When I started in mine planning back in the day, everybody was talking about this Revenue Factor 1 thing. At some point I couldn't contain myself anymore, and I asked my manager what does it mean, and he explained: When doing a Whittle Open Pit Optimisation, the software generates an array of Nested Shells, or incremental shells, say in 0.25 intervals. Revenue factor is defined as: (incremental cost)/(incremental revenue). At a RF =1 pit, the incremental cost = incremental re

The video shows a glimps of the fun to be had at the Mine Scheduling course from 14 to 16 March at University of Pretoria. One thing I really enjoy of the software is the user-friendliness and the clarity of the animations. Don't take my word for it, come and have a look for yourself!!

During the week of 12 to 16 March the School of Rock is presenting 2 mine planning courses at the University of Pretoria. The courses are aimed at especially new employees that entered the open-pit mine planning arena, to teach them the fundamental basics of mine design as well as mine scheduling, using industry software sponsored by our partners (Optron's TOP-D & RPMGlobal's OPMS). Not only new employees, but people looking to further their understanding of open-pit mining a

Sash Pillay has been newly appointed as a Senior Mining Engineer in the planning department of an open pit iron ore mine in South Africa. With a background in underground copper planning, he required the skill-set needed to transcend to open pit mine planning. Sash has undergone 5 weeks of personalised training from the School of Rock, and has covered the following in his training: Block model reporting in SURPAC™ Basic Mine designs in TOP-D™ Preparing the geological models

The graph on the left shows the relationship (green) between cumulative tonnes and the cut-off grade (COG). The higher the COG the less Cum Tonnes. The graph on the right introduces the secondary Y-axis which shows the relationship between Ave Grade above COG and COG. The higher the COG, the higher the Ave grade. So if you know what your product spec is (thus the Ave Grade), how do you determine the cumulative tonnes at that product spec...? Is it where the red curve interse

Doing a pit optimisation for a client, I realised you can utilise 2 different beneficiation plants by cleverly setting up the expressions. The material above the higher cut-off grade (COG) gets "dispatched" first and committed to that plant. That material is then taken care of. The remaining material above the lower COG is then "dispatched" to the other plant, leaving the remaining material as waste. The beauty comes in the reporting where Whittle clearly shows you the tonnes

When up-blocking to a specified SMU (smallest mining unit) size, I always tend to forget which parameter to use for weighted averages (WA). A friend of mine reminded me to use the diagram as illustrated below: you work with the bottom variables to do the weighting. So if you want to calc the WA of relative density (RD), you use Volume as the WA. Volume and Mass however are additive variables, so you just add them to calc your new up-blocked Volume and Mass. Likewise for Yiel

If I think back to my university days all the tuition was from textbooks and the internet. A lot of the stuff was quite difficult to comprehend, as I had very limited exposure to mines back then. That made me think: if I could relive those days, what would have helped me to better understand the material? The School of Rock is assisting the Mining Engineering Department of the University of Pretoria in designing and conducting tutorial exercises, where students apply the inf

That's unfortunately the harsh reality in applying for almost any position - they want experience. But how do you get any experience if you're stuck in your current job... Give yourself a fair chance by enrolling for one of our group courses, which you can add to your résumé. After completing the courses, you will step into the interview with confidence, and that's one of the key ingredients of a successful interview - CONFIDENCE!

Remember that Geotech plays a significant role in your mine design, and has a huge influence on your mine's economics!