Setup Development: Tracking
You use the Tracking tab to track the progress of mining in your development headings.
The progress of mining is tracked by surveying the face position at regular intervals of time. You record the face position surveyed and the survey date in the Tracking tab. Recording known face positions on known dates allows you to use the as-mined data when you generate the schedule, resulting in a more accurate schedule, based on the last known face positions.
Tracking is not always required during scheduling. For example, at the pre-feasibility or feasibility stages there is no as-mined data. You turn off tracking for a scenario by clearing the Enable Tracking check box, located above the Tracking data grid.
When you want to use tracking in a scenario, you make tracking available by selecting the Enable Tracking check box, located above the Tracking data grid.
When tracking is enabled, you must select a date in the Current date field. This does not have to be today's date, but it is usually a date after any dates on which you have tracked development face positions in the Tracking data grid. The current date is used as the cutoff between the as-mined development and the planned development for scheduling and reporting.
You can record tracking dates and face positions using the 3D Canvas and Tracking data grid, or you can record tracking data using the spreadsheet view.
Note: If you want to schedule from a known face position on a heading that is preceded by other headings, you must add at least one record of a face position and date on each preceding heading. The tracking data for the preceding headings must show that sufficient mining has occurred on these headings for mining to be possible on the following headings prior to the current date. For example, if heading A precedes heading B, which precedes heading C, and you want to add tracking data to heading C, you must also add tracking data to headings A and B.
There are a number of benefits to scheduling using tracked as-mined data:
- it generates the most accurate schedule because you are using all of your known data to produce your plan
- it is easy to update the schedule based on the latest survey information
- there is no requirement to edit the original design, which is important for data integrity
- there is no requirement to change the start scheduling date or period lengths
- the report templates remain correctly linked to reports
- the colour legends for periods in the graphical results remain consistent
- you can display actual mining graphically, coloured by period
- you can report on actual mining, allowing for reconciliation against the original plan
When you use as-mined and development data in the schedule, from the start of the design up to the Current date MineSched displays and reports what has been mined. From the Current date, to the end of the design, MineSched creates and displays the schedule plan. The mined data and the schedule plan are displayed and reported in the Create Schedule Dashboard and in Publish Reports.
Note: In the Create Schedule Dashboard, the known mined values are reported with a resource called "ACTUALS_RESOURCE" so that you can differentiate the as mined results from the planned schedule results.