Calidus Resources Limited (Calidus) operates out of the Pilbara Goldfields district in Western Australia. Last year Calidus became Australia’s latest gold producer. Steve Sheppard became Calidus’ new Regional Exploration Manager in 2020. With nearly 30 years of experience working and managing remote geological projects, Steve was ready to bring a fresh perspective to the challenges of running Calidus’ remote Pilbara projects.

The challenge

Coordinating drill programs in a remote area like the Pilbara is inherently challenging. There are many complex moving parts, from securing drill rigs to establishing effective communication lines or managing safety issues in a hot and dangerous environment.

To make things even harder, critical drilling data was arriving late from multiple contractors and spread across paper, emails and spreadsheets. Time spent on data wrangling was sky-high, and it was overly complicated for the crew to stay abreast of what was happening in the field or down the hole. Let alone make timely decisions about the exploration program.

Shortly after being appointed to his new role, Steve teamed up with Calidus’ Geology Database Manager, Grant, to review the team’s workflow. They could see that the status quo was compounding the complexities of working in the Pilbara, and they wondered if there was a better way for the team to address these challenges. In Steve and Grant’s eyes, a spreadsheet was no longer going to cut it. They needed a place where they could connect the field and office teams and enable them to make timely and informed decisions about the drill program.

And then they discovered CorePlan Exploration Hub, a single source of truth platform for mineral explorers to plan their drill programs, monitor production, manage sample dispatch, lodge inspections and more in real-time.

A giant leap toward a single source of truth

Step 1: Eliminate the headaches drilling data created for the geology team

Fed up with the paper-based workflow, the Calidus team decided they had nothing to lose by putting Exploration Hub through its paces on two of their gold projects. It just so happened that one of their drilling contractors was already using Drilling Hub to run their drill programs.

Calidus connected to their contractor’s CorePlan account using a shared digital cost contract to ensure that plod data settings and cost calculations were always correct. At the end of each shift, Steve’s team received an instant notification requesting sign-off on the supplied drilling data in CorePlan’s Exploration Hub. Likewise, the drillers received real-time alerts when Calidus approved the data or came back with a query.

And for the team’s other drillers, the paper and spreadsheet-based drill plods could be instantly imported and standardised in CorePlan, creating a similar experience across all their contractors and making it easier for the Calidus team to slice and dice their data.

Step 2: Connect the office with the field

After detangling their drilling data and enabling real-time information sharing with the Perth office, a further opportunity emerged to address a key challenge of remote drill program management: coordinating all of the supporting activities that the drill depends on to keep the drill plan moving forward on time and on budget.

To do this, Steve built an integrated drill hole lifecycle plan on CorePlan to facilitate closer connection between his geologists and field assistants, and enhance the visibility of the status of field work for the Perth-based team for improved planning and scheduling.

Steve pushed the workflow to the CorePlan mobile app so that his field assistants could mark off pre- and post-drilling activities like pegging, clearing, hole plugging and rehab in real-time.

The geologists and office team could then refer to this tracking system to make sure that the drills could be moved on-schedule and with minimal standby time, and that all of the rehab requirements for the hole were completed within the required time limit.

The result

In less than a month of using the platform, Calidus could already see the benefits of working from a single source of truth. Not only this, but it’s also had a remarkable effect on Steve’s ability to make timely decisions. “We like that our team can log in and see what’s happening in real time. Seeing the drilling data when it’s still fresh makes it much easier to address anything important with the team or with the drillers.”

Grant also noticed an immediate effect on his working day. “Now our plods are coming in daily, versus before I had to wait a week or more for the data. I’ve gained back the time I spent following up data and re-entering it into spreadsheets because it’s already on the system when I need it.”

“And with the field crew now using the mobile app, we can easily keep across what’s happening on the ground,” says Steve. After combining a spatial view of the entire drill hole lifecycle with the daily drilling data, Grant agrees that “it’s about as close as we can get to being on the rig!”

Exploration Hub has helped remove multi-system chaos by creating a centralised place for the team to work together. Now there’s more time to optimise other essential aspects of the business like finding feasible extensions to the new mine.

"When our montly drilling invoices came in, there was virtually no work to do, which was great!"

Grant McEwan, Geology Database Manager