When you hear the beep, you know you are too close.
That’s the gist behind new technology that Nutrien has added to its safety response to COVID-19.
Nutrien’s Executive Vice-President and CEO of Potash, Ken Seitz, explains that proximity monitoring devices beep when you get closer than two metres, and they also help to hone in on contact tracing if someone tests positive for COVID-19 or has been near someone who has.
Normally, Seitz says, Nutrien would send home a swath of people to self-isolate in an abundance of caution, but with these devices, the contact list becomes much more specific meaning less disturbance to the work shifts.
Seitz stresses that this is not a GPS system that tracks your every move.
Workers at the Vanscoy mine have just begun using this new technology as a pilot project before moving on to the rest of Nutrien’s potash mines and its headquarters in Colorado, Illinois, Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Last summer the company began using proximity monitoring devices from Triax at its nitrogen and phosphate mines in the U.S. where COVID-19 was prevalent in the summer.
Seitz describes the devices as a badge that is smaller than a deck of cards.
He believes Nutrien has done well with its safety protocols even before this new technology.
The infection rate at its Saskatchewan mines is 18 times lower than the provincial community transmission numbers.