Gold Mining Company

Gold miner recoups time and delayed revenues on development project

Challenge

When a development project at a block-cave mining operation in Canada threatened to overrun by more than three months and cause over $64m in delayed revenue, the company needed to rapidly clear the development backlog and get the project back on track.

Solution

dss⁺ was engaged in a rapid turnaround program over 8 weeks aimed at accelerating the development rate to address existing overruns and prevent them from extending further. The engagement was designed and successfully delivered around three key focus areas:

• Baselining historical performance and engaging over 30 members of the development team to identify key levers and priority actions in order to reduce cycle times and accelerate development rates
• Establishing effective management operating system routines and disciplines with action orientated short-interval controls to identify variation and drive corrective actions. These include start-of shift visual boards, daily management reviews and action tracking, weekly operations and improvement KPI reviews to drive improvements and reinforce short-interval controls
• Intense on-the-job coaching of supervisors and superintendents to drive targets and deliver backlog recovery