- tion. It predicts that "a currently unknown mineral will become an integral part of the U.S.'s energy mix by 2020." It suggests that mining executives should take a "drill it, and they will come" approach to mineral exploration. 2. Mining Does the Robot. The report predicts a 10-fold increase in the amount of revenue mining companies dedicate to IT between 2015 and 2020. This, it says, will allow many U.S. mining companies to "continue to expand efforts to integrate autonomous technology by 2020." What will this look like in mining operations? Autonomous drilling, blasting, and driving will be found in opera- tions of the near future, they say. The report points to data from the Interna- tional Institute for Sustainable Development that found driverless technology increases mining output by 15 to 20 percent while decreasing fuel and mainte- nance costs by 10 to 15 percent and 8 percent, respectively. 3. Continued Disruptions (Not the Good Kind). This prediction falls on the bad news side of the good news/bad news nature of the group's predictions. It says that, by 2020, more than 20 percent of mining companies in the U.S. will be the victims of a Distributed Denial of Service Attack, either directly or through an attack on the power grid. Essentially, the same technology that allows mines to gain productivity opens them up to cyberattacks. This means that development of cybersecurity must go hand-in-hand with technology implementation. While some of these ideas seem much farther than a couple years away, they are not as far-fetched as you may believe. Innovation often takes place in the larger mining sector, then trickles into the aggregates industry. A few years ago, I wrote a somewhat tongue-in-cheek story about mining on the moon. Since then, I've watched demonstrations of autonomous haul trucks, seen joystick-controlled wheel loaders and dozers, and covered the development of autonomous drills. Suddenly, everything seems possible. Just remember, technology implementation is not without its risks. If these inno- vations are in your near future, start scouting cybersecurity experts to hire along with your next set of mining engineers.