Mining projects and operations are under constant pressure to deliver positive ESG outcomes. These requirements are set by a wide range of stakeholders, such as investors, local landowners, governments and broader communities.
Improving ESG outcomes continues to drive mining companies and engineers to seek new solutions and innovations to overcome operational challenges, which include reducing energy consumption, emissions, water consumption, footprint and producing safe and stable rehabilitated land from tailings and waste.
How to drive innovation
To drive innovation in an engineering business, the most important factor, above all else is culture. All people within the organisation need to be motivated and supported to “find a better way”. As Phil Dakin, Ausenco’s Principal Layout Designer quoted recently, engineers and project developers need to ask “why” – and once they become proficient at asking and understanding “why” they need to ask “why not”, and leverage creativity and ingenuity to propose novel solutions.
The best questions are those that are asked across interfaces of role, discipline, scope or company. Questions asked across different knowledge areas will help grow understanding for both the person asking the question and the person answering it. A great question will often cause the whole project team to think at a higher level of detail and provoke ideas and new solutions.
When questions are asked across contract or scope interfaces, for example from a client to an engineer, or from an engineer to a vendor or constructor, all parties benefit from improved understanding and alignment. Recent work between Ausenco and an equipment supplier (in the form of iterative Q&A and thought-provoking discussions) has led to large simplifications in their equipment, and 30 – 40% reduction in total installed cost, for the benefit of our mutual clients.
Although asking questions is a simple concept, in practice there are many barriers to positive engagement and this style of thinking. For teams to be truly innovative, organisational hierarchies need to be as flat as possible, people need to be naturally inquisitive and strongly inspired, ideas need to be developed collaboratively, and the team needs to be open-minded to challenge and rebuild pre-existing conventions from fundamental principles. The whole project team, inclusive of clients, engineers and suppliers need to be fundamentally focussed on the objective of finding better ways for the project and all stakeholders.
“At the end of the day, innovative behaviours are reliant on natural curiosity, inquisition, and creating a problem-solving culture, rather than formal qualifications. It’s simply a desire to want to do things better at all levels within an organisation.”
Ideas versus innovation
Once a good idea is generated, the work has only just started. Most ideas never progress beyond the idea phase, as they lack the pull-through to execution and a strong and clearly defined business case proposition. “The decision to adopt a new innovation at an increased cost will always be met with resistance concerning return on the investment,” explained Pyle.
Ausenco considers innovation a little differently, as Pyle highlights “Like all good engineering decisions, innovation must be approached with a clear focus on the business case. The benefits to all stakeholders must be quantified in some way, and must clearly outweigh the costs or downsides”. If this is done poorly, suboptimal decisions can lead to ‘local’ instead of ‘global’ optimisations, often undervaluing ESG benefits or underestimating ESG risks.
Pyle added, “This is the difference between an idea and true innovation. It is this focus on holistic value that pulls innovation through the ‘innovation valley of death’ into highly applicable, sustainable and scalable solutions. It is also this approach that resonates with decision makers.”
Ironically, net value is often a good proxy for a wide range of ESG metrics and generally promotes the right decision-making behaviours when properly assessed. For example, projects with reduced economic costs and reduced risks tend to also trend with reduced energy consumption, reduced carbon footprint, reduced water consumption and reduced footprint. If a value assessment is completed holistically inclusive of ESG factors, the project team can optimise the total project outcomes to the benefit of all stakeholders.
“The same skills and approaches required for great engineering by default, with less energy, steel and concrete, align with the same engineering skills required to reduce energy, water and tailings in alignment with ESG outcomes,” he said. “At Ausenco, we use this approach and culture to drive step-change projects that lead the market in terms of performance, cost and ESG outcomes”.
Overcoming future engineering challenges
Pyle explained, “The good news is that the technical outcomes are easy. As an industry, we already have proven approaches that can halve the energy, water and tailings footprint for major mining operations, delivering positive ESG and financial outcomes. The challenge is driving and growing acceptance of innovation across the wider industry to accelerate implementation.”
“It has been 10 years since Ausenco designed the first coarse particle flotation circuit which was successfully demonstrated in a hard rock copper-gold application at Cadia, and yet, it has only been implemented at three other hard rock operations since. Bulk ore sorting is operating successfully at scale. Novel tailings dewatering and management approaches have components which are industrially proven in isolation, but the pieces of the puzzle have not yet been holistically integrated. New innovations continue to be tested and proven, but implementation at scale within capital intensive mining operations is a complex exercise in people and change management that most businesses struggle to overcome.”
A key part of Ausenco’s role, is therefore working with all stakeholders and mining companies to develop and apply the best industry understanding and capability, so that innovative solutions are not only technically viable, but practically demonstrable, successfully implemented and with confidence supported by a proven track record of delivering innovation.
Copper in the spotlight
There are several examples of Ausenco’s commitment to innovation and improved ESG outcomes. Figure 1 shows how innovations and good designs have the potential to significantly reduce the amount of steel and concrete consumed in the construction of a project, with commensurate reductions in embodied energy and emissions, as well as reduced effort and schedule to construct.
Figure 2 shows how Ausenco’s recent copper projects have ramped up quickly to nameplate, which is only possible with a good understanding and management of all interfaces, through a truly innovative and collaborative culture.
Two recent copper projects in South America reflect Ausenco’s commitment to innovation, as well as expertise in delivering groundbreaking engineering projects situated in the most challenging and remote parts of the world.
Mina Justa demonstrates Ausenco’s innovative approach to deliver a unique implementation of a full mine-to-port solution, including all onsite processing infrastructure, overland pipelines, port facilities as well as a 12 Mt/y oxide and 6 Mt/y copper sulphide plant.
“Our design for the oxide plant used an energy efficient HPGR crushing circuit coupled with a 650 m long vat leaching circuit at unprecedented scale, which unlocked a previously-stranded copper project, producing more than 99 per cent pure copper cathode at very low water consumption with environmentally stable and safe residues.”
A second project, the Mantoverde Development Project in Chile, saw Ausenco design, construct and ramp up a 12 Mt/y copper concentrator in Chile, inclusive of desalination plant expansion and sand-tailings storage facility. This project was inaugurated late last year for Capstone Copper.
Pyle commented, “The team challenged the project designs and delivered ESG improvements and cost efficiencies by redesigning the plant to reduce footprint, improve constructability and reducing the energy consumption of the plant my carefully managing the pumped water flows”. We ultimately delivered a concentrator that is energy and cost efficient to operate, at approximately half the capital cost per lb Cu produced when compared to other concentrator projects in Chile.”