Published in the April 2009 Australia’s Mining Monthly
Golder Associates consultant Ross Bertinshaw said there was still plenty of work coming Golder’s way, but that it was coming from the smaller end of the industry.
“The downturn has had some effect on the mine planning side, particularly some of the big companies such as Rio and BHP, with their downsizing,” he said.
“Things died down very much come October-November last year, things fell very fast in terms of the mine planning/mine engineering side, [but] we’ve started to see more requests, more proposals go out at the moment. There’s certainly a number of the gold juniors who are looking to get financing and want to get projects up and running.
“Some of the uranium players, some of the iron ore juniors are still working on a number of projects that we’re involved with, so there are a few things happening, but I guess you’re not seeing any of the really big feasibilities and expansion plans underway at the moment, because no one can get finance for it.”
While some projects are being put on hold, there is still demand for mine planning services from companies looking to reduce their bottom lines and increase productivity.
Runge consultant Kevin Holm said the software and mine consulting company was engaging existing clients in strategic conversations to help make their processes more efficient, and therefore more productive.
“We’ve come up with a concept where we believe we should be talking to the mines now about the mine planning process as such, and how we can map that process, document it and make it a lot more efficient, so they’re only really doing what needs to be done.
“We sit down and say, right, where are you now in your mine planning world, what are the inefficiencies that you have at the moment, what are all the problems and challenges?”
In some cases, Holm said an operation would have steps or processes in place that were not being used. By mapping the mine planning process, Runge aims to either identify the purpose of a particular activity and highlight its necessity, or establish that it is not needed and remove it from the process.
At the same time Runge can identify where advancements can be made to increase efficiency at different stages of the mine planning process.
“Traditionally, dragline engineers have drawn hand-drawn cut sections in the blocks to simulate a dragline method,” Holm said. “We went along and automated that by using a tool such as Dragsim that can be used for simulation across the life of a mine. That takes a lot of the work out of the process and makes it a lot more efficient.”
Demand for Runge’s mine planning solutions have not been hugely affected by the downturn, something Holm attributes partly to the cyclical nature of mine planning and partly to the need for increased efficiency brought about by lower commodity prices.
He said Runge’s mine planning solutions generally had a five to seven-year shelf life, due to changes in the client’s circumstances or priorities.
“Technologies change and people change, and eventually the model just becomes a little bit unusable, and they call us back in again after five to seven years to rebuild the model based on the new emphasis on the mine, and so we’ve found this recurring cycle,” Holm said.
“In the current economic climate there has been a lot of cost cutting and retrenchments and whatever that are happening across the mining industry that mean they are going to have less engineers.”
Maptek Australasian sales manager Steve Sullivan said the demand for mine planning was “surprisingly robust” given the downturn, with operations closing down and expansions being put on hold. He attributed Maptek’s ongoing strength during the downturn to its broad knowledge base.
“Maptek is in a fortunate position whereby, as a supplier, we’re across all of the mining disciplines, so we’re across coal mining, we’re across coal seam methane, iron ore, gold, nickel, so we have a very diverse customer base,” he said.
At the same time, Sullivan said, many mining companies were rationalising their mine planning systems to get the most out of them during the downturn.
Similarly, Coffey principal mining engineer Rick Taylor said it was common for demand for mine planning and optimisation services to increase during a downturn.
“I’ve been specialising in mine planning now for 20 years, this is probably the third cycle I’ve seen now,” Taylor said.
“What I’ve found in those cycles is that actually the mine planning and optimisation work becomes more critical. The companies that are cash flush generally don’t pay as much attention to optimisation and planning, and there’s no real emphasis on keeping costs as low as possible, which is probably human nature.
“When it gets to the downtime, these companies can probably scrape by, but they need assistance, and that’s when our workload on the mine planning side increases.”
At the same time, Taylor said, many companies could do a lot better during the hard times if they took time when things were good to prepare for the next downturn.
“A lot of the smaller companies haven’t planned ahead, haven’t got a plan B for the downturn. We’re seeing a lot of those going under now and that’s unfortunate because in a lot of those cases, with a bit of strategic planning, they may well have been able to put a plan together to remain afloat.
“A lot of fire fighting goes on in the planning office on the minesite to try and recover from a bad situation, so whether you’re in an upturn cycle or a downturn cycle, the necessity to plan and have a backup contingency plan never goes away – it’s part and parcel of mining.”
Outside of the global financial crisis, trends shaping the mine planning industry include a greater focus on safety from the earliest stages of mine development and greater data integration into the mine planning process.
Maptek is set to introduce a new version of its Vulcan mine planning, surveying and geological modelling tool, which will focus on ensuring that mine designs are built to incorporate both geotechnical and operational safety. Sullivan said safety was vital to providing companies with a product that fit their needs.
The company has recently released its MineSuite operations system that allows for the tracking and reporting of information from a mine operation. Sullivan said this was an important step for the future of mine planning.
“We see the future of mine planning is getting that operational data and feeding it back into the mine plan on a very tightly integrated basis, so that the engineer has got actual information he’s using to make his decisions, rather than assumptions and inferred information,” he said.
“We’re collecting real-time information from various sensors, both in the mine operation and in the process plant, and any environmental monitors or safety monitors, noise monitors, we integrate and connect to that in real time so that we can produce a real-time report or a weekly report, on any of the parameters that are key to the mine’s performance.”
