58th JK Lecture: Mining, technology, and entrepreneurship - the last 50 years, and the next 50 years

Ian is a mining engineer and founded the consultancy Runge, now RPMGlobal, which developed a suite of mine scheduling and other software that dominates this market.

Ian grew up in the old gold mining town of Gympie in Southern Queensland where his family was involved in retreatment of gold tailings and in the mining of limestone. He attained his undergraduate qualifications in mining engineering at the University of Queensland before working at the Saraji Mine in Central Queensland, for the coal division of Shell in Netherlands, and for Miller Mining, a large UK-based mining contractor.
In 1977 at the age of 24 Ian started his own business involved in computer applications in mining and was a pioneer of the Australian Mining Technology Services industry. This business, now called RPMGlobal Holdings Limited listed on the ASX in 2008 and is one of the world’s largest publicly traded mining technology
enterprises, with 13 offices in 9 countries. Many mining people would have heard of products like TALPAC –the flagship truck-and-loader analysis product - or XPAC for mine scheduling – both of which were originally written by Ian Runge (in Fortran!) with derivatives of them in use today throughout the world. Ian
retired from the board of RPMGlobal in 2018 after 41 years.
In addition to his interests in mining and mining technology, he is passionate about education and economics. He was an honorary industry fellow in the School of Economics at UQ for 4 years and has taught undergraduate economics at UQ off-and-on since 1979 and delivered courses in mine planning, trucks-and loaders,
draglines and mining economics throughout the world. UQ students, and ex-UQ Students might have been exposed to his economics example course on “How to be a Millionaire by age 30” which, during Covid, he turned into a 6-part video series. In 1993 (at the age of 40) he went back to school to study economics at George Mason University, Virginia, USA, … not as a career change, but a career upgrade. He wrote his PhD dissertation under the Nobel-prize-winning economist James Buchanan. He has written dozens of papers and two books on the subject and his third book, simply titled Mining Economics is in the final stages of compilation for publication by the SME next year.
Ian spent many years on the Southern Qld Branch committee of the AusIMM and was Branch Chairman in 1992. In 2022 Ian was awarded the Institute Medal by the AusIMM – the highest and most prestigious annual award of the AusIMM for services in advancing the mining industry and demonstrating leadership and professionalism on issues of national and international significance. This was followed up in 2024 with the award of the Legion of Honor of the Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration (SME).

Examples of Published Work over more than 35 years:
Books
Runge, I.C. (2000)
Capital and Uncertainty – the Capital Investment Process in a Market Economy Cheltenham, U.K. Edward Elgar
Runge, I.C. (1998)
Mining Economics and Strategy, Denver; Society of Mining Metallurgy and Exploration (SME)
Articles, Conference Papers (examples)
Runge, I.C. (2017)
Mining Economics and Technology, Keynote presentation in: Proceedings, 25th International Mining Congress and Exhibition of Turkey (IMCET) Antalya, Turkey
Runge, I.C. (2014)
Mining Project Risk – After 238 years we still don’t understand it, Proceedings: “Project Risk: the News isn’t all bad,” Management and Economics Society of the Canadian Institute of Mining, CIM, Toronto, Canada
Runge, I.C. (2012)
The Economics of Mining: Is the Boom already becoming a Bust, and are we Prepared?, Public Lecture, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld.
Runge, I.C. (2012)
Mining Economics, Keynote presentation in: Discover Mongolia 2012: International Mining Conference and Investors Forum, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Runge, I.C. (1995)
Economics, Technological Change, and the Knowledge Problem, Proceedings, International Conference, Application of Computers in the Mineral Industry, (APCOM XXV), AusIMM, Brisbane, Australia
Runge, I.C. (1992)
Maintaining and Improving the Economics of Open Pit Mining, Conference Theme Address, in: Proceedings, Third Large Open Pit Mining Conference, AusIMM, Mackay, Qld, Australia
Runge, I.C. (1990)
Assessing Risk and Capital Investment Criteria in Mining Projects, Proceedings, MinCost ’90 Symposium, AusIMM Sydney, Australia