That is the view of Parsons Brinckerhoff’s Cameron Kirkwood and Alana Burrows in their paper Standardising global infrastructure in the mining space, presented at Aspermont’s Mines and Money London last week.

To Kirkwood and Burrows, standardisation is a singular design solution for widespread uses.

In mining, that could apply to any number of aspects, from the layout of the mine infrastructure area to the components of the coal-handling and preparation plant.

A lot of what Kirkwood and Burrows espouse links up with the mining utopia of the mine as a rock factory.

It is the sort of goal companies such as Rio Tinto are chasing with its Mine of the Future or the likes of Caterpillar, Sandvik and Atlas Copco are after with their autonomous equipment programs.

Think of the benefits.

Economies of scale from going to a common parts bin. There is the ease of installation that comes from using off the shelf products.

Design times are accelerated because designs can simply be reused. Long-lead time equipment could potentially be ordered earlier in the schedule.

System commonality is another benefit. If each piece of equipment is speaking the same language it is easier to implement project and process automation.

Indeed, this very issue was one Rio Tinto had to deal with when it set about automating its Pilbara operations. It found that over time each of its operations had set up completely different systems. None of these reported in the same way. It took a lot of mathematical and computing power to find a solution to get common reporting outcomes from these divergent systems.

As an analogue of this approach, consider that a square peg can be put into a round hole if enough force is applied.

However, as has been seen with in-pit crushing and conveying installations, one of the big problems with standardisation is the loss of what could be crucial flexibility.

The authors conclude that there are significant benefits to be had by standardisation, providing there is a level of optionality embedded into a standard design.

This way it gives some room to move to cope with local geographic conditions and allow for the vagaries of grade.

However, they say that alongside developing a suite of standard designs for use globally, there has to be a governance framework in place to manage the use of the designs.

A rigorous change in management process is also required to allow for continuous improvement as more knowledge is acquired and technologies advance.

As has been seen with the Rio Tinto example, standardising processes and systems is vital.

The authors say the systems have to be governed by a standard set of rules and guidelines.

They also point out that the least costly situation may not be the most economical in the long-term.

“When it comes to the economy of the project it must be determined based on the size of the throughput versus the expected mine life and investment required,” the authors say.

This article first appeared in ILN's sister publication MiningNews.net.