Books & Training Resources

Read:

• How, as at 2012, the cost of developing a mineral resources project in Australia is an average 1.5 times that of getting a project up in other mining nations – and how disillusionment by project owners is prompting an active and more open-minded search for alternative delivery methodologies.
• Why Minerals Council CEO Mitchell Hooke has said a “wake-up call” lies in wait for anyone hanging on to the belief that the country’s mining sector is sufficiently resilient that it will continue to thrive, irrespective of events and trends in the industry, the economy, and markets globally.
• How international law firm Ashurst (formerly Blake Dawson) reported in its most recent infrastructure survey that 67% of respondents who had delivered a project using an alliance had seen them come in on schedule, on budget, and to the required standard. Only 48% of respondents had experienced these desired outcomes using other contractual methodologies.
• The (often substantial) financial penalty paid unwittingly in the marketplace by project owners employing inefficient project delivery methodologies.
• Why the transparency feature of alliancing and other reasonably “pure” forms of collaborative contracting offer substantial scope for mining interests and contractors to solve the industry’s current woes.
• How one mining management consultant considers alliancing “a giant leap on from joint venturing” and “an evolutionary step onward from EPCM”.
• Why proponents of collaborative contracting still need to solve the issues surrounding the convincing demonstration of VfM and the challenge of appropriate risk-sharing, if they want to talk seriously with mining industry leaders.
• Why some mining industry leaders still view alliances as simply another form of cost-plus contracting, with the owner footing the bill for everything, including poor contractor performance – and what the construction sector can do to change that opinion.
• How setting accurate TCEs and meaningful KRAs is vastly different to achieving the same in the public infrastructure environment.
• When and how to interest a mining major in an alliance or other collaborative contracting arrangement.
• Why alliances need to be kept “fresh” if they are to deliver value in the highly-specific context of a mining project.
• How the contracting sector could play a more valuable role in reducing the failure rate of mining projects by sustaining collaborative effort past the hand-over stage.
• How alliancing stalwarts would benefit from “sparing the mystique and the buzz words, and ‘embracing boring’”.
• What’s behind the mining industry’s growing interest in the application of Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) formats, the specific benefits owners and contractors should be capitalising on, and the communications priorities that must be recognised for a successful ECI.
• Why the collaborative contracting movement’s leading facilitator believes many mining executives have a “command and control paradigm block” that inhibits their beneficial application of alliancing principles. 
• Why understanding the distinction between “co-operation” and “collaboration” in the context of a mining industry project could be the difference between the acceptability or non-acceptability of alliancing for many mining houses.