Ravensthorpe Nickel Project

The Ravensthorpe Nickel project is located 155 kms northwest of Esperance in Western Australia and includes the development of a mine, a hydrometallurgical process plant and associated infrastructure. The nickel laterite treatment plant will treat limonite and saprolite ores to produce up to 220 000 tpa of a mixed nickel and cobalt hydroxide intermediate product for transport and treatment at the expanded Yabulu refinery in Queensland.

The on-site service facilities included all power generation through steam turbines, package boilers and diesel generator sets, a 4 400-tpd sulphuric acid plant, and water desalination and demineralisation plants.

Scope of Services
As part of the EPCM delivery team for the Ravensthorpe Nickel project, Hatch’s Systems & Process Control (S&PC) Group was responsible for the entire operational systems landscape, from Level 0 through Level 5 systems, as well as infrastructure (communications and networking) and common (shared services) systems.

The guiding principles of the project were to:

• Empower the business’ decision-making processes by making data readily available from the sensor to the boardroom
  
• Focus on business requirements
  
• Ensure that users have confidence in the data and eliminate duplication and redundancy by adhering to “single source of the truth”
  
• Comply with corporate standards and governance directives.

Hatch was responsible for project management, conceptual design, system architecture, and integration of the entire system’s landscape.

Engineering services (detailed design, implementation and on-site commissioning) were provided for the plant control system, plant information management system, integration platform, and infrastructure.

Project Highlights

• Hatch’s S&PC team was part of the overall greenfield EPCM project. Hatch provided overall project management services thereby providing the client with a single point of responsibility for entire systems landscape
  
• All third-party and vendor management was Hatch’s responsibility
  
• Project executed with globally distributed team. Software development team spanned three continents
  
• Business requirements were mapped out (ISA 95 Framework) before the technical phases commenced – selection of technology/development of solution driven by business needs and not technology
  
• One of the largest Delta-V-distributed control system (DCS) Fieldbus implementations worldwide, largest installation of Foundation Fieldbus in the southern hemisphere
  
• Bulk edit/data management approach to configuration of the DCS
  
• Next generation operator HMI (human-machine interface), based on human factors research (solutions outside the box) for abnormal situation management
  
• Hatch introduced a new integrated architecture for BHP Billiton and aspects of this solution have been subsequently implemented at other BHP Billiton sites including QNI, BHP Billiton Iron Ore E2E project and Cerro Matoso.
  
• Overall systems landscape included:
  
  • Infrastructure (telecommunication, radio systems, access control, CCTV, fibre-optic plant-wide networks, integrated control and computer room design)
    
  • Process control (implementation of Foundation Fieldbus and Profi Bus, Emerson Delta-V DCS)
    
  • Production systems (mine fleet management, geology and mine planning, mine data management, mine data reconciliation, plant historian, batch, downtime, real-time performance management, laboratory information management)
    
  • Shared services (document management, HSEC, access control, IT management)
    
  • Business systems (SAP PM, SAP PPPI, SAP QM, SAP AutoID)
    
  • Integration and reporting platform (SAP Enterprise Portal, SAP MII, Microsoft Reporting Services)
    
• Hatch was engaged on subsequent projects to provide ramp-up and operations support for integration platform, plant information management system, alarm management systems, instruments and control