Modern technology is enabling this city-based employee, located in Perth, to monitor iron-ore operations 1 760 km away in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. He is able to check on virtually every conceivable metric at the Christmas Creek mine, which is owned and operated by Fortescue Metals Group. Fortescue is the third-largest iron-ore mining company in the Pilbara after Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton.