Mark Bowater

Founder, Mining Know How

Mark Bowater is a mining engineer with more than 35 years of experience in the Australian and global open pit mining industry, spanning coal and metalliferous operations. He has held senior operational and technical roles, founded and led a successful mining consultancy, and worked across more than 50 mining operations.

In recent years, Mark has shifted his focus toward working “on the industry” rather than in it—challenging conventional thinking and advancing how mine planning is understood and practiced.

He is the author of Crimes Against Mine Planning and a recognised thought leader on the evolution of mine planning. Through his writing, speaking, and training, he advocates for a fundamental shift away from deterministic planning toward decision-centric approaches that better reflect the realities of uncertainty and variability.

Mark is driven by a clear purpose: to leave mine planning in a better place than he found it. He is passionate about helping the industry rethink how mine planning is structured, how decisions are made, and how capability is developed—so that mine planning can better support operational performance and decision-making.

Presentation title

Built to Fail: Rethinking Mine Planning From The Ground Up

Presentation synopsis

Mine planning has a problem that better software won't solve. Despite capable people and increasingly sophisticated tools, operations continue to miss targets, plans get reworked, and frustration builds between teams. The reason isn't effort or talent — it's the planning system itself, which was never deliberately designed.

This keynote argues that fixing mine planning requires four fundamental shifts:

1. Planning must be organised by purpose — Strategic, Readiness, and Execution — rather than by time horizon
2. Variability and uncertainty must be built into how we plan, not ignored or assumed away
3. The focus must shift from producing the perfect plan, to designing how decisions will be made when reality inevitably diverges from it
4. The industry must invest in building and retaining great planners — creating real career pathways for technical excellence, rather than pointing every talented engineer toward management

Together, these four shifts form a complete redesign of the mine planning system — producing plans that are more robust, more honest about uncertainty, and far more useful when it matters most: the moment reality hits and decisions have to be made.