The Integrated Future: Single Digital Platform for Mines, Cities, and the Planet

0:00Welcome to the Canadian SME Small Business Podcast, a podcast for Canadian Small Businesses. We interview Canadian experts and entrepreneurs to provide expert insight into marketing, innovation, business leadership, technology, and trends that impact small businesses. Whether you're just getting started or already established, UPS is here to help you make the most of your time. Their services, tools, expertise, and team of UPS Small Business Ambassadors can help businesses with all sizes, simplify processes, improve customer experience, and guide you on the path to growth. My name's Elaine Tank-Komo, founder of Easy Dazies, the official schedule for kids, and I want to invite you to visit UPS.com to learn more and save up to 52% or more on shipping. This is a paid advertisement. Hello everyone, this is Krippa Arnand and welcome to the Canadian SME Small Business Podcast.

1:00Today we are exploring how the mind of the future has moved from concept to digital reality. In the world of heavy industry, the shift towards integrated data and real-time visualisation is now the key to operational excellence, minimizing costly and potentially dangerous blind spots. Joining us today is Dr. Boris Vorebivov, CEO and Chairman of Site Power Inc. With the PhD in Information Technologies and over 40 years of experience, Boris is a pioneer in spatial data processing and digital transformation. From managing major projects at the Royal School of Mines to developing technologies acquired by Autodesk, he has spent his career bridging the gap between complex science and industrial application. Today, Site Power is leading the way with its digital mind concept, protecting multi-billion dollar assets across the globe. So, let's dive in.

2:02Firstly, Boris, welcome to the podcast. It's such a pleasure to have you with us. Thank you very much, Krippa. Thank you for here today. Now, Boris, the mining industry is famously conservative, right? Yet, you argue that digital transformation is now an absolute necessity. So, go ahead and explain why is integrated data management now essential for mining and why is it still underestimated? Go ahead. Okay, thanks, Krippa. It's a great question. There are two questions in one, so I will go like, consequently. So, big question. Why is integrated data management? Now essential. Integrated data management is becoming essential in mining for a very simple reason. The complexity of decision is growing faster than the industry's ability to organize the information behind those decisions. And that gap becomes dangerous.

3:06First, mining today is a multi-domain environment, strategic decision, decisions interact with geology, geotechnics, energy, processing, ESG, community impact, supply chains, and even geopolitics. Each of these domains produces massive streams of data, much of it interconnected, but you know what? Not only is it connected. So, mining leaders face pressure to run faster and with better context. And in the world, the information appears instantly. The company that can interpret relative faster is the company that wins. That becomes a hidden competitor arena. Second, the role data we produce is often served as a world messy. Consistent formats. It's no validation. It's no timestamps. It's no cross-referencing.

4:08So, even if you have a data lake, a big, big, big heap of data, this data lake where often just a data dump, to be honest, you cannot meaningful analyze a pile of unverified, unconnected data. And yet, strategic decisions worth hundreds of millions of dollars depend on it. And that's where some optimal moves happen often. For instance, buying assets that don't feed or over-investing and developments based on optimistic assumptions or delay in decisions because people simply don't trust their numbers, hesitate like worrying, like taking responsibility for some decisions. So, at the operational level, the issue is the same, but it works faster at operations. Modern hardware generates billions of data points per hour from equipment telemetry to environmental sensors. But software integration hasn't kept space. You may see islands of

5:11automation, great point solutions for dispatch, draw-allage, plant optimization, etc, etc. But all these pieces, they can't talk to each other or to legacy systems. And that leaves huge blind spots across the value chain. And actual integration is what closes those gaps and gives a mine a single operational truth instead of silent views. Fourth, few words about general mining landscape. You know what? We live at the time where it's happening precisely at the moment, if you wish. When mining is getting harder and more expensive, easy deposits are gone. New ones are deeper, poorer or remote. So, the only way to keep costs and ultimately the price of nearly error in the use, because error in comes from mining actually, under control, keeping this under control, the only way is optimization at every level. And you know, optimization always begins with

6:13clean, reliable, connected data. I would like to extend the simple analogy for people who maybe are not very familiar with mine. Imagine you are rushing to the airport. In scenario one, your shorts are on handguards, pants, neatly arranged socks in their drawers, everything where it should be. You can get dressed in five minutes and you're out of the door. All your clothes are dumped into a single giant box. Short-stangle the socks pants, like stuffed somewhere at the bottom, nothing much, nothing ironed, you jeep, you guess, you improvise and you look questionable at them, but it's even worse that you lose time and you miss the plane and you miss the meeting. Mining often operates in scenario two. Well, the data is technical there, but unstructured and verified, unconnected, and integrated data management. It's the equivalent of putting the wardrobe in order, not because organization is nice, but because it directly determines

7:16whether you make the plane or miss the opportunity. And the second part of this question, so why, if it is so obvious, why integrated data still under-estimated? Okay, to be honest, it's bitter because it demands real change. You may pretend to do something, but it's not enough, you must do. It forms organizations to rethink workflows, reporting habits and data governance and accountability. It makes operations more transparent, which challenges long-established managerial styles, and it requires the philosophical shift. Decision based on evidence, not on comfort, on the way they always done that. This disruption makes some leaders hesitate. Despite the natural conservatism, integration is no longer optional with rising complexity, shrinking margins, and pressure for speed integrated data management becomes the backbone of modern mining. Actually, it's quite infrastructure. It allows everything else to work. And here's one,

8:21very last, very important link with sometimes miss. Let us introduce the term, which is kind of man, without deep understanding of content. Real data integration and move to digital transformation assumes you compile and maintain a digital twin. A structure continues the updated representation of the acetinent workflows, without digital twin, transformation is just new dashboard or old with digital twin, which is well organized data model, connected to all workflows and operations. You have a governed data backbone, where context, quality and timeliness arrive together. Okay, it's clear that in an environment where margins and safety are so tight, guessing based on fragmented data is no longer a viable business strategy. Thank you so much for giving such a detailed explanation there, Boris. Now the focus turns to how digital twins use AI to mirror real world operations in real time.

9:25So please go ahead and explain as fast as you can to our listeners, that how do AI tools enhance digital twins for real time decision making? How does it work? It's a great question. So as we mentioned 20 minutes, 20 seconds ago, a digital twin is a continuously updated content model, where plans, operations and constraints align. Add AI to this story and the twin moves from accurate to actively helpful. It starts reasoning, not just reflecting. AI becomes a bridge between the complex digital twin structure and the user's needs. Okay, so let's go point by point first. AI elevates discovery, scanning, geological, geotechnical, environmental, and processed data to surface subtle structures, risks, risks and anomalies as they emerge. Second, AI turns monitoring into foresight by

10:26fusion telemetry, KPIs, maintenance, energy, and weather. Within common ideas and timestamps, it predicts failures, bottlenecks, and risks, and proposes interventions, proper interventions. AI agents operationalize the twin. They validate data quality, which is very, very important. Auto-produce reports run what ifs and recommend optimal plans, faster, consistent, auditable, because they work of the govern twin. This is very important, of the govern twin. Fourth, AI connects inside defense data with external drivers, prices, tariffs, weather, supply chain, policy markets, while still enforcing strict security and permissions. So user only see offers data without leakages. Let's say pictures, like without AI, the twin is very useful, but is still a super-beam map. AI is an navigation system that

11:28highlights congestions, forecasts delays, and rarals in real time. And bottom line, AI turns the twin into an adaptive decision engine, discovering patterns, predicting outcomes, orchestrating actions, and learning continues. Wow, that's a very well explained answer. Turning static data into a living model means that problems can be solved in a virtual environment before they ever cost a cent in the physical one, right? That's amazing. Now moving ahead, Boris, our attention now shifts to how this technology is expanding beyond mining into large-scale infrastructure. So how can site-power support smart cities and other sectors like construction or maybe even agriculture? Oh, thank you for this question. Okay, so it's very interesting, because technology we use in mining is not mining specific.

12:29And the base of our technology is so-called extended, just spatial integration platform, we call it XJP, and it is a universal spatial platform. It is full JS plus integration with other spatial domains. This platform was built to create dynamic digital twins by combining any kind of spatial data, like LIDAR, drone imager, BIM, IFC, underground utilities, environmental layer, sensor networks, semantic data. So the same principles which we use for mining apply to smart cities, construction infrastructure, agriculture. Let us go step by step, like for all these smart cities, what do we do? One twin for surface, sub-surface, and ESG. XJP platform unifies buildings, roads, streetscapes, and then the ground city, water, gas, power, telecom, metro, hydro-jolage, which is very important, governance, stability, and drainage.

13:29Planners may coordinate construction, dig safe, transport, flood mitigation, and resilience from a single continuously updated source of truth, with ESG, KPIs, and sensor fields for auditable reporting, reporting is critical for smart cities, for management of any city yet. Go to another domain, construction and infrastructure. Again, IFC, BIM, BIM models, yeah, inside the just spatial model. We ingest IFC BIM with survey LIDAR drone updates into one govern twin. So design as builds in the right of the way, a right of way, live together, making clash checks, progress tracking, and quality assurance, GAAQC, simple and faster, and agent-adventing and mixture that overlays. Crucy utilizes or future structures on site, utilities or future structures on site, cut and network, and improving safety. Go to precision

14:31agriculture now and land. Okay, so LIDAR plus imagery plus classified maps, we combined LIDAR terrain, drone satellite imagery, and GIS classified layers, like soils, moisture, drainage, to optimize irrigation, routing, and inputs. It's an attack to energy water is geometrics as well. So the same well-augmented route, the toolkit supports planning and field validation. So all of this, by the way, gives immediately the answer why the technology developed by site power is so different, so crucial, because underneath all of this is this platform, this XJAP platform that organizes and connects the data. So our digital twins, they work across mining, cities, construction, and agriculture. Wow, you know, it's fascinating to see how a solution designed for the most extreme underground conditions can provide such clarity even for urban planning and, you know, ESG initiatives. That's amazing. Before we go any further, here's a special message for

15:36all of our listeners, especially all the industrial leaders watching. If your departments are still operating in silos, you aren't just losing efficiency. You are risking a disaster. We've seen exploration teams plan drills right through newly built railways simply because they're data didn't talk to each other. In 2026, integrated information isn't a nice to have. It's your primary defense against human error. Don't wait for a costly mistake to unify your data. Build your digital twin today. Now coming back to you, Boris, let's look at the technical capabilities that, you know, set site power apart. So if I were to ask you what would be your unique selling point, right? What sets site power technology apart from the other digital solutions available in the market? What would you say? Thank you for this question. Agriva. So what makes it power unique? Okay, very simple. We don't build tools. We build like

16:42living digital twin that works. And let us go step by step again, like in a brief way. First, we connect everything other keep separate. Lidar, BIM, IFC, drone imagery, underground utilities, hydrojology, IoT, ESG, operations, one-governed model, not 10 disconnected systems. Second, our twins are alive. They update themselves in real time. If production changes, a sensor fires, a pump slows or traffic shifts between changes instantly. No manuals, syncing, no day-old data. Third, the operated scales that break most platforms. Say 2,000 meters shaft, or 40 kilometer corridor, or billions of lighter points, or a whole city district, this stream is smoothly. It's our IP. It's our know-how technology, know-down sampling, know-waiting. Fourth, our platform, XJP, technology, it's open. We support all standard

17:48formats, open interchange formats. IFC, BIM, modern, API, so your existing third-party tools keep working. Not throwing them out. They will be keeping working together, no lacking, no writing your world. Fifth, we bring the twin into the field with augmenting and mixed reality. So people may see utilities, hazards, and engineering models as holograms on top of reality. Zero guesswork, better safety, and faster decisions. And finally, we grew up in underground mining, the hardest environment to model. So its surface plus underground, protrology, plus engineering, sensors, plus 3D, all the skills that transfer directly to cities, infrastructure, energy, and agriculture. And in short, unlimited scale, multi-domain integration, real-time updates, AR and the field, and an open architecture. One platform that builds a digital twin, you can actually run a business on. Wow, having an open architecture, you know, that provides

18:54a single common information space for everyone, right? From geologists to senior managers, this is a massive comparative advantage. So a huge congratulations once again, you know, on achieving this Boris and taking it this so far. Now, if I were to give you a time machine and say we were to travel 10 years into the future, how exactly would you envision site powers global growth in the coming years? Or how is this simple? So we would like to make site power a global leader in digital transformation for complex, spatially intensive industries. In mining, we are working with partners and clients across Canada, Latin America, Central Asia, Europe and Australia, and we'll expand without geographical limits. We don't just deliver software. We help clients bring the future closer with practical, scalable twins and enable decisions. And the philosophy isn't confined to mining. The SAP approach, integrating multi-domain data into operational twins, applies the same transaction infrastructure,

19:58energy transportation, ESG oil and gas management, agriculture, smart cities. So in short, global and multi-sector, we aim to be the platform that helps industries and cities make better decisions faster anywhere in the world. That's a short answer. Wow, I think that's an amazing vision to have. With your global footprint expanding so quickly, site power is clearly setting the new standard for industrial digital transformation. That's amazing. Loving this conversation, Boris, as usual. But before we let you go, I'd love for you to give one final advice for leaders who are, you know, overwhelmed by spatial data volume. Okay, so here's the advice. Simple, simple. If you overwhelmed by spatial data, stop wrestling with chaos, organize it, put everything into one digital twin and noise becomes

20:59clarity. And you know what, if that still feels impossible, that's when you just call site power period. Wow, that gives a lot of clarity to our listeners. Thank you so much. That is a great reminder that data is only valuable if it's integrated and actionable. Boris, it was such a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, Kripa. It was a pleasure. Then all your audience, thank you so much. All right, that was Boris Waribov from Site Power Inc. A vital look at why the digital mind and the smart city are built on the same foundation of integrated intelligence. To all the listeners, thank you so much for tuning in to the Canadian SME Small Business Podcast. Be sure to subscribe and visit canadianacemy.ca for more resources. And lastly, a very special thank you to our podcast partners, UPS, A1 Global College, Google,

22:01and ADP for their own going commitment to empowering SMEs across Canada. Keep going forward, keep shining, Kripa, on in the signing off.