Notes from the Consultants Society Chair - May 2022

Welcome to the May 2022 update from the AusIMM Consultants Society.

Technical courses for 2022

This year, readers will have seen that the AusIMM is ramping up its technical course offerings.  At the last count, 13 different courses are offered as part of the 2022 course calendar, with 8 of those run twice, 2 courses online year-round, and 2 offered on demand. These fall under the following headings:

• Mining codes and standards (2: JORC and VALMIN)
• Environmental and Corporate Social Governance (ESG) (2: ESG and Tailings Management)
• Digital transformation (2: Process automation and Data analytics)
• Mining project evaluation and operation (2: Cost estimation and Study processes)
• Mining fundamentals (2: Mining safety and Mining 101)
• Leadership and governance (3: JORC Essentials, Diversity and inclusion and Tailings fundamentals).

The existing course which the ConSoc is involved in is as follows:

• Study Processes for Resource Projects – this course, which ran for the first time February this year, will be repeated later in Sept 2022. The course has been devised and run entirely by ConSoc committee members and is commented on later in this newsletter by the course instigator, Paul Harper.

New courses in planning

The next ConSoc managed course initiative is still in the planning stage and likely to be called 'Minerals Consultants Fundamentals Course' or something similar. That course is intended to be a follow on from the Minerals Consultant’s Handbook seminars 1 – 5. Held in 2021.  It will draw on the chapters of the Consultant’s Handbook, with more emphasis on the more popular topics from the five seminars. Final approval for this new offering awaits cost-benefit analysis, content and content approval. The expectation is to run it in 2023.

An additional course is also in the early stage of planning and is primarily in the hands of the Mining Society (MinSoc). It is envisaged to be based on the AusIMM Monograph 26, the Mine Manager’s Handbook which appeared as a first edition in 2012, comprising ten chapters, and has not been updated since.  The MinSoc was considering the idea of a second edition, but, for now, this additional course is what is occupying them. As a first step the planning team has prepared the following baseline documents:

• a Project Plan
• a Project Specification;
• a Scope of Work; and
• an Expression of Interest (EOI).

The EOI invites members to volunteer for any of four roles in the project: subject matter experts (SME’s); presenters; assessors (of the final assignment(s); and finally, facilitators. Anyone interested to know more, or to obtain these documents, contact Kim Thorne at KThorne@ausimm.com

Other ConSoc Committee updates

The committee has a busy agenda which is discussed every two months by means of a one hour Teams meeting. Ongoing agenda items include:

• ConSoc involvement in the Trusted Voice Initiative – supplying subject matter experts as needed
• The review of the JORC Code – involvement with some working groups
• ESG further policy development
• Future Workforce initiatives and multi stakeholder task force led by the AusIMM
• Liaison with other Society Chairs (MetSoc, S&E, MinSoc).

We hope to report further on the JORC review, ESG and Future Workforce later in the year.

Short Course for Study Processes

The working group for this short course included Lisa Park, Karl van Olden, Peter Fairfield, Paul Harper, Kristy Burt and Alison Bickford. The course consisted of 4 modules over 4 weeks and we had over 60 participants attend. What was very pleasing and encouraging is the positive feedback we received from the participants with some constructive comments for improvement.

This has also confirmed the need to present this course again in the near future (enrolments are now open for the September intake). What also was fully supported was the concept to publish ‘guidelines’ for Study Processes in the form of a handbook with the view of potentially establishing a code which complements the JORC and VALMIN codes.

The working group has not stopped and is currently finalising the framework for this handbook and will be seeking Subject Matter Experts (SME) to assist as Chapter leads and general content for this publication. So it is all go with this project, and I would like to thank the working group for all of their efforts and enthusiasm to date and look forward to the next progress update.