The Supervisor mining software suite consists of a number of geostatistical modules to help mine geologists visualise and analyse drill hole and other geological data.

“Supervisor V8 is all about productivity,” Snowden senior consultant John Graindorge said.

“The time saved through customisable, advanced functionality allows large datasets to be easily analysed and additional scenarios can be assessed, where previously time limitations would inhibit this ability.”

Supervisor V8 modules are built on Phinar Software’s new extendable software platform for technical applications.

Snowden says significant improvements on the previous version, Supervisor V7, include the addition of powerful graphing tools to allow the quick and easy statistical analysis of geological data with multiple windows, graph overlaying and the three-dimensional viewfinder.

Snowden said the latest version also included templates, undo/redo, copy/paste and drag/drop functionalities as well as libraries.

The software company is aiming to build on the 250 installations of the Supervisor V7 software currently being used by companies in Australia and overseas.

“We are in a unique position at Snowden when it comes to software development,” Snowden lead developer for the suite Rob de Bruin said.

“We have direct access to geologists who can both highlight requirements and test beta [development] versions of the software.

“This allows us to develop a software tool that has functionality to suit the way geologists work and think – it is designed for geologists by geologists.”

De Bruin said the original concept for Supervisor came from what was a stand-alone Visor product developed in conjunction with the CSIRO in the second half of 1990.

Supervisor was built off algorithms developed to provide variograms, geostatistics and conditional simulation, and now used Visor along with the Maximisor and Analysor modules to operate within the system, he said.

Each module has a specific function. Analysor is used for the statistical analysis and visualisation of geological data and Visor for continuity analysis and modelling while Maximisor is a full-function conditional simulation toolkit.

Snowden’s Supervisor V7 suite won the exporter category at the 2010 WA Information Technology and Telecommunications Awards.