Prairie Mines Accountability and Emergency Roll

Prairie Mines needed a system that could account for all visitors and staff at any given time, particularly in an emergency situation.

Existing Accountability and Emergency Roll Call Solution

Paper sign in sheets were kept each day but were admittedly inaccurate.  The system was error prone mostly due to the nature of a manually-updated system.  Staff and vendors were required to sign their name along with writing the time when they entered and then they had to remember to sign out when they left for the day.  Achieving conformance was the most difficult challenge with the system.  In addition, you must have physical access to the paper sheets to do roll call.  When you have people moving from area to area in a mine, that posed a major challenge to properly account for staff in a certain area or zone.  The current system offered no other benefits other than a laborious method to audit a specific scenario.

Drawback to the Current System

First, it was very labor intensive and error-prone.  Calculation errors would cause problems that would require special attention.  Payroll would be delayed because of the administration time to process all the punch cards. In addition, management had no idea as to each person’s accumulated regular and overtime until the end of the pay period after payroll was fully processed.

Proposed Solution

Implement the Observint Technologies Infinias eIDC controllers with existing card readers and matching “out” card readers along with Savance’s EIOBoard Kiosk and Offline Emergency Roll Call solution.  In one location, the Sheerness mine, three Infinias controllers were used to handle three areas of access.  This location also had one 15” Kiosk interactive touch screen to dual purpose as a vendor/guest check-in station and a staff check in and check out point.  On this station staff could leave more details when they left, such as where they were going (lunch for example) and how long they were going to be gone (30 minutes).  One Offline Emergency Roll Call Tablet was also implemented at this location, which continuously syncs with the system ready to do roll call even if connectivity to the system is down.

A similar configuration was set up at the Paintearth mine.  Here, they only had one primary access point so only one Infinias eIDC controller was needed.  Two 15” touch screens were implemented with USB card readers to again facilitate vendors and guests, as well as for staff.  This site also implemented the Offline Tablet for emergency roll call.

The End Result

The most obvious result is a semi-automated accountability system with an up-to-date staff and vendor list available from anywhere on the network or from a tablet device even when the network is unavailable.  When you have an environment like a mine where safety is of high concern since lives are on the line, it’s hard to put a value on safeguards to ensure each person’s safety.  In addition to added accountability to enhance safety, the system also adds many more benefits for the mines.  They now have an electronic log of every visitor who enters and exits the building going back as far as they implemented the system.  In addition, they can leverage the system to drive payroll for hourly employees.  They can also use the system during reviews to uphold expected attendance standards for exempt and nonexempt employees.  In addition, staff can utilize the system to communicate more effectively.  They can start up a chat about a project, find out who is covering a shift, review who is on vacation, and much more.