Championing cultural change for the digitisation of mining
CORE Skills Facilitator and mining innovation ground breaker Andrew Scott shares his views on how to erode cultural inertia to allow for the resources sector’s successful digital transformation
Andrew Scott has been involved in the mining innovation arena since the beginning of his career over 30 years ago.
If ever he felt that a position within a company wasn’t giving him mining technology exposure, Andrew soon discovered that he would engineer himself into those roles. Case in point: when Michelle Ash became Chief Innovation Officer at Barrick, he ensured he was on her team delivering on their digital strategy as Senior Director Innovation.
As Chairman of the Global Mining Standards and Guidelines Group between 2014 and 2016, Andrew thoroughly enjoyed working with motivated and passionate people to improve the industry through collaboration, guidelines, and standards.
Andrew has recently taken up the position of Principle Innovator at Symbiotic Innovations, and coupled with his concurrent role as CORE Skills Facilitator, he is enthusiastic about further supporting the resource sector’s successful digital transformation.
We recently caught up with Andrew to discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with the digitisation of mining and the necessary cultural shift. Here’s what he had to say:
What has been your involvement in the mining technology space?
Essentially it goes back to the very beginning. I studied biotechnology and then computer science at the University of Queensland and had to find a way to pay my way through university, so that’s what initially drew me into the mining industry. I completely maxed out my workload at university, as I have always been interested in so many things.
As a young field assistant, I quickly found myself fulfilling the role of “go-to” person for any new technology that needed to be investigated or implemented.
I feel as though I’ve been in the innovation space for my whole career, because I have always worked with people to solve problems, worked with researchers to research and then solve problems, and helped researchers implement proof of concepts and then test things.
As Senior Director, Digital Mining at Barrick, I had the scope of providing technical information systems and support for the entire mining process, which included everything from exploration, feasibility, construction, production, reconciliation, through mine closure.
Working with people to solve problems has always been a passion of mine.
The industry is currently going through a massive digital shift. As one of the slower industries to get on board, how would you describe the biggest challenges associated with this ongoing transformation?
A lot of companies are still dealing with the cultural inertia, so it is this classic resistance to change.
The words digital transformation are not helping at times, as they are definitely buzz words at the moment, and there are a lot of charlatans and snakes in the grass who are capitalising on this, which is not helping matters.
But, when the tyre hits the road, organisations fundamentally need to change, and they are having trouble dealing with that change. There is a big lease of space required and so I see that as being the biggest challenge for the industry.
What have been the digitisation goals in some of your more recent roles? What have you been striving to achieve?
I was originally involved with defining the digital strategy with Michelle Ash at Barrick. Gordon Chiu, the CIO at the time, and the Chairman John Thornton both realised that things had to change quickly, and with help from some high-ranking consultants we were informed to go forth and digitise.
I was heavily involved in that strategy session, due to my role within the IT organisation that straddled IT and the business. I had a team of people that was a multi-disciplinary team with geologists, physicists, engineers, and software people. We were in that role interacting with sites, directly solving problems and implementing new technology, essentially in an innovation type role already, so it made sense for me to be involved in the digitisation.
I helped speed up the process and communicate the strategy by working closely with the site.
Once it got going, it was decided that the change agent had to be setting up a new digital organisation dedicated to the innovation function to get the digital ship ready to set sail.
Following this, I worked with Michelle to define that innovation strategy.
What do you think about the current state of preparedness for the digitisation of most resource sector organisations?
It comes back to the cultural inertia, the biggest pieces that are needed are education, to raise awareness, and a lot of sharing.
I have been heavily involved in the global mining guidelines group because it’s a valuable forum to collaborate on ideas, validate ideas, talk to like-minded people and leverage case studies and lessons learnt.
There are a lot of pitfalls and so, the more we can learn from people who have made those pitfalls, the more we can learn as an industry to implement improvements across the board.
In the past, many organisations would not share quite the level of detail that they are willing to today. However, because everyone is dealing with this cultural inertia challenge now, the more we share and collaborate around key things, the better off everyone is, industry wide.
Another piece of this is that the fees have accelerated for technological development, so getting your arms around that is difficult for most organisations. The latest is around the 5G discussions, global organisations have lapped into other technologies, so the question is: what do we do now? There needs to be a lot of active discussion around that.
It is crucial to acknowledge that there is positive action around sharing. It goes beyond a conversation.
Several organisations have tried it and it has been successful, especially in Barrick’s case. The embedding of people and their knowledge — having embedded researchers and embedded company or industry people on the research team has been highly successful.
What we are seeing now is this collaboration being translated to organisations allowing people to come in from other peer organisations to work on joint projects, not just to come and have a look, but to roll up their sleeves and co-create. I think we need to be doing more of that.
Opening up operational data for initiatives like hackathons and online competitions to crowd source solutions has also been extremely valuable. Not only for the resulting prototype solutions, but also as an education piece. To raise awareness outside the industry that there are challenges in mining that are solvable and can be translated to other industries.
How do you see these challenges impacting industry players in Queensland specifically?
Queensland is interesting. I have lived here for long time but have also worked elsewhere, so I also have an outsider’s perspective. Now that I am in Queensland a lot more and interacting with groups, it is a truly interesting ecosystem.
There is a bit of a west-coast and east-coast industry dynamic still in play for different reasons, but one notable thing about Queensland is that it has some well-established research organisations and programs, along with many METS companies based here that interact with them. Then you have some of the major players who have a significant presence, including Rio Tinto, BHP, and Anglo American. The ecosystem is becoming more active and innovative and therefore there are some real opportunities to leverage the industry’s maturity and take it one step further.
So, whether it’s through further standards of excellence, or other initiatives, with further injection of funds and motivation, there are a lot of good things that could happen here.
Brisbane has been called the Silicon Valley of mining technology. Imagine if that could be amplified by working closely with other startup hubs, not just in person but in vibrant communities like South Australia.
Queensland has a lot of base metal resources. Mt Isa, for example, is a very established area, and there is a lot of underground potential in parts of Queensland that is unexplored.
There is new technology that will open that up, so it is going to be a very exciting period. There is also a valid opportunity to demonstrate to the world that we can use high quality coal and that the need for coal is still there. We could use this data as a demonstrator of what could happen.
What I am really interested in is a tighter interaction, integration and collaboration with other industry groups, for example: applying advanced manufacturing technologies to resource extraction.
The Queensland Government is very supportive of innovation, so there are real opportunities in Queensland. If we put our minds to it, we could set up a variety of centres of excellence and hubs for specific contexts, such as robotics research and technology. There isn’t one in any single city in Australia, so Brisbane can lead the way. What is needed is the motivation — this can be pure cash funding, but it can also be about demand.
What are the more pressing challenges associated with the transformation?
The realisation and the acceptance that mining isn’t special is critical. We need to be able to attract people who are focusing on other industries or who have forgotten or not even considered mining. This can be done in part through hackathons, and we need talk to mining schools about this, as the number of mining engineers graduating is now at its lowest.
Attracting talent into the industry is one part of the equation, but we also need to be looking at core degrees and considering the need for change to these degrees. Mining engineering needs to change to remain relevant and attract people to these schools.
By educating geologists in data science, we are offering a different way of thinking for industry, starting at the educational level. Robotics is another area to look at, but again we need to look at the current curriculum at university level for graduate and under-graduates to really try and make sure we have right resources needed to be building the mines of the future. This is a very pressing need.
I am convinced that it is not just about university but vocational training, courses need to be upgraded, especially with the newer technology available.
As an example, I have been involved in “core to rig” technologies. Currently, there is only one driller that knows how to drill these types of rigs within the hard rock space. This is the perfect opportunity for discussion around accelerating vocational training programs for these types of operators.
What do you think industry leadership might look like moving into the future?
Mining companies are going to look very different in the future. By that, I mean there will be greater diversity of backgrounds of people in leadership positions. To nurture this cross-industry collaboration and experience, I see people coming from other industries into mining coupled with a high degree of people leaving the industry and coming back with more diverse experience.
Leadership will certainly change, so you won’t have to be in mining to become a General Manager. Why not an IT professional or someone from a completely different business unit?
We are starting to see this with Chief Digital Officers and Chief Innovation Officers coming from different industries, and we need to see more of that. We need to be encouraging leaders from other industries and nurturing our leaders within the industry to make sure they don’t just think from a single industry perspective.
There were discussions whilst I was surrounded by academics about academics moving into industry and back into academia and vice versa. This was seen as incredibly healthy, so there is going to be more of that.
How do you see yourself being involved in industry 4.0?
I want to foster that deep collaboration and culture of change in any way that I can, whether it is through exposing people to different experiences or helping organisations to address that cultural change.
I want to foster learning from other industries, as we are not alone in these challenges. I want to demonstrate and help the industry and its communities to think about different business models — who owns resources assets, and the ways in which we can leverage the value.
I would ultimately like to see mineral resources as a kick starter for economic development for an area, whether it be country or regional. We need to think longer term and think about the secondary and tertiary uses of anything: equipment, displacement of materials, waste for building, excavation for energy, harvesting, energy storage research and fostering startups. I would like to continue being involved in these areas.
What drew you to be engaged in the delivery of the CORE Skills program?
I have been watching how CORE Innovation Hub has developed over the years. CORE Director Zane Prickett and the team at Unearthed have helped with hackathons and other open innovation initiatives over the last few years, and I can see the maturity of CORE and it is well placed.
I think the time is right to start to look at skill development differently and so that is what attracted me to become involved. We need to be doing more of this in the sector, leveraging insights from other industries and really getting “rubber on the ground” in terms of accelerating industry change.
I will inject whatever industry experience I can into the CORE Skills program. I am passionate about changing the industry, as it has given me a lot over my career. I want to give back and see the industry become more vibrant, sustainable and attractive.
How do you see CORE Skills being a part of the solution?
I am hoping that we can affect significant change from senior management that will not only empower their staff, but also influence their whole supply chain of organisations.
We need change not only at the mining companies, but throughout the whole value chain. If we can educate these companies and individuals and get them to a point where they are essentially encouraging all companies who interact with them to engage in similar programs, the impact and momentum will be significant.
I am hoping this will open up further opportunities for collaboration and I love the fact that University of Western Australia BHP Billiton Fellow for Engineering for Remote Operations Melinda Hodkiewicz is involved. There is a need to approach the academic change, and also future opportunities for vocational training — to spin out and work closely with organisations that provide that level of training.
This program has immense potential to start a ground swell of change from a skills development and education perspective that will feed straight back in helping organisations deal with disruption in a positive way.
We would like to thank CORE Skills Facilitator Andrew Scott for taking the time to talk with us and sharing his insights into how the mining industry can best adapt their culture to fully embrace opportunities associated with the resources sector’s successful digitisation.
CORE Innovation Hub
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