Fraser McQueen
Senior Mining Engineer, SRK Consulting
Fraser McQueen (BEng, CEng, MIMMM) is a Senior Consultant Mining Engineer with 7 years’ international experience whose work focuses on open pit mining engineering, strategic planning, optimisation, mine design, equipment selection, capital and operating cost estimates and operational improvement studies.
His operational experience includes open pit planning and production roles in Cu-Au mining, Copperbelt, Zambia. Other speciality areas include dilution estimation (block model regularisation and dilution skins), cut-off grade strategies, in-pit crushing, conveying and trolley assisted truck haulage. His specialist software proficiencies include Deswik, Vulcan, Whittle and NPV Scheduler.
Current focuses include development of life of mine plans and Mineral Reserve estimation, and has worked on projects in West Africa, Scandinavia, Kazakhstan, Russia and the USA.
Improving Operational Performance by Intelligent Data Use and Haul Road Explorer Software
Equipment operating data collected by on-board sensors can be used intelligently to identify production shortfalls, estimate potential gains and plan improvement strategies. Haul Road Explorer software makes this approach possible, and provides an intuitive and visual interface to support positive decision making. Examples of practical data uses include identification of slow truck haul speeds on roads, truck health events such as brake overheating, poor road surface conditions and payload monitoring. These parameters can be shown together on a map of the mine site to determine where issues exist, and determine the best approach to resolve them. Use of this data removes guesswork, develops real understanding and enables information driven decisions to improve operations.