The Times - UK (2020-07-27)

42 1GM Monday July 27 2020 | the times

Business

BHP uses own tracing app

to avoid virus shutdowns

Emily Gosden

The world’s biggest miner has devel-

oped its own Covid-19 contact-tracing

app and is in talks to share the tech-

nology more widely in Chile as the

country battles the pandemic.

BHP said that 10,000 of its employ-

ees and contractors globally had volun-

tarily downloaded the “C-19 Tracer”

app. About 60 per cent of the down-

loads have been in Chile, where the

company operates three copper mines,

including Escondida, the world’s

biggest. BHP said that the technology

had helped it to isolate affected

employees and to prevent the total

shutdown of operations from corona-

virus outbreaks.

The Anglo-Australian group is now

said to be in talks with the Chilean

government and other industries in the

country. This is likely to involve making

the source code available for other

companies to use in their own apps.

BHP employs about 72,000 people

globally producing commodities in-

cluding iron ore, copper, coal and oil. It

reported underlying net profits of

$9.1 billion in the last financial year.

Chile, the world’s biggest copper

producer, has one of the highest rates of

Covid-19. BHP’s operations there are

running with 65 per cent of usual staff-

ing levels to reduce the risk of trans-

mission.

BHP said that its in-house tech-

nology team had developed the app in

six weeks and had begun voluntary

trials in Chile in early May. It said that

“in the event that an employee or

contractor tests positive, authorised

HSE personnel would use that person’s

data, with their permission, to identify

their movements while at work and

quickly isolate, clean and sanitise the

areas in which they had been working

to reduce the risk of surface trans-

mission”.

The app is voluntary, can be switched

on or off, and disposes of all data after 14

days. It is also being used at several

other BHP sites, including its huge iron

ore mines in Western Australia.

It’s the future of getting around towns
and cities, improving air quality, re-
claiming streets from car congestion
and taking the pressure off public
transport. Alternatively, it’s the un-
leashing of urban transport anarchy.
For advocates of e-scooters, the

E-scooter giants wheel out

their fleets for UK invasion

battery-packed footplates with handle-

bars represent a long-awaited revolu-

tion in individual transportation — or

micromobility, in the argot; for their

critics, they could be replacing the

internal combustion engine with

another urban blight — road usage by

the unlicensed, the irresponsible or the

incapable, road traffic accidents

waiting to happen. Cynics merely

dismiss them as a fad, in the manner of

the Sinclair C5 in the 1980s, and, in

Britain’s maritime climate, a mode of

transport that will be acutely seasonal.

Nevertheless, this month the

government gave the green light to the

electric-powered scooter. Indeed, it did

so despite the private use of such

scooters remaining illegal, regardless of

the numbers seen on the country’s

streets (and pavements).

On a national level, the government

has given the go-ahead for trials of

wide-scale renting of the machines. On

a local scale, cities and towns are

already in the opening stages of offer-

ing contracts to operators renting

scooters. Places such as Milton Keynes

and Teesside are ahead of the curve and

the urban conurbations of London, the

West Midlands and Manchester are

finalising plans.

Although Britain is one of the last

adopters of the e-scooter in the

developed world, in its favour is the fact

that the technology, which is almost

exclusively Chinese, has galloped on

and operators have condensed to five

big players: Lime and Bird, of the

United States, and their European

rivals Voi, Tier and Dott, typically

venture capital-backed as private

equity investors race to cash in on the

future of mobility.

Lawrence Leuschner, 37, is the

founder of Tier, a German operator

hailing initially from Berlin that now

has 45,000 scooters in 70 towns and

cities and is fresh from winning a

contract to operate 5,000 machines in

Paris. Tier is the German word for

animal, thus Mr Leuschner’s slightly

self-conscious assertion that “we are a

beast in the urban jungle”. More

prosaically, the name also stands for

taking individual mobility to the next

level, the next tier. His 15 per cent stake

in the business is said to be worth

€45 million already and — in the vogue

of corporate eco-warriors — he is

pledging to spend his fortune on future

green technologies.

“We have big ambitions for the UK,

taking Tier to a lot of cities, running

pilots in the next few weeks in munici-

palities which already have bicycle in-

frastructure [such as cycling priority

lanes],” he said.

Tier has already taken its first

shipment of a thousand e-scooters to its

depot in west London. “We are now

discussing with various municipalities

that are looking for mobility solutions,

to reduce the number of cars, to take the

pressure off public transport, to reduce

carbon emissions and who want to

improve their air and noise quality,” Mr

Leuschner said.

In Europe, riders access e-scooters

via an app and are charged on their

credit cards, typically €1 to take control

of the machines and then between

15 cents and 20 cents per minute of

Robert Lea Industrial Editor

Bird’s e-scooters have proved popular