Published in June 2008 Australian Longwall Magazine

Mike Rowland, principal underground consultant, Runge.

In its most basic form, the biggest issue facing any longwall mining operation is how to improve the bottom line cash flow of the business in the face of gradually more difficult mining conditions.

Longwall operations are facing increasing depths, levels of gas and geotechnical complexity, with issues such as multi-seam mining. As underground mining is a highly fixed cost business, the operational focus is primarily on producing more tonnage to dilute these fixed costs.

Most operations consequently focus most of their attention on operational and equipment related issues, seeking various improvements that can translate to increased production.

More often than not they overlook or do not fully recognise the significant value that initial good business and mine planning can provide. Too often the focus of the business shifts towards building and supporting an efficient operations team and overlooks developing an experienced team of mine planning practitioners, using procedures and purpose-built tools, so as to develop optimum mining strategies.

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 largely by the proficiency of the mine planning practitioners, as they effectively set the foundations of the mine business and the path along which the mine will operate. Trying to efficiently operate a business built on poor foundations isn’t a recipe for high success.

Having a well developed and thoroughly analysed life of mine strategy and associated plans significantly enhances the ability of operations personnel to achieve consistent production outcomes in line with forecast expectations.

These strategies and plans only come about from having well developed and well understood planning processes, using appropriate tools tailored to meet those processes and engaging appropriately experienced planning personnel.

Runge’s experience shows that in many mining operations, the mine planning processes have not been designed from a business and workflow modelling perspective, are generally not well documented, and are therefore not understood by the mine planning practitioners. Compounding this situation is the rapid movement of personnel throughout the industry.

Runge suggests that this situation can be tackled by: recognising that significant business value can be realised by developing best practice planning systems, tools and personnel; building a clear view of what a best practice mine and business planning process can and should deliver; and engaging with specialist mine planning groups to assist in:

• Building and documenting the mine planning processes and procedures in a concise and modular fashion;

• Designing and tailoring best practice software modelling tools to meet the process requirements; and
• Implementing a monitoring and control architecture that can ensure compliance within the planning processes, transparency in data and assumptions and provide the necessary corporate governance.