MineSched is a block scheduler that could range from short term – LOM schedule.

A common practice for Tactical Mine Planners is to do the Life of Mine Plan and break it into short-medium term schedule. However, there are some instances when we have an existing production schedule and we would like to incorporate this to a Life of Mine study.

In this article, we would use as an example an existing Underground production schedule and incorporate it into a LOM schedule.

Since the production schedule already exists and we already know how much is to be mined every period, whether daily, weekly or monthly, then there’s probably multiple ways we could incorporate that into a LOM study.

Among the options are these two:

1. Setting up a stockpile per period in MineSched that is given balance and a resource that mines 100% of the material each period. The stockpile balance will represent the UG material mined each period. This could potentially generate too many locations depending on the period we use as relative to the LOM, but there’s no reason it should not work.
2. Create a vertical model with one block per level, the block mass would represent the UG production and with proper set-up in MineSched, you could restrict mining to one block per period only.

This blog will focus on the second option which is to use a vertical block model by following these steps:

STEP 1: Create a csv with with the field Y, X, Z, Material Class, Block Volume, Volume Factor, Adjusted Volume, Density, Block Mass, Adjusted Mass, and at least one grade attribute

In this exercise, I am creating a 10 x 10 x 2 block model with the following coordinates. However, the coordinates and block sizes do not really matter, it can be any vertical blocks because what we are after ultimately are the adjusted block volume and adjusted mass which represent the underground materials mined each period. We can achieve any volume and mass with the use of a volume adjustment factor.

First divide the adjusted Mass (the Mass of material we want to mine each period) by the density to get the adjusted volume, then divide the adjusted volume by the original block volume to get the volume adjustment factor that we will use in MineSched later on.

STEP 2: Import the csv model into any GMP block model. In this exercise we will use Surpac model (.mdl)

1. Create the model space

2. Create attributes in the new model then save model

STEP 3: Import the new model in MineSched

STEP 4: Extract Material Class. In this case it’s just ORE_HG

STEP 5: Extract Qualities

STEP 6: Check for model errors then validate.

STEP 7: Import the LOM Model, extract material classes and qualities, check for errors, then validate as you did for the UG production model.

Now, you have an existing production schedule incorporated into a LOM study. Next steps as you would normally set up in MineSched are to create locations, assign fleet resources and rates, create material movement rules, create plant targets if you are target-scheduling, then smoothen it up by adding target parameters. This is not covered in detail in this blog.

Remember to add a parameter rule that allows mining only one bench, in this case one block, per period for the UG production model because each block already represents the UG mining per period.

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