Published in May 2006 Australian Mining Monthly

As miners get bogged down with managing the movements of their staff and fulfilling their workplace safety obligations, downtime can be increased at the expense of profitability.

IT and mining consultants Cube Consulting has recently introduced an integrated management system that can coordinate the human logistics of an entire mining project, as opposed to having several separate systems for each area.

Called Integrated Human Logistics (INX), the system is divided into three modules designed to address specific areas of people management:

Flight: rostering, flight scheduling, accommodation and security

Control: risk management, health and safety

Tuition: competency and compliance, procedures and training

The Cube system monitors individual employees and manages them from the day they commence work.

“Managers are not having to look in a filing cabinet here, a spreadsheet there, and an Access database somewhere else,” Cube marketing manager Myke Jones said.

“The mission is to keep a largely electronic system. The paper trails we’ve observed on some mines are highly complex and the admin overheads have been huge. [That’s] just in managing the paper, let alone doing anything with the info that’s contained upon that paper.”

Cube managing director Garry Back said INX was first implemented in late 2005, and was now being used on 25 sites.

They include operations run by Rio Tinto, Barrick Gold, LionOre Mining, Newmont Mining, Western Areas, Kimberley Nickel, Agincourt Resources, Clough Engineering, AngloGold and Skippers Aviation.

According to Back, switching from a paper-based system to the fully implemented new system could take up to six months, depending on the size and complexity of the operation.

“It’s mainly because you have to change business processes,” he said.

“But the task of implementing the InFlight system is typically two weeks and maybe only three or four days of actual hands-on time. A typical site will have a spreadsheet containing the names of their people and the rosters they’re on. We can upload that spreadsheet into the system and have their people trained in two days. Once they’ve got their information managed regarding who’s on their site, you can then start training people in how to control the flow of information.”

“A number of the companies [using these systems] with operations in Western Australia are interested in the fact that you can do a lot of your administration from Perth, rather than have to have people out on site,” Jones said.

“With the pressure on human resources and getting people out to minesites – if you manage half of those activities from a Perth-based division, you’re way ahead.”

Back said the INX software cost between $20,000 and $100,000 to buy and implement.

Back and geologist Ted Coupland founded Cube Consulting in 2000 to provide IT and mining consulting services to the resource and industrial sectors.