The value derived by good mine planning is often underestimated as many mines steer their attention to the more immediate and more easily recognised successes made by the day-to-day operational bush fire' fighting. Similar to machine maintenance, the efforts made to quickly rectify short-term breakdowns are well recognised; whereas the value derived from the work in planning, scheduling and undertaking preventative maintenance is not so obvious or readily quantified._x000D_
Too often the focus of the business shifts to building and supporting an efficient operations team at the expense of developing a highly experienced team of mine planning practitioners that are well trained with procedures and purpose-built tools to develop optimum mining strategies._x000D_
A resource has an inherent value based on its quality parameters and its likely mining conditions. How well that value can be unlocked is governed, to a large degree, by the proficiency of the mine planning practitioners, as they, essentially, set the foundation of the mine business and the path along which the mine will operate._x000D_
The importance of having a well documented and procedural mine planning methodology that integrates both a thorough technical and economic understanding of the resource cannot be over emphasised. The aim of the mine planning process is to develop a robust mine design and production capability which can best cater for future uncertainty whilst providing the best opportunity to maximise cash flow into the business. The planning process must be transparent and auditable, clearly summarising the process steps and assumptions made to arrive at a justifiable and defendable outcome. To provide maximum value to the business, the planning process must be repeatable and scalable to enable easy replication throughout the different mines and projects within an organisation._x000D_
The diminishing numbers of highly experienced personnel within our industry, coupled with the growing pressure to clearly demonstrate that appropriate due diligence has been exercised, means that well documented and monitored mine planning processes using purposed built and innovative tools need to be developed to ensure optimum outcomes.