Covia Transforms Mine Planning with Kespry

Kespry Covia 2

Covia – with more than 3,000 employees operating more than 50 plants and 94 terminals – is one of the largest solution providers in the industrial sand industry. The company has been working with Kespry, utilizing its drone-based data solutions.

Covia’s Tunnel City mine uses Kespry’s drone-based aerial analytics platform for consistent and effective mine planning that has helped with better decision making for their operations.

“Prior to using Kespry, we had a GPS survey system,” said Nick DeHaan, continuous improvement manager at Covia. “It was basically a backpack and a rod. With the GPS, the surveyor had to go out and walk everything manually. Because of that, we would typically measure the sites maybe once a year to get a topo and ortho photos. We got Kespry because we wanted to improve safety and efficiency. We wanted better planning and numbers. We wanted better numbers all around, so we didn’t have to do any re-work. Also, before, we’d get the GPS raw data in and then we’d have to figure out the contours ourselves. With Kespry, the contours are identified for us, which also makes things more accurate.”

Covia has been using Kespry to fly its sites on a weekly basis, which has made a major difference for operational efficiency.

“I used to have to take a week off from my regular work duties to walk the site and then we’d have to deal with the data on our own,” said DeHaan. “Using Kespry, that whole thing can get done in one day, including the data processing which Kespry delivers. We’ve been able to do weekly flights, which means we’re able to achieve a much greater level of accuracy without seriously impacting productivity like the old GPS system. Also, with Kespry, a picture’s worth a thousand words. We’re able to take those pictures of our sites and explain things to our staff and customers so much more easily now. It makes everything run smoother.”

Kespry, www.kespry.com

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