Published in the March 2008 Coal USA Magazine

Hill noted that the system's design started about six months before the enactment of the Act in 2006. The bill played a role, however, in some of the Minetracer's design decisions through the development stages.

To be the most effective solution for the mining application, Hill said designers purposely built the system to be comprehensive from a federal compliance perspective.

"The MINER Act provides some pretty generic requirements, such as 'the plan shall provide for above-ground personnel to determine the current, or immediately pre-accident, location of all underground personnel…any system so utilized shall be functional, reliable, and calculated to remain serviceable in a post-accident setting', [and] there are two ambiguities in this provision.

"First, what is not specified is the resolution of the location; [about] 10ft is significantly different than [about] 5000 feet. Secondly, how long a system [is] to remain serviceable is also not defined."

He said the requirements vary by the perception of the reader in many cases. "We have heard requirements for hours to days … those details are going to left to the rule-making bodies. In the meantime, we are having to make design decisions based on what we believe the rule makers will dictate."

The Act has impacted the system's design in other ways, some of which won't be known for a while.

"We are designing the system on the assumption that it is preferable to see more than less. We want to establish what can be achieved with commercial systems today," Hill said, noting that should federal regulators decide in final rulings that miner passage check points are required every 5000ft, Minetracer may be at a slight disadvantage over other suppliers offering lesser performance in the sector.

Another area of consideration was the battery for the system which is regulated in the bill in terms of operational ability post-incident but not in terms of power capabilities. The latter must be taken into consideration in the design of the appropriate battery.

“We have tooled housings to accommodate 48 hours of continuous operation,” Hill said. “Should the rule makers change the requirements to 96 hours, we will need to design a larger case.”

"To meet the deadlines of West Virginia, we are tooling based upon our best guess as to what will be required."

Hill added that the Helicomm system does not require as much energy as others that use different technology.

"The good news for us and for the safety of the miners is the higher the bar is set by the rule makers, the more competitive we become."

Hill noted that the company has not focused as much effort on how future mining regulations, such as the potential S-MINER Act, will impact the communications sector in the industry because its central vision to date has been meeting legislation in West Virginia (the state was the fastest to implement MINER Act provisions from 2006).

"The ramifications of the S-MINER Act for communications and tracking will be to accelerate implementation from June of 2009 to 120 days after the bill is signed into law. Since the system design has been completed, the challenge will become the ability to ramp production and installation to comply with the new deadlines [and] this is a challenge we look forward to addressing."

Looking ahead, MineTracer is identifying one area of the S-MINER Act for its growth plans – the requirements for workers to don environmental monitoring equipment – and has decided to establish an industry partnership to examine that.

"Helicomm designed and manufactures the wireless networking infrastructure and radio components of the system. Venture Design Services, our design and manufacturing partner that developed and manufactures MineTracer, will be introducing new components in the next few months which will not only provide the miner with the required sensors, but those sensors will be able to transmit their data to the mine office.

"With the addressable two-way communication capability of the system, any or all of the appropriate personnel within the mine can be notified of alerts, warnings or calls for assistance."

Because the system has already been MSHA-approved, Hill noted, component additions should be fairly straightforward, as the system's framework would not require modification.