However, without training, how can people come up through the industry? Some companies take the opposite view and believe it is in their interest to offer their staff training opportunities – given that they have themselves benefited from skilled staff trained up by resource majors such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.

Some mining consultants, such as SRK, instead of just bemoaning the lack of skilled engineers and the like for their businesses, have taken the view that they can benefit by becoming involved with universities, and in some cases such as Coffey Mining, they even fund courses.

There is also a push for technology to take the place of people on the ground. This is helping to reduce some of the skills shortage pressures.

Snowden Mining Consultants director Phil Snowden told Australia’s Mining Monthly that the difficulty companies such as Snowden faced was in seeking specific skills sets. “If you put out an ad and ask for general mining engineers to work in Perth, we’d probably get about 100 applications,” he said. “But as soon as you start specifying the skills needed, the numbers drop off dramatically.”

However, some consultants, such as Coffey Mining chief operating officer Dan O’Toole, believe there has not been enough attention spent on attracting people to key mining courses such as engineering.

“The reason we’ve got the skills shortage is that despite there being a mining boom on, we’re closing engineering courses,” he said. “The number of graduates coming into the industry is diminishing. Australia is turning out the same number of engineering graduates as it was nine years ago.”

With demand increasing and the number of new graduates coming into the industry not matching that increase, another option is for companies to provide training. Some companies have told AMM in the past that while they offer training, they feel that sometimes the effort is wasted because their newly trained staff takes those skills elsewhere.

Snowden said he did not share the view that companies were limiting their approach to training.

“We’ve found companies are very willing to spend on training their own people,” he said. “We’re in the training and mentoring business ourselves, so from what I’ve seen from that I would have to say the companies out there have a strong commitment to training their people.

“We’ve all been beneficiaries of the training largesse of the WMCs and BHPs. They have been de facto trainers for the industry. This company has certainly benefited from employing people who have come through that system. What goes around comes around.”

It would be fair to say there is a high level of mobility within the mining industry at the moment – at virtually all levels. Consultants, for example, are moving from one firm to the next with great ease.

Snowden offers this example: “We lost a person to another consulting group the other day. Today I’ve received an application from a person coming to join us from that same consultancy.”

One thing helping to ease the burden on skilled staff is the advances in fields such as monitoring technology.

Golder Associates mining sector leader Ian Lipton said such technology enabled truck movements and geotechnical activity to be viewed from remote locations. He said this allowed consultants to do some of their tasks offsite, which allowed for a more efficient use of their time.

Australia’s Mining Monthly