Modern Quarrying Q3 2025

Automation for efficiency The Covid-19 pandemic

demanded the fast-tracking of online communication and other platforms, but the unit now focuses on data engineering to harness digital technology for more efficient and streamlined data collection, storage, analysis and visualisation. “This allows our engineers and scientists to deliver greater value to their projects and clients, giving them specialised tools to process big data, for instance, and to facili tate deeper and different insights,” she explained. “Being focused on this fast-moving world of technology, we are also able to keep our colleagues abreast of what developments are interesting and available.” Among the custom-developed applications developed by the team is a field logger for rock mass char acterisation – for quickly capturing data on core samples, according to William Joughin, SRK Consulting (SA) corporate consultant and one of the country’s leading rock engi neering specialists. “This replaces a manual logging procedure which traditionally used a pen-and-paper method to log values; this data would need to be manually transferred to spreadsheets before calculations could be conducted,” said Joughin. “The process allowed errors to creep in at different stages – whereas our application places parameters on the input and reduces the room for error.” More accuracy The system not only avoids these errors and saves time, but provides instant calculations which can alert the user to any anomaly that might require immediate checking. Traditionally, the manual checking of data for errors is time-consum ing and difficult, but is essential in achieving accurate results. “Through applications like these, we can make our work more efficient while ensuring that data is more reliable and accurate,” he said. The team was also involved in the development of KinApp, an applica tion that performs kinematic analy sis of a range of slope orientations and angles in a dataset – all within

DIGITALISATION

With the insights of consulting engineering disciplines being steadily enhanced by the use of powerful digital technologies, SRK Consulting (South Africa) underpins its professional work with an in-house Data Services function. HARNESSING THE POWER OF DIGITAL TOOLS FOR ENGINEERING INNOVATION

There is great satisfaction in knowing that, whenever I need support, the Powerbit team is just a phone call away. They always go the extra mile to make sure I have no downtime and can always rely on the quality of their products.

T his is delivering valuable results for SRK’s consulting teams, leading to the development of specialised digital solutions to streamline workflows and push boundaries of innovation, according to Ansu Louw, Principal GIS Consultant and Data Services

Lead at SRK Consulting (South Africa). “We initially put together a small data services unit in 2020, as part of our interest in digital transfor mation,” said Louw. “This has since grown to a staff of eight, including data engineers, software develop ers and data scientists”.

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MODERN QUARRYING QUARTER 3 | 2025