Centurion-based medium-sized mine consultancy Ukwazi will this year celebrate its tenth anniversary, says director and principal mining engineer Jaco Lotheringen, who tells Mining Weekly that the company has developed into a sustainable and reputable mining engineering consultancy over the past decade.

“I think the biggest milestone we could have hoped to pass after ten years is that we helped prove that the mining industry still values independence and using independent consultants for one of the most integrated and critical aspects in mining projects – mining itself.

“Our approach has always been to form long-term relationships with clients and function as a mine owner’s adviser and representative,” says Lotheringen, adding that Ukwazi consults with some of the largest regional iron-ore, coal, diamond and platinum-group-metals producers, as well as a range of smaller mining companies.

He notes that Ukwazi started as a technical solutions provider to the mining industry, but the consultancy noticed that the market required value-add in terms of mine design and the drive to design a mine configuration, based on an integration of relevant disciplines, to deliver a compliant, optimal and practically executable mine plan.

Lotheringen tells Mining Weekly that, owing to immense cost pressures throughout the mining sector and poor-performing commodity prices, one of the universal challenges for mining projects is providing a responsible and integrated design that is cost effective, safe and efficient.

“For this, you have to have a strong, strategically minded and technical mining team behind you,” he argues.

“Mining projects and operations need a disciplined team with experienced and specialist engineers to focus on and model the mining and nonmining-related modifying factors in a consolidated model. This ensures that the mine delivers the right products and that it uses the correct processes and appropriate methods at the lowest cost to create the most value.”

Lotheringen explains that mining projects cannot be delivered simply by appointing mining engineers. A compliant technical project framework needs to be formalised, with a strong team of supporting specialists.

“The service that we supply is very technical and requires an in-depth knowledge of the relevant reporting codes, the specific project’s mining, plant, infrastructure, social and environmental approach, practical execution and local production performance. We establish team-based project processes that enforce a compliant process to be followed – from mine configuration and the design phase to the mineral reserve estimate and financial model.”

Ukwazi’s technical delivery teams comprise three basic contributors, namely the leader, the technical mining engineer and the ‘engine room’, where most of the mine design and mine planning-related software is applied. “We have the technical basis to train our own people using in-house training programmes,” says Lotheringen.

He adds that each project must apply the appropriate software solutions, as he believes that there is no software suite available that will cater to all types of mine configurations, mine designs and planning. “Ukwazi employs a wide range of the leading mining-related software and we use it in a way that is appropriate, compliant, efficient, reputable and practically sound.”

He notes that it is unrealistic to expect mining engineers and mine planners to be industry leaders on every aspect of every mining project and argues that, to provide continuous market-leading and efficient solutions, a specialised and dedicated team needs to be applied in a way that enables mining engineers and mine planners to excel as specialists within a specified area.

“Based on this, we have developed several mining engineering project development teams, including the hard-rock underground team, which focuses on flat- dipping orebodies, and the hard-rock underground massive mining team, which focuses on caving methods, open stoping and various empirically designed mining methods. The openpit team mostly specialises in large and complex pits, and the equipment and practical considerations of these pits.

“We also have a dedicated coal team that specialises in opencast coal and underground coal mines and projects,” Lotheringen explains.

He further notes that Ukwazi plans to continue training specialist teams and to focus skills development on relevant practical and technical capacity building. The company also aims to continually adapt to market requirements, reporting-code updates and mining software developments.

“For example, the coal and openpit teams are working closely with mining software provider RungePincockMinarco (RPM). We know mining software well and we collaborate with suppliers that provide proven and pragmatic solutions.

“We recently embraced RPM’s latest offering, Open Pit Metals Solutions, which we have successfully applied to a range of iron-ore and manganese openpit projects,” Lotheringen explains.

He notes that the company has expanded its services offering to include additional mining and mine planning services, and that it focuses on identifying and recruiting exceptional individuals to form part of the company’s various teams.

“We are very excited about our fifth and latest technical team, the short- and medium-term planning team, which is working at a coal mine and two of the largest iron-ore mines in Southern Africa. This team forms part of the larger mine planning team to provide additional expertise.

“We believe in a solution that provides clients not only with a mine planner but also with an individual that forms part of the client’s team. “This way, the client gets the added advantage of support from the larger Ukwazi team and sufficient technical capacity for interaction between the operation’s planning, production and management teams that makes a difference,” he concludes.