The School of Rock was founded in 2016 with a single mission: to uplift the mine planning skill-set of organisations to empower mines to deliver high quality mine plans and schedules so as to ensure production throughput and sustainable growth in these turbulent times.

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The economic downturn of mining globally resulted in skills losses across all the mining departments, including mine planning. With an ever diminishing gene-pool of mine planners, mines are forced to employ candidates that show some potential, resulting in a “best of the lot” approach.  Most of these candidates have little or no mine planning experience, while the mining houses can only hope that the appointee will make it in the long run. There are only a handful of institutions where candidates can learn practical mine planning skills; I personally had to rely on my fellow colleagues to show me some of the ropes, having to go through the slow and frustrating process of figuring it out on my own. It was frustrating because I couldn’t add value from the get-go. The School of Rock gives newly appointed mine planners (and experienced ones) a basic understanding of the workings of an open pit mine, and then more to the point the fundamentals of mine planning. Furthermore, private tuition is also available to take the skill-set of those candidates to the next level where they master the software needed to accomplish a task.

 

The School of Rock aims to ultimately uplift the skill-set of the mine planning industry as a whole, resulting in mines being more profitable and the world enjoying a more stimulated economy from mining.   

 

Grant Crawley - Director