Speaking to MiningNewsPremium.net, Gemcom Australia managing director Nic Pollock said it is a difficult time for mining companies in relation to the skills shortage, which he believes has been building up gradually over the past five years.

"Mining companies are getting hit at both ends; a resource boom and an ageing population," he said.

Pollock explained that with the combination of complicated pieces of software that has taken years for people to master and younger people with not a lot of experience on their hands, useability of software is a major factor with mining companies not able to spend time and/or resources on training.

"Useability is an important thing for us at the moment so we can get people skilled up much, much quicker," he said.

Surpac 6.0, the latest version of the Surpac series, claims that it addresses some of the challenges confronting the mining sector including skills shortages, and also enables companies to train staff quicker as well as ensuring consistent processes and workflow.

With over 2500 mining sites in 90 countries using Gemcom products, Surpac 6.0 also boasts of a multi-language platform supporting English, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, German and French.

That feature has come especially handy for Canadian company Capstone Mining where its senior geologist Michelle Stone has trialled the software on both her English- and Spanish-speaking staff in Canada and Mexico.

Stone said with consistency to processes and automation abilities, staff can do more in less time using the Surpac software, and at the same time saving time for the company.

"Having used all the major competitive products over the last 10 years, we have standardised on Surpac because it not only provides the right features for exploration and mining projects, but also the capabilities needed to support global staff with differing skills sets, working in multiple languages," Stone said.

The effectiveness of the program comes through with Surpac's simplified workflows and greater interaction with on-screen displays for its primary uses including ore body evaluation, mine design, mine planning and production, which enable geologists, engineers and surveyors to "accomplish more in less time".

The main features of Surpac 6.0 include the new "Move tool" that allows users to move selected data to a new location within seconds, where in the past that process would have taken hours.

Also included is the new "plotting engine", which has new graphical editing tools and allows plot data items to be grouped and moved together.

"Also incorporated is an easy, one-step operation to produce plan/strip plots for drillhole data," Gemcom said.

Surpac 6.0 capabilities can also be enhanced with the addition of other Gemcom software including Whittle, Mineshed and InSite.

And there is no rest for Gemcom just yet, as the company is determined to be at the forefront of mining software technology, with its vice president of research and development Steve Carter commenting that plans for Surpac 6.1 are already starting to crystallise.

MiningNewsPremium.net