BHP is thinking of new ways to accelerate exploration at its operations. So how is it doing this?
“This all seems very obvious, but it is actually quite hard.”
That is BHP chief technical officer Laura Tyler discussing the need for the major miner to continue growing if it wants to continue delivering what its customers need.
And the key to that growth is exploration, but looking for new mineral resources is a difficult, costly and time-consuming undertaking.
“It is difficult to find new deposits,” Tyler said at a Melbourne Mining Club luncheon in late 2022. “They are becoming deeper, harder to access in more challenging regions.
“We identify some promising geology and we start sampling and drilling. This process can be not only invasive but takes time.
“We all know how exploration works now.”
But there is light at the end of the exploration tunnel.
“There are some amazing new solutions in the technology and innovation and data space that are making this process so much more efficient and less invasive,” she said.
“At BHP, we use mineral systems methodologies to identify the terrains we think are interesting, and then we can use a range of non-invasive land and airborne-sensing techniques that allow us to better understand the subsurface, both greenfield and brownfield.
“New technologies allow us to target drill holes much more effectively. And the additional detail we can see between drill holes allows more efficient mine planning through more accurate resource characterisation.”
All of this new technology is great and makes for a relatively easier exploration process, but even for majors, collaboration – and a certain level of humility – is vital.
“That means we have to embrace new ideas, new ways of working, different ways of thinking,” Tyler said. “Not always easy for a company the size of BHP.
“We have to acknowledge we don’t have all the answers.”
Exploring new ideas
BHP does not limit its exploration activities to drilling for new deposits.
In acknowledging it does not have all the answers, the company understands it needs to look to others to help broaden its knowledge base. This has come in the form of investing in start-up companies like Kobold and SensOre in Australia, and SRK and DeepIQ in Chile.
These innovators use advanced artificial intelligence (AI) to enable BHP to widen its search space and cover ground more efficiently.
BHP has also launched its own processes for finding better exploration ideas.
“Opening ourselves up and inviting good ideas in will only make us stronger,” Tyler said.
“In that spirit, we launched a program called BHP Xplor this past year, looking for new concepts … in early-stage minerals exploration that we can help accelerate.
“Xplor is a global program that searches for start-ups in the early exploration stage by supporting prospectors with innovative and breakthrough ideas to find new mineral deposits.
“It merges concepts from both venture capital and early-stage accelerators, offering mentoring and networking.”
Internal operations
Looking inward, BHP has also taken strides in implementing new ways of working that are designed to make better use of digital technology.
The company understands that it can improve its exploration activities by making better use of the massive amounts of data the resources industry generates every day.
“Our technology team has set up digital factories for each of our operated assets to find, curate and use the data already available to define new solutions,” Tyler said.
“Together with product owners, they are changing the relationship of BHP operations with the data they collect.”
Of course, leveraging that information requires skilled people but finding – and keeping – those people is not as easy as it once was.
“How do we attract and retain these skills from mining engineers to stack developers to industrial engineers and venture capitalists?” Tyler said.
“We have to talk differently about the work we offer.”
One of the systems the major miner has in place is the BHP Operating System (BOS), which offers a holistic mindset to operational structure and is designed to empower employees from the ground up.
“We’ve been working on the BHP Operating System since 2017,” Tyler said at the BofA SmartMine conference in late June 2022.
“Our goal was to create a way of working that makes improvements central to everyone’s role in the pursuit of operational excellence, taking inspiration from the leading car makers such as Toyota and the Toyota method.
“It (BOS) builds on foundations that we’ve built over the previous decades, including … increasing digitisation, implementation of centres of excellence, and our move to the cloud more recently.”
Tyler said that as it introduces greater digitisation and new ways of working, BHP needs “more electricians, more digitally savvy operators and maintainers, more robotics experts”.
She highlighted recently visiting a coal mine and meeting a maintainer completing field checks with an iPad as an example of the benefits of these new ways of work in action.
“He took me through how he completes the check on the new autonomous fleet at Goonyella,” Tyler said.
“He could point to the very real benefits of his new way of working, from the connectivity to the predictive maintenance plans and uploading of issues in real-time, to the assurance of a job well done by his cross-shift due to standardised work methodologies, to the new skills he had gained that had given him the confidence to join Facebook with his grandkids.
“He was engaged and pleased with the change – the tools had made his work better and more reliable.”
This feature appeared in the February issue of Australian Resources & Investment.