Your mine is a race car. Here’s why.

Whether race car team or mine site, collaboration is vital to your team’s success.

Did you know that in a F1 Pit Crew alone, there are more than 20 specialised team members responsible for different elements of stabilising the car, changing the tyres, making adjustments to aerodynamics and releasing the car back onto the track? Each of these team members is specifically trained to be part of this crew.

More broadly, each role discipline in a race car team is distinct but interconnected:

• • The owners’ team provides the resources (education, capital expenditure (CAPEX), operational expenditure (OPEX));

• • The driver drives within the parameters set by the race engineer to obtain the fastest lap time possible whilst preserving tyres, brakes and fuel to complete the race;

• • The pit crew changes the tyres, brakes and fills the fuel tank as quick as possible, or repairs the car when there is unplanned damage;

• • The race engineer recommends the parameters for the driver to operate to (braking force, acceleration, engine RPM); and

• • The design team develop a vehicle that can win races and withstand the race environment based on past wins, failures and new regulations.

When it comes to collaboration among a race car team, you may see the driver, race engineer and chief mechanic huddled around the engine of the car or a computer, debating things like:

• • Where the driver can brake differently or modulate the throttle to save tyres and fuel;

• • How the mechanic could adjust suspension stiffness to provide the driver an edge; or

• • How the race engineer might adjust the pit strategy to out-manoeuvre the competition.

What you don’t see is the race engineer lining up the car on the grid.

Or the driver jumping out during the pit stop to change a tyre.

Even though a pit crew member can drive the car, they are not the expert and wouldn’t be expected to win against seven-time World Drivers’ Championship Titles winner Lewis Hamilton. Instead, each team member has clear responsibilities and key performance indicators (KPIs), and it’s the whole team’s responsibility to win the race – as a team of collaborators.

And win they do: Did you know that a Formula 1 team has been awarded the Laureus World Sports Award for Team of the Year three times?

The link between race car teams and mining teams

Although the driver may get all the glory for winning a race car championship, success is a result of many specialist team members working together. The same goes for the mining sector. It is not just the responsibility of operations to win the championship, but of a strong, collaborative team effort.

And, just like a race car driver wouldn’t jump out of the car to change their own tyre, you wouldn’t want your metallurgist operating the plant, or an operator refurbishing a pump – even if they were able to. Otherwise, they would leave a gap in their role (which is where their expertise lies) to perform a task that is beyond their realm of expertise. This is surely not the best use of their time – or your money.

What you would expect is for operators, maintainers, metallurgists and engineers to work together contributing their individual expertise, whilst understanding the strengths and weaknesses of their team members, to ‘win the race.’

As in racing, each of these roles need to work together – for example, to understand which variables contributed to your recovery dropping below target, and what needs to be done as a team to mitigate the deviation and get back on track.

The problem with silos

As in many sectors, the mining industry can suffer from siloed work environments.

There is frequently a lack of communication, for example, between the mining and processing groups. Similarly, KPIs can be allocated to the wrong people, or to individual team members when really their achievement is dependent on a broader team working together.

The outcome? Misunderstandings, wasted time and missed opportunities.

For example, if there’s a drop in recovery in your flotation circuit, there might be a misunderstanding about which levers can and should be pulled to get this recovery to come back up. Afterall, there is no magic recovery improvement button you can ask the Metallurgy Superintendent to push. This means that production deviations can take a long time to address – often not being resolved until the next production meeting. The delay can cause significant opportunity costs and frustration.

The same can happen when there is confusion between who can actually control and influence a production variable, from an accountability and responsibility perspective. In the example above, is the Metallurgy Superintendent alone actually able to control recovery? Or do operations, maintenance, metallurgy and reliability need to work together to understand what variables contributed to recovery deviating and what collectively needs to be done to mitigate the deviation (like in the race car analogy)? An individual focusing on just what they can control alone can lead to spending effort on the wrong (recovery) lever, and again cause opportunity costs.