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Cross-Discipline Collaboration Keeps Underground Design on Track
Introduction
MEC Case Study: Solving a Technical Modelling Challenge for an Underground Gold Operation
Project Stream: Execution
Project Stage: Mine Design and Reserves
Type of Mine: Underground
Region: Western Australia
Commodity: Gold
The Challenge
MEC’s Underground Mining team was engaged to complete mine design work and volume calculations for an underground gold operation in Western Australia.
During the project, the team encountered difficulties extracting usable surfaces from client-supplied wireframe solids. Without these surfaces, critical design work and volume calculations could not proceed, creating the potential for delays and additional information requests to the client.
The Approach
1. Identifying an Alternative Solution
Rather than returning to the client for additional data, MEC leveraged expertise from within the broader business to identify a practical solution.
2. Cross-Team Technical Collaboration
The Open Cut Mining team recognised that a tool commonly used in surface mining applications within Deswik could be adapted to solve the underground modelling challenge.
3. Applying Existing Tools in a New Way
Using the Extract Faces by Orientation function, the team successfully generated the required surfaces from the existing wireframe data, allowing the underground design process to continue.
4. Knowledge Sharing Across Disciplines
The Open Cut team worked directly with the Underground team to demonstrate the workflow and explain how the methodology could be applied within an underground mining environment.
The Outcome
- Required surfaces successfully extracted from the client-supplied wireframes.
- Underground design work and volume calculations completed without interruption.
- Potential project delays avoided.
- No additional information requests required from the client.
Key Impact: By leveraging expertise across disciplines, MEC quickly resolved a technical challenge and maintained project delivery timelines without creating additional workload for the client.
Next Steps
The project has been successfully completed. Beyond the immediate outcome, the collaboration created valuable internal knowledge sharing between MEC’s Open Cut and Underground teams, strengthening future project delivery capability.
MEC Mining: Combining practical experience and cross-disciplinary expertise to solve technical challenges and keep projects moving.
