Across the mining industry, pressure to accelerate project development is intensifying. Strong demand for critical minerals, commodity price volatility and rising expectations from investors are all encouraging owners and developers to move projects into production as quickly as possible.

Against this backdrop, accelerating project schedules often makes commercial sense. Yet, in many cases, it seems the drive for speed is beginning to overshadow the discipline of effective risk management. In my experience, when early study work is compressed or bypassed, risk does not disappear. It usually moves downstream, where the time and cost required to remediate issues can have a far greater impact on schedule, capital and stakeholder confidence than the studies themselves.

It’s all about risk mitigation

Mining has never been a low-risk business, but today's projects face a broader and more interconnected set of challenges than ever before.

In part, that is because more familiar risks have become increasingly complex. Environmental approvals are more demanding, community expectations continue to evolve, and regulatory scrutiny has intensified across many jurisdictions. Securing a social licence to operate has become just as important as securing financing.

At the same time, the technical risks remain just as significant as ever. The fastest projects to deliver are those with good certainty regarding orebody variability, metallurgical performance, engineering assumptions, and permitting constraints. That’s what really determines whether projects ultimately deliver the pace and returns anticipated during development.

Where early studies create project value

Increasingly, we hear project teams questioning whether traditional study phases are slowing them down. The motivation is understandable. Markets reward speed, and development capital is expensive. The problem is that bypassing critical early work rarely creates true speed. It simply pushes uncertainty into later stages of the project, where decisions are harder to reverse, and the cost of change is significantly higher.

Value is often created long before construction starts. It is created in the study stages, when teams can still test assumptions, compare options, challenge design choices, and make informed trade-offs. By the time a project reaches execution, many of those choices are locked in. Execution is where value is either protected or eroded. If the early work has been rushed, or assumptions are weak, value is lost through redesign, rework, procurement changes, schedule slippage and avoidable capital escalation.

That is why study stages should not be viewed simply as gateways to the next investment decision. They are one of the most valuable opportunities to improve project outcomes. Why?

They help optimise capital costs. Early studies allow project teams to validate assumptions, compare options and optimise flowsheets and plant designs before the project is locked into a single path. Once major design, procurement and construction decisions are made, those options become much harder and more expensive to revisit.
They improve constructability. Bringing constructability thinking into early design helps ensure that what looks efficient on paper can actually be built safely, efficiently and economically. This is particularly important in remote mining regions, brownfield expansions or complex logistics environments.
They reduce delays. A comprehensive study process helps identify environmental, social, regulatory and procurement risks before they become delays, disputes or issues. It also provides opportunities to engage communities, suppliers, and other stakeholders earlier, offering a clearer understanding of the required pathways and highlighting any issues that require early attention.
They facilitate better decision-making and investor confidence. Stronger technical confidence leads to more reliable capital estimates, operating cost forecasts, valuations and assessments of economic resilience. That gives owners, investors and lenders a clearer view of project risk before committing major capital and enables informed decisions that support pace and cost certainty across the project lifecycle.

The cost of moving too quickly

I’ve spent more than 40 years in the industry and have seen firsthand what can go wrong when mining leaders rush decisions or skip critical steps, often resulting in costly production delays.

On one South American project, an owner was preparing to present its development strategy to investors when a detailed review revealed that part of the proposed mine plan incorporated ore bodies the company did not actually control. Identifying the issue at that point avoided what could have become a major commercial and reputational problem.

In South-East Asia, a large-scale project unfortunately underestimated the influence of local communities and the church during the permitting process. While technical work progressed, stakeholder engagement never really did. Years later, the project has yet to export its first concentrate.

In another case, an Australian operation only discovered after purchasing its major mechanical equipment that its orebody behaved differently from earlier assumptions. The result was a projected reduction in plant throughput that fundamentally altered the operation's economics and required an expensive reassessment.

Pace depends on predictability

In my experience, the most successful projects are rarely those that move fastest through the study phase, but rather those that build sufficient technical and commercial confidence to execute with fewer surprises.

At Ausenco, we work with mining companies to accelerate development without compromising technical rigour. Our multidisciplinary teams integrate engineering and commercial expertise from the earliest stages of project development, helping clients identify risks before they become costly delays. Whether supporting greenfield developments, expanding existing operations, or helping projects recover from unforeseen challenges, our experience across global mining jurisdictions enables us to deliver practical solutions to complex development challenges.

In today's market, delivering projects quickly is increasingly important. That is precisely why early study work matters.