The Olympic Dam Expansion Project is located in an extremely remote and arid area of Central Australia on the site of an existing copper and uranium mine and processing plant. Jackson Lane Pty Ltd was engaged by Bechtel Pacific as specialist consultant to the project to develop a concept for the new central control building consolidating individual plant area control rooms and to assist with design of other plant buildings including engineering offices, change houses and laboratories.
On completion of the conceptual design we were engaged directly by Western Mining Corporation as design project managers and architects for the detailed design of the central control building. We were responsible for building design work in all engineering disciplines as well as for construction support services. The centralised control building will accommodate all instrumentation systems for monitoring and control of both mining and processing activities at the site.
The building’s HVAC system is interfaced with a complex fire and gas detection system to initiate isolation and secure running in the event of external contamination from the process area. An important feature of the design was the requirement to maximise off-site work by prefabricating the building in modular components to reduce construction labour costs in the remote site location.
3D rendered images of the control room interior were produced in the early design stage to give management and plant operators a realistic idea of their working environment. A comparison of the computer generated image and a photograph of the completed control room is shown below.
