Rohitesh Dhawan, president and chief executive officer of the International Council on Mining and Metals, was in Chile recently and shared a look at a very different kind of mine site, one defined by data, automation, and real-time decision-making rather than blasting and trucks alone.
This is the Integrated Operating Centre for Teck Resources Ltd.’s QB2 copper mine. Teck, headquartered in Vancouver, runs this high-performance hub from downtown Santiago, remotely operating a major mine located 1,800 kilometres away in the Andes.
More than 200 specialists work inside the centre, about 30 per cent of them women. They oversee more than 7,000 instruments across the site and coordinate a fleet of 23 autonomous haul trucks. Every element of production — crushing, grinding, dispatch, water systems, maintenance, environmental performance, and energy use — streams into the room in real time.
Shifting the narrative for Canadian mining
What Dhawan observed is mining reimagined as an advanced industrial system: safer, cleaner, more efficient, and more transparent. For a country like Canada, which relies heavily on resource exports, technology like this reinforces global competitiveness and ensures communities can continue to benefit from world-leading standards.
The advantages are already visible:
- Safer operations: Workers remain out of high-risk zones while performance improves.
- Lower footprint: Real-time adjustments reduce water use, energy intensity, and emissions.
- Higher stability: Operators face fewer unplanned outages, improved fleet availability, and tighter control of the plant.
- Better jobs: Digital operations roles attract new talent and help retain experienced workers.
Dhawan noted that these types of centres are now a broader industry trend. Advanced control rooms are connecting orebody intelligence, digital twins, process control, and predictive maintenance into a single decision layer. It represents a quiet but consequential evolution in responsible mining.
Where the next gains will come from
The next major step involves closing the loop between the orebody model and the processing plant, allowing crushing, grinding, and flotation systems to adjust automatically to feed variability. That improves recovery, lowers input requirements, and strengthens environmental performance.
Water treatment technologies — including solutions developed by Vancouver-based Tersa Earth — are also poised to benefit from centralized oversight.
The room Dhawan photographed signals the industry’s direction: remote-first, data-driven, autonomy-ready, and grounded in the high standards Canadians expect from responsible resource development.
Yet, even with sophisticated automation, Dhawan was clear that people remain at the centre. Technicians, operators, and engineers on the ground make the entire system work.
It is a powerful reminder that Canada’s resource leadership is built on innovation — both at home in Vancouver and across the global operations run by Canadian companies.
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