Dashboards Connect Emergency Operations Across Nevada Gold Mines

The emergency response team at Nevada Gold Mines faced a challenge in July 2019 when its formerly separate parent companies merged to create the largest gold-producing complex in the world. That merger strained the team’s ability to communicate effectively as they doubled their team size and response area, said Clancy Harman, Chief of Emergency Response.

Harman took Nevada’s Gold Mines‘ reorganization as an opportunity to streamline the team’s combined information by implementing dashboards by First Arriving. Now, just a bit more than a year into that merger, he sees the dashboards as one of the keys to their success.

“We actually saw it on one of your Facebook ads about a year ago,” Harman said. “With the merger, it worked out perfectly.”

When the teams combined, they became responsible for an area larger than the state of Rhode Island—and that’s just on the surface.

“In addition to providing traditional fire, EMS, and search and rescue duties above ground, the team handles those duties below ground in eight separate mines. Some of our underground mines have up to 60 miles of tunnels in them,” Harman noted.

Even their above ground operations require specializations in confined space and technical rescue due to the complex’s industrial and processing facilities. These sites include tanks, tunnels, conveyor belts and other equipment involved in making gold. “That’s the specialty side of what we do on top of fire and EMS,” Harman said.

Harman himself is assigned to the largest mining area in the state, which has about 3,000 mine employees on site, 24/7. “We basically run as a small city,” he said. The response team has 130 members at that site and just under 300 statewide, Harman said.

The team now stays on top of incidents and updates with dashboards in their stations and common areas, and their feedback has been nothing but positive, Harman said.

In some cases, the dashboards can actually improve their incident response abilities. “Because we’re a private company in a very rural area, we don’t have street addresses, so navigating to certain locations has been tough,” Harman said. Through coordinated service from First Arriving and another vendor, his team can now see a satellite view of their response location as they head out the door, and immediately understand where to go. “It’s certainly not just a large metropolitan type of tool,” Harman said.

One of the biggest daily advantages has been in helping personnel track their certifications and physicals, so they can always see when requirements are upcoming, he said. They’re also relying on dashboard integrations that include apparatus status, road conditions, and other updates – especially now, with coronavirus affecting training and other site activity. Furthermore, management can view the dashboards to stay on top of what’s happening.

“While much of this information goes out in email, those announcements can be easy to miss or forget, so this is an additional way to reach people.” Harman said.