Manning best practice in the Australian gold mining industry

摘要: Best practice mines deliver their corporate goals by efficiently and effectively implementing their mine plan. From the authors’ experience, these best practice mines have the following similarities:• Sound mine planning and mine operational practices• Appropriate equipment and manning levels• Good information collection and reporting• A continuous improvement culture which is outcome focused.For manning best practice in the Australian mining industry, the result derived from performance evaluation and benchmarking studies can provide insight into the key drivers of manning requirements on mines and enable determination of appropriate manning levels. In recent years, the shortage of skilled and experienced labour has been acute in the Australian mining industry; spread across all organizational levels including trades based roles, engineering and management positions. This has resulted in equipment being underutilized and some maintenance departments unable to fill all positions. In the Australian context, labour represents a substantial component of most mine’s operating costs. Total direct labour costs can amount to 18% to 46% of total operating costs for underground mines (Figure 1) while total direct labour costs for open pit mines can range from 12 to 26% of total operating costs (Figure 2). There is no apparent clustering to indicate Australian gold mines are different from base metal mines.