Strategic Mine Planning & Open Pit Optimisation using Geovia Surpac and Whittle

PAPUA NEW GUINEA (PORT MORESBY): 1-5/7/24

Course Brief

Strategic mine planning is the process of integrating and aligning with the strategic objective(s) of the mining company. It involves continuous adjustment and dynamic changes within and outside the mining environment. It needs to make enough room for all levels of the company, such as the corporate level (vision, mission, feasibility) and the expansion of production, as well as accounting for a medium/long term production strategy. This can be done by varying the input parameters (economic, social, political, environmental etc.) in a flexible mine planning system to achieve the desired balance between financial and physical returns. It focuses on analyzing technical variables that affect the life of a mine and the value of the underneath mineral resources until the mineral of interest is thoroughly exhausted, exploited or abandoned.

In this course, the individual will learn the diverse areas of the GEOVIA Whittle and GEOVIA Surpac in carrying out an open pit optimization coupled with detailed pit design. The individual would learn how to explore the software, considering vital factors such as: the deposit’s geological setting and topography, grade distribution, the cut-off grade, the mineral resource and reserve, the geotechnical constrains holding bench height, berms and slope stability, environmental constraints; mining and processing costs, recovery and metal price.

This course is intended for mine planners, mining engineers, geologists, and technical managers who are responsible for activities that demand them to generate or oversee yearly, monthly and weekly mine plans and designs.

The course seeks to practically and technically walk the individual through validating the required geological parameters in the block model, adding cost and slope information to the model, testing resource model and generating reports for export files validation in surpac, preparing and exporting a mod and par file, having a quick and thorough tour of Whittle interphase through importing and validating the mod and pad files, slopes input, optimizing and producing pit shells, running operational scenarios, performing analyses and scheduling using different graphs types for final pit selection as well as exporting pit files back to Surpac for detailed pit designs, further scheduling and analysis.

The following workflow will be addressed:

Course Content

Technical Overview of
- SMP in general
- Situation Analysis
- Decision-Making Behavior
- Pit Optimization Algorithms
- Resources and Reserves
- Economic Evaluation
- Pit Inputs & Optimization
- Block Value Calculation
- Whittle and BM Dimensions
- Slopes and Structure Arcs
- Mine Recovery and Dilution
- Mining Costs, Pit shells
- Ore Selection Methods

Creating a Model file and a Parameter File in Surpac
- Practical Overview of Software
- Testing Resource Model
- Building Rock Code, metal grade and Sg’s
- Applying Slopes in Surpac
- MCAFs and PCAFs application
- Applying Constraints & Reporting in Surpac
Economic Optimization of Pit in Whittle
- Creating & Selecting Project in Whittle
- Validating Project in Whittle
- Block Size and Reblocking in Whittle
- Generating Slopes & Pit Shells in Whittle
- Grade-Tonnage Graphing in Whittle
- Operational Scenario in Whittle
- Pit Sensitivity Analysis in Whittle
- Pit by Pit Analysis in Whittle
- Mining Sequencing & Bench Scheduling
- Choosing Pushbacks for Final Pits
- Analyzing Fixed Lead, Milawa NPV, Milawa Balanced etc.
- Reporting in Whittle & Spreadsheet analysis
Whittle and Surpac Back to Back
- Exporting Whittle files to Surpac
- Preparing Whittle files for designs in Surpac
- Running Detailed Pit design in Surpac
- Exporting Pit files for further Analysis

Course Requirements

Hardware: The individual must have a Personal Computer.
Software: Delegates must have both Geovia Surpac and Whittle Installed on their computers.