In consequence, mine design sys-tems have to be capable of addressing sudden amendments as well as provid-ing the overall framework for getting the most out of a given deposit, in both tonnage and financial terms. Soviet-style planning focused on the former at the expense of the latter, while exam-ples abound of operations that have been run exclusively on financial rails and have closed early, only to find new leases on life under a different operat-ing regime.

The development of mine design software, which has been on-going since the first systems such as Data-mine were introduced over 30 years ago, has resulted in a strong supply base of competitive concepts. Not sur-prisingly, there has been a degree of consolidation within the mainstream players in recent years, as well as acqui-sitions of suppliers by larger companies who have realized that the mining-sec-tor market is no longer a niche. Such moves can, of course, bring significant benefits in terms of having greater development resources available, as well as the potential to merge software systems with different focuses into more comprehensive packages. As with machinery manufacturers, the goal is often to be able to meet all of a cus-tomer’s needs from one source, rather than risking part of the business (and its potential for long-term support) going elsewhere.

The Cost of Making Wrong Decisions
Looking first at greenfield project development, one of the most obvious trends of the past 10 years has been the rapid escalation in capex costs that companies worldwide have had to face. One of the first examples to come to widespread notice was BHP Billiton’s Ravensthorpe nickel laterite project in Western Australia, where the initial $1 billion cost more than doubled between 2005 and 2008. The mine failed, and BHP sold it to First Quantum Minerals for $340 million in 2010. First Quantum in turn spent some $370 million on re-engineering it and bringing it back into production, which itself was nearly double the com-pany’s original $190 million re-engi-neering estimate.

In point of fact, cost overruns are more of the rule than the exception. In November, the management consultants Accenture published a report titled Achieving superior delivery of capital projects, which makes alarming reading if for no other reason that it highlights the scale of the overrun problem.

The survey that provided the founda-tion for the report sought the views of 31 senior industry respondents with responsibility for capital projects around the world. Of these, 22 respon-dents were involved with mining pro-jects, and the other nine with metals. According to Accenture, “less than a third (30%) of the respondents report-ed staying within 25% of approved budgets for all projects, and less than a fifth (17%) said they completed all projects within a 10% budget range.”

Put in financial terms, the implica-tions—as well as the sums involved— are huge. Accenture estimates that capex for metals and mining projects will have been more than $140 billion last year, with the prospect of $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion being spent between 2011 and 2025. “With $100–$200 bil-lion in annual spend, the impact of pro-ject delivery overruns on individual com-panies and the industry as a whole is enormous,” the company commented.

“When asked what typically causes delays in project schedules, survey respondents cited the availability of tal-ent (57%), new or unconsidered regula-tory requirements (45%) and insuffi-cient detail during the planning stage (42%),” Accenture added, while point-ing out that mining projects are often more complex than metals projects, so are more likely to experience longer delays and higher cost overruns. In some ways, though, that seems count-er-intuitive since smelter and metallur-gy projects in general can be highly complex and, in consequence, risk budgets being broken. The high capex requirements for today’s nickel-laterite treatment plants is a case in point, relying as they do on autoclaves and sophisticated hydrometallurgy.

Leading Attributes and Recommendations
However, that is by far from being the whole picture, since a host of other fac-tors can come into play. Looking purely at the key reasons for cost overruns, and setting aside the question of whether or not a company can attract competent staff and contractors (which is an issue in its own right), it is diffi-cult to understand how projects can fall foul of factors as obvious as ‘unconsid-ered regulatory requirements’ and ‘insufficient detail during the planning stage.’ Those, frankly, are fundamen-tals that any company considering a major investment should be capable of addressing, and it begs questions that shareholders should be posing if they feel that their interests (and invest-ments) are not be husbanded properly.

Still, there are some companies that can and do deliver projects on schedule and budget, even faced with the pres-sures of skilled-labor shortages and ris-ing equipment costs. According to Accenture, a number of common attrib-utes identify them:

• They make fewer revisions to the approved schedule;

• They make significantly fewer changes during construction; and

• They have greater confidence in their own culture in delivering projects.

In addition, these companies make wider use of analytics, including key performance indicators, and have bet-ter access to performance data across multiple dimensions, such as timeli-ness, accuracy, range and source.

In its report, Accenture defined five key recommendations for effective pro-ject delivery:

• Establish strong project governance and risk-management tools;

• Proactively manage external stake-holders’ increasing expectations for sustainability;

• Optimize scarce talent through port-folio management, organizational flexibility and training; • Integrate information systems among capital project players; and

• Accelerate operational readiness.

“Addressing cost and time objectives of capital projects is a prime opportunity to achieve competitive advantage,” Accenture concluded. “Ideally, capital projects should be run as high-stakes businesses with targeted objectives, clear delivery strategies and careful monitoring to track progress toward high perform-ance.” And this, of course, is where good design has a major part to play.

Mintec’s new activity and resource-based scheduler, MineSight Atlas, is one of several products scheduled for
release in 2013.

Sector Movements
Among consolidations that have recent-ly taken place within the mine-design software companies, the current wave of acquisitions seems to have started in April 2010 when CAE bought out The Datamine Group. It followed this in January 2011 by adding Century Systems Technologies to its portfolio, thereby boosting its capabilities in geo-logical data-management and gover-nance systems.

Shortly afterward, Switzerland-based ABB acquired the Australian mining-software developer, Mincom, bundling it into its existing software systems unit as Ventyx. During 2012, meanwhile, the major change came with the French 3-D specialist, Dassault Systèmes’, $360-million pur-chase of Vancouver-based Gemcom, now part of Dassault’s Geovia brand. At the time, its CEO Rick Moignard explained the potential benefits of the move: “Advanced technologies in 3-D modelling and simulation will not only enable engineers and geologists to model and visualize resources but also improve sustainable mine productivi-ty,” he said.

Orebody modelling led the way in bringing computerization into mine design. Today’s mine engineers have a plethora of competing products to assist them in interpreting geological data and optimizing resource extrac-tion. Some software focuses specifical-ly on geological resource data; other packages address surface-mine layouts; yet more take specific mining methods such as block caving, providing the design department with the tools to model the resource and apply ‘what-if’ tests to determine the effects of pro-duction schedule changes or commodi-ty-price movements on the operation’s viability and resource utilization.

In the remainder of this article, E&MJ looks at some of the mine-design software packages that are currently available. There are, of course, many other providers; the common thread here is that each of the suppliers men-tioned was among those that exhibited at last year’s MINExpo.

RungePincockMinarco
In 2005, the Australian software devel-oper, Runge, took the unexpected step of buying out U.S.-based mining con-sultants, Pincock, Allen & Holt, with the subsequent addition of Minarco-MineConsult boosting its consultancy arm. In December, the company, which today claims to be the world’s largest independent group of mining technical experts, announced a change of name to RungePincockMinarco (RPM).

The company’s software suite in-cludes FRACSIS for visualizing geo-logical data, XPAC and XACT for mine scheduling, TALPAC, HAULNET, DRAGSIM and FACETS for simulating loading, haulage, dragline and longwall face operations, and XERAS for finan-cial analysis. At MINExpo 2012, it released an update for its TALPAC haulage and loading software which, it says, is used by mining operations world-wide to evaluate the performance of mixed fleets.

According to RPM, it now has a database of more than 500 trucks and 400 loaders, allowing virtually any truck and loader combination to be simulated and evaluated. The up-date includes Caterpillar’s Unit Rig MT4400D AC and 777G trucks, Komatsu’s 750E (AC) truck and Hitachi’s EH 5000AC-3 truck, all of which were launched at MINExpo, together with newly introduced or upgraded equipment from other manu-facturers such as Liebherr, Bell, Volvo, Belaz and P&H.

Geovia: A Raft of Upgrades
At MINExpo, Dassault Systèmes’ sub-sidiary Gemcom (now Geovia) intro-duced updates to its Surpac, GEMS, InSite, Whittle and MineSched mining-industry applications. “With the mining industry facing higher costs and more pressure on commodity prices, it is imperative that they can unlock addi-tional efficiencies and economic value from their mining operations,” said Moignard. “The new features will pro-vide additional tools and functionality for mining professionals to better quan-tify, plan and manage extraction of their orebodies.”

Surpac 6.4 (geology and mine-plan-ning software) will be available in the first quarter of 2013, and has a new integrated Dynamic Shells tool for sig-nificant time savings when initially evaluating deposits, Geovia said. It also has increased memory handling for faster working with very large datasets, and a new stereoscopic 3-D visualiza-tion capability. The company is also introducing a Dynamic Shells tool for its GEMS 6.5 collaborative geology and mine planning application, which will launch in early 2013.

Whittle 4.5, for open-pit mine plan-ning, now has the capability of produc-ing more practical mine plans through the use of a new mining direction fea-ture and alternative pushback creation capabilities, while MineSched 8.0 pro-vides users with much faster response times, with production scheduling up to 50-times faster and development scheduling 10-times faster than before, according to Geovia.

The upgrade to its InSite mine-pro-duction management software, version 4.2, has improved reporting and analy-sis capabilities, the company adds, helping to give users a closer view of material balances and stockpile man-agement for faster reconciliation and end-of-the-month processes.

Micromine 2013 Available Soon
From its headquarters in Western Australia, Micromine provided visitors to its MINExpo exhibit with a preview of the latest edition of its namesake explo-ration and mine design software. Micromine 2013 is scheduled for release early in the year, having still been at the development stage at the Las Vegas show.

The company reports that new fea-tures within Micromine 2013 will include capabilities for rotated block models, with one, two or three-dimen-sional rotations being supported. Orientating the blocks to match the ore-body means they are a better fit with reality, producing a smaller model and saving processing time and disc space, Micromine says.

The new version will also contain tools to simplify the creation of seam block models, including splits, plies, overburden and interburden, even in stratigraphically complex areas. The company says that Micromine’s strati-graphic modelling tools honor the origi-nal data, with smart tools that handle seam pinching and missing holes, pro-ducing a geologically correct model.

There will also be a range of new features and improved functionality for Vizex in Micromine 2013, including seam correlation, annotation layers, seismic SEG-Y, drillhole solid, color/ hatch/symbol sets, line styles and stereo 3-D.

At MINExpo, Micromine presented its Coal Measure software which, it said, is coal-industry specific in terms of terminology, features and functional-ity. The suite combines the data man-agement features and benefits of Micromine’s Geobank geological data-handling software, integrating coal database management with three-dimensional geological modelling, grid-ding, seam block modelling, resource categorization, resource reporting, pit optimization, pit design and plotting. The software is also suitable for other stratified resources, such as tin, miner-al sands, uranium and potash, as well as those with complex tectonics or mul-tiple splitting and merging of seams.

Maptek Vulcan 8.2 was released to customers in November 2012. Standout features include new rapid pit design
tools and improved grade estimation.

Post-mining Design from Carlson Software
With its center in Maysville, Kentucky, USA, Carlson Software draws its mine design credentials from its background in surveying, and now offers a complete software suite that covers data collec-tion, surveying, engineering design and drafting, mine planning and modelling, construction estimation and machine control. The company claims to be the largest provider of design software for mines in the U.S., with increasing applications in other countries.

From its initial focus on U.S. coal mining, Carlson Mining software is now used in designing operations for miner-als such limestone, trona, clay, phos-phate and other sedimentary deposits, with routines for block modelling gold, silver, copper, nickel, iron and other orebodies having been added to its capabilities. The company also offers a basic version of its mining package, allowing access to computerized design for operators who only need a low-cost tool for simple mining practices.

Aside from mine operating design, Carlson said its Natural Regrade soft-ware is unique as a tool for reclaiming mine sites, regrading surface mines back to natural land-forms. Natural Regrade provides an affordable and natural way to achieve sustainability, with its GeoFluv fluvial geomorphic design method bringing back natural landforms while establishing stability against erosion and enhancing water quality. The software enables users to build with on-site materials, save costs on material moving, reclaim steep slopes in a stable way, handle water and sediment naturally, and produce a self-maintaining, natural-looking result. New features include the ability to visu-alize vegetation growth in 3-D at vari-ous stages throughout reclamation.

Mintec Adds New Plug-ins
Mintec took the opportunity afforded by MINExpo to launch MineSight 7.5 which, it said, provides better visualiza-tion and compatibility between products. Version 7.5 includes improved versions of MineSight 3-D, Schedule Optimizer, Torque, Basis and Data Analyst.

The Tucson, Arizona, USA-based company followed this in December with the 2013 update to MineSight, version 7.6, which features new plug-ins such as a surface resloping tool for MineSight 3-D’s engineering open-pit CAD. This allows engineers to reduce a shape, such as a waste dump, to a desired final slope while balancing cut and fill requirements. MS3D also includes plug-ins for auto cut genera-tion, used to create cuts starting from polygons, polylines or solids, and Digline Generator, used to assign a min-ing sequence for cuts on every individ-ual bench of each phase.

Mintec reports it also has four new products scheduled for release early this year.

MineSight Implicit Modeler is a mathematical tool for geologists to take drillhole, polygon, point and fault-plane data, and then interpret new geological scenarios. MineSight Performance Manager is used to assess and report on mining performance in near real time, as well as providing analytical tools that can answer why something has hap-pened. MineSight Atlas is a complete package for manual scheduling and stockpile blending, while the company describes MineSight Stope as being not only a design tool, but also a very quick first-pass scheduling tool for under-ground engineers to look at alternatives for stope locations.

Hard Dollar says its Project Cost Management (PCM) package enables mining companies to make project
decisions that avoid cost overruns.

Maptek Moves Off-shore
Australia’s Maptek released the latest version of its Vulcan geological model-ling and mine planning software at the end of last year. The company noted that a customer request for generating strategic pit and dump designs led to the development of a new rapid pit design tool, which has been released in Vulcan 8.2. Mine planning engineers can quickly create mid-bench based designs, it said, as well as generating phases and reserve reports, and can evaluate multiple designs in the same amount of time previously needed for a single design.

“The new tool helps engineers to quickly create and analyze different pit designs, allowing them to look at many more alternatives before pro-ducing a final design,” said Steve Uecker, Maptek’s Vulcan client experi-ence manager.

Maptek reports that AuruMar, the South African-based joint venture established between AngloGold Ashanti and De Beers to evaluate off-shore min-eral resources, has adapted Vulcan 3-D modelling software for its exploration on 26 mining leases off-shore Nome, Alaska. Vulcan GeoModeller provides a complete set of tools for exploration and mining geologists, and can be used on both stratigraphic and non-strati-graphic deposits. The Vulcan platform allows users to do resource modelling, mine planning and reconciliation in the same environment.

Hard Dollar: Counting Cash Where it Counts
As noted earlier, plenty of mining com-panies are feeling the combined effects of soaring capex costs, upward pres-sures on operating costs and uncertain-ties over commodity markets. In a pres-entation given in April last year, Scotts-dale, Arizona-based Hard Dollar com-mented that “mining companies must take measures to manage cash flow and conserve spending, while ensuring that projects stay on schedule.”

The company went on to point out that controlling costs and managing mining resources requires a robust tool, suggesting that its Project Cost Management (PCM) package removes common hurdles from cost controls, allowing mining companies to make project decisions that easily avoid cost overruns.

While not specifically a mine design package, PCM provides a way of pro-ducing detailed, timely project status data, the company states. These data immediately show what was estimated and budgeted, versus actual project performance. Through customizable daily reports, an entire project overview is displayed, clearly showing variances and forecasts at completion.

In July 2012, Hard Dollar teamed up with Canadian company CAE to include its PCM in CAE Mining’s mine design, planning and scheduling soft-ware suite. “Hard Dollar’s integration with the new CAE Studio 5-D Planner provides customers transparent delivery of cost and productivity throughout the entire project lifecycle,” the companies said at the time, while pointing out that by integrating the two products in an industry first, they had provided users with the opportunity to merge mine design, scheduling, financial and pro-ductivity modelling for both study and operational environments.

According to Hard Dollar, PCM can reduce the time it takes to build, plan, deliver and forecast cost and productiv-ity by more than 300%, while increas-ing profits by 15% or more.

CAE Moves Deeper into Mining
A relatively recent entrant into the mine-design software market, in the past CAE has perhaps been better known world-wide for its simulator and training technology. However, the com-pany’s purchases of Datamine and Century Systems Technologies has increased its interest in the mining sec-tor, such that it now has a dedicated business area, CAE Mining.

CAE Mining supplies software tools for underground mine planning, includ-ing Mine2-4-D and its successor, CAE Studio 5-D Planner. The company’s Mineable Reserves Optimizer (MRO) package determines the optimal mining envelopes within which stopes should be designed, and can be used for pre-liminary underground reserve estima-tion. The Mineable Shape Optimizer (MSO) automatically produces opti-mized stope designs that maximize the value of recovered ore within the given geometry and design constraints. It supports massive, sub-vertical and flat horizontal deposits and can quickly generate individual stope designs with-in a resource model, CAE Mining says.

In terms of access design, Mine Layout Optimizer (MLO) produces opti-mal decline designs to satisfy access requirements and design criteria. The company suggests that this can be valu-able with rapid engineering during the analysis stages of a project, as well later once designs become more detailed.

Good Designs Save Time and Money
With so much pressure on exploration and mining companies to bring projects on stream in a cost-effective, timely manner, while working in increasingly remote and often logistically challeng-ing environments, it is hardly surprising that there is a strong market for com-prehensive software tools that can take some of the risk out of the design process. Each of the major suppliers has its own list of ‘satisfied customers’, working in locations from Nevada to Papua New Guinea, and from Australia to Appalachia.

It is, of course, sensible to remem-ber that all of these software packages rely on having accurate data to work with, so it is essential that users ensure that their input information is not only clean, but is as accurate as can be achieved. After all, the old maxim ‘garbage-in, garbage-out’ applies to design software as much as it does to any other data-reliant process.

In common with other sectors of mining and exploration technology, there appears to have been a steady trend toward consolidation within soft-ware suppliers, usually with the aim of amalgamating complementary prod-ucts. Most suppliers claim dominance in one particular aspect or another, although it is clear that no one compa-ny has an over-riding position in the wider world market. Software develop-ment and computing power have gone hand-in-hand here as elsewhere in the industry, with 64-bit technology becom-ing mainstream where large amounts of data have to be handled.

Shareholders should always be able to see where a project’s design has not met the mark. Whether they can do anything about it is, of course, another matter. Perhaps the best thing about good design is that it just keeps paying dividends.