Cradle to grave
Venetia runs on Candy
The De Beers Group started excavation work on an underground extension to its Venetia Mine in South Africa in 2013. The new development is expected to extend the life of the mine to 2046 and deliver about 96 million carats in diamonds.
The USD2.1-billion project is the biggest investment in the South African diamond mining industry in decades and is expected to be in full production in 2025. Around 1 500 jobs have already been created in construction. The company currently operates an opencast mine employing 3 731 staff, of whom 1 411 are DBCM employees and 2 320 are full-time contractors providing specific services and skills. The underground project will include employees who transfer from the open pit to the underground mining systems, while the future mine will use the current plant to process ore.
A project of this scope requires experienced and reliable partners, and De Beers assigned the quantity surveying and contract management to Professional Cost Consultants( PCC), with Murray & Roberts Cementation as the contractor. Similarly, a multi-year endeavour like this requires tight control of costs and all the equipment, parts, and labour required through the various phases of the project. To accomplish these goals, organisations need a reliable and proven project management platform able to effectively and transparently deal with every aspect of the project and provide in-depth reports. For the Venetia project, the Candy estimating and project control software from CCS Mining & Industrial( CCSMI) was chosen. CCSMI is a distributor of Candy to the mining industry and a part of the EOH group of companies. The software is a multi-faceted, all-inclusive project control solution, which caters for different scenarios and industries. It is also able to integrate and exchange data with a host of common business applications.
Joe de Klerk, managing director at CCSMI, explains that clients use
The underground extensions at De Beers’ Venetia Mine close to Musina in Limpopo is expected to extend the life of mine to 2046.
CCSMI’ s software for the full project life cycle, from the feasibility study through to project estimates, project planning and management, right through to completion. It is a 32-bit Windows application and runs on all modern Windows operating systems, either in stand-alone or networked mode, as well as on Windows Terminal Services and Citrix.
Murray & Roberts Cementation’ s Allan Widlake says Candy is a“ fantastic estimating tool for large and complicated projects”, as it contains and controls all aspects of the project, saving all parties involved time and avoiding the frustrating miscommunications one often sees on large projects.
“ Candy is a norm for us,” says Widlake.“ There is no job that goes out of this office where Candy is not used. What’ s also nice is that Candy has a good record-keeping facility that records every change that is made. This assists us to understand changes made to estimates over time and to see who was responsible.”
Prenesh Reddy, also with Murray & Roberts Cementation, adds that Candy is a great valuation tool.“ We use it for forecasting revenues; it is a very accurate and detailed way of getting that done.”
De Beers’ mining engineer Mervin Smit adds that since all the contractors on the Venetia project were using
Candy, De Beers followed suit to ensure everyone was on the same standardised platform. This made project estimation control much easier. Candy can export and import data from many applications, including MS Excel.
Another benefit, attributed to Candy, is the speed of the application and the detailed data one can extract from the platform for interrogation and analysis.
Detail and transparency were the selling point for PCC, says PCC associate Kyle Kemp. As the contract manager, PCC needed a system that offered seamless integration and speedy access to relevant information to ensure everything was on track. Candy is a repository of all project-related information and the designers made it simple to access whatever information is required.
Time savings are also impressive in Candy.“ We used to spend twice as long checking information as compared to measuring it before we used Candy. Now these times are reversed, and PCC is able to spend more time servicing the client constructively rather than checking information.”
Another benefit of Candy is that it saves you time, which translates into cost savings at the end of the day. Reddy says that because the Venetia project is so complex, there are four subprojects in JD Edwards, which is Murray & Roberts’
[ 34 ] MINING MIRROR APRIL 2018