Reflections

A few years ago I reviewed a community-company grievance mechanism. The client didn’t have the best of reputations and I had some seriously negative preconceptions when I agreed to take on the work. I have to say, I was wrong.  I found the teams on site were doing a much better job than I expected with a significant and multifaceted effort being put into grievance prevention…

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Why Building Strong Relationships Matters.

Going into a new area to explore and ultimately build and operate a mine you start with high and positive expectations that you can work constructively with the local communities. Then it goes off the rails. Most often, with good intentions and a focus on an immediate issue, individuals in the company or in the community will take actions or make decisions (or fail to take actions or make decisions) that over time, cumulatively and progressively add up to major problems and consequences that are for the most part predictable – difficulties, costly delays and if it really goes badly, loss of the project. The good news is that taking some simple actions will give you far more control than you might think...

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Living with uncertainty is part and parcel of exploration and project development but this doesn’t mean that you can’t plan. The uncertainty is with the outcome of each phase, it is not with the project management process, where one well defined step follows another. For the most part, when decisions are made they follow a pattern – a round of drilling is completed, results are assessed and are used to inform a go / no go decision for the next step. Likewise, there is a conscious decision to start a scoping study, to progress to a feasibility study or to put a project on the shelf... 

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