mine planning
There are two stories inside Grant Thornton's latest mining contractors report, and the one getting most of the attention is the wrong one.
A recent industry webinar hosted ahead of the AusIMM International Mining Geology Conference 2026 brought together leading practitioners to tackle one of underground mining’s most persistent challenges: reconciliation.
There’s a moment in every technological revolution when optimism meets reality - when the glossy promise of transformation hits the grit of practical deployment.
Unlocking up to 70 per cent faster mine planning cycles and millions in additional project value is now within reach for operations that combine centralised data systems, virtual twins and advanced optimisation engines.
As mining companies increasingly operate from hundreds, sometimes thousands, of kilometres away from the pit or plant, one challenge has remained constant – how to give remote teams the same operational context, detail, and situational awareness they’d have if they were standing on site.
Every hour of downtime costs a mine tens of thousands of dollars, and Professor Amir Gandomi told the NSW Resources Regulator’s Mechanical Engineering Safety Seminar how artificial intelligence is now cutting those losses by predicting failures and optimising operations in seconds.
Henry Dillon, Global Customer Success Manager - Geoscience at Maptek, used his time on stage at APCOM2025 in Perth to challenge one of the industry’s most entrenched habits - treating resource models as static snapshots.
When mining engineer Eddy Zhang took the stage at the 2025 AusIMM Underground Operators Conference in Adelaide, he was candid about the task at hand: “Today I’ll be presenting learnings from reorientating the Ernest Henry sublevel cave.
For Superintendent of Mine Planning Anne-Marie Ebbels, the expansion of BHP’s Prominent Hill operation isn’t just a technical upgrade—it’s a strategic shift in how the mine approaches longevity, productivity and sustainability.
In a bold shift from business-as-usual block modelling, a team of geologists has turned their attention to the part of the orebody most often ignored — waste — and what they’ve uncovered could reshape how mining operations plan for ESG risk.
