Spoil Placement Timing


This command brings all the spoil commands together as a final step and performs the timing and scheduling of the spoil placement. The first screen will allow you to choose two options for timing; either ‘Use Spoil Source Dates’ or ‘Use Fleet for Timing’ (shown below). These two options will produce very different results, and should be selected depending on the needs of spoil removal and placement.

The ‘Spoil Source Dates’ option will move the material to the spoil area as it is excavated from the pit based on the production schedule. This option requires a spoil file (.spo) generated from Surface Equipment Timing. A .spo file generated from Surface Mine Reserves does not include start and end dates for the pit excavation, and therefore there are no Spoil Source Dates to be used.

The ‘Use Fleet for Timing’ option can be used with a .spo file generated from either Surface Mine Reserves or Surface Equipment Timing. This option does not consider the production schedule of the mine, and will instead move the spoil material as quickly as the haulage fleet will allow.  As this option does not consider the production schedule, in general it will be sensible to only use a .spo file generated with Surface Mine Reserves with this option.

After selecting the timing option, you will be prompted for a Spoil Timing Project file (.spd). This file stores information concerning the spoil sources, spoil volumes, start and end dates of excavation, spoil/pit centroid locations, haul fleet production capacities, spoil attributes, etc.
 
After specifying the .spd file, you will be prompted to select the .spo file.

Once the .spo file has been selected, you will see a preview of the file which can be edited before it is used for the spoil timing. The preview of the spoil source is shown below.

The next dialog shown will be the Spoil Timing Project Manager. This shows a tree structure of the project, which includes the haul fleet (if used), the spoil sources, the spoil destinations, and the spoil attributes. Certain aspects of this dialog can be edited using the ‘Edit’ button when a field is highlighted. This dialog is shown below.

After clicking ‘OK’, you will see one of two dialogs, depending on which timing option you selected. The two options are detailed in the following two sections.

Use Spoil Source Dates for Timing

Note that this option will not require a haulage fleet to calculate spoil timing. The Spoil Timing Project Manager will therefore not include haul fleet information. This dialog is shown below:

This dialog consists of list of spoil sources by time period, a list of assigned and available spoil destinations, and a Gantt chart which shows the timing of the spoil placement.

The spoil source list shows the time period in which the spoil material will be available for placement. Note that there are no options to select or deselect the spoil sources to be used for spoil timing, as this information is read directly from the .spo file; all spoil from the mine pits must be used for timing calculation.
 
The assigned and available lists shows the spoil destinations that can be used for timing. Spoil destinations can be moved between the available and assigned lists by using the left/right arrows between the two lists. The up/down arrows between the lists controls the order in which the spoil areas will be filled. The arrow-and-road icon will automatically assign spoil destinations based on the shortest haul distance between the spoil source and the spoil destination. This command requires you to have selected the haul roads using the Haul Road Manager command.
 
The assigned list also shows the fill percentage of each spoil pile. Note that each spoil pile will be filled to capacity before spoil is placed in the next pile. Both the spoil source and spoil destination information can be directly edited by clicking the green pen icons above each list. The total amount of spoil to be moved is listed under the spoil source list. The total amount of spoil that has been assigned to a spoil destination is listed under the assigned list.

The bottom section of the dialog shows a Gantt chart of the spoil placement timing. The use of Gantt charts are discussed in the Surface Equipment Timing section of the help manual. Clicking ‘Calculate’ will determine the final timing of the spoil placement. As the dialogs shown after clicking ‘Calculate’ are the same for both the ‘Use Spoil Source Dates for Timing’ and the ‘Use Fleet for Timing’ options, discussion of the output is discussed in the Spoil Calculation Output section of this page. One item that is specific to Gantt charts in the Spoil Timing dialog is the Export to Haul Cycle option. This option exports a .sph file which can be used with the Haul Cycle Analysis command to calculate a more detailed report of the timing associated with spoil placement.

You may also save and load the spoil timing assignments in a Spoil Assigment file (.stm)

Use Fleet for Timing Option

Note that this option will require a haulage fleet for timing. With this option, you may create multiple haulage fleets, which can be assigned to various spoil sources and destinations for timing.
The Spoil Placement Timing dialog for this option will appear as shown below.
 
Unlike the dialog shown for the ‘Use Spoil Source Dates for Timing’ option, this dialog allows you to use only specified spoil sources for timing. Aside from this difference, the two dialogs are similar in functionality. Spoil sources and destinations can be moved between the assigned and available lists and reordered using the green arrows between the lists. This dialog also shows a new list of the haul fleets that can be used. Selecting a haul fleet will list the spoil sources and destinations that are assigned to that fleet. Another additional feature to this dialog is that you can specify a start date for the spoil timing.

Spoil Calculation Output

After clicking the ‘Calculate’ button, you will see the dialog shown below. This allows you to set the type and appearance of the text and timing report.
 
The Report Type will set the time periods for the timing report. The spreadsheet will be automatically updated based on the selected report type. The Layer, Label, and Color columns may be manually updated, but the Period, Start Date, and End Date columns are fixed. If the Spoil Source File report type is selected, the periods will be set by the .spo file created in Surface Equipment Timing. This option will also enable the Use Equipment Timing Grids option, which will merge the spoil timing output grids with a .gsq file created from the Surface Equipment Timing command (shown below).
 
If you use the Output Period Grids option, you will see the Define Surface Grids dialog after clicking OK (shown below). This dialog allows you to set the surfaces which define the existing ground and bench surfaces of the spoil piles.

If you use the Use Equipment Timing Grids option, you will be prompted to select a .gsq file to update. Note that you must have an existing .gsq file for this option. This command will merge the output surface grids with the .gsq file at the respective time periods, which can be saved as a new .gsq file. This will represent the full mining progression, showing the advance of the pits, and the following of the spoil and dumps.

Example

The below plan view map is hatched with the color period blocks to illustrate where each spoil is placed in each period.

Viewing the new .gsq file with the View 3D Surface History command will show the mining progression with the spoil fills.

Using the Report Formatter can export the report directly into Excel. An example Excel dump is shown here.
Keyboard Command: timespoil
Prerequisite: SPO file from Surface Mine Reserves or Surface Equipment Timing, spoil polylines with direction, and haulage fleet.
Pulldown Menu Location: Spoil in Surface Mine Module