Abstract
Sudbury is one of the largest integrated mining, milling, smelting and refining centers in the world with over 100 yrs of continuous operations. In 2014 Vale opened Totten Mine which was the companies first new mine in Sudbury since the 1960’s. Totten Mine suffered delays during project and a longer ramp-up to steady state than estimated from FEL III. Copper Cliff Mine Phase 1 is on schedule to be operational by Q2 2022 and the business requires a fast ramp up to full production and positive cash flow to meet business needs.
Colin Pegues: Copper Cliff Mine Complex Manager and Jason Mackinnon: Operations Readiness Manager are managing a team to handle handover from construction and transition the project to operations. The lessons learnt from Totten form the basis to prepare for the startup of CCM Phase 1 in a means that is fundamentally different that previous mining projects at Vale. With two more mine expansions in study for CCM in the next 10yrs the success of Phase 1 is critical for the mine’s future.
Jason and Colin will provide a case study of the Operations Readiness Plan for CCM Phase 1 designed to mitigate similar delays that were incurred at Totten, which includes:
- Early labour on-boarding into the Sudbury Operations
- Transition of workforce between 5 existing mines in Sudbury
- Integrated training with existing operations
- Alignment of all activities at Copper Cliff Complex between North and South Mine Assets
- Maintenance blueprinting for fixed assets
- Registration of master data in SAP
- Mine design vs retro fit, brown field vs green field
- Dialogue with the United Steel Workers
- Implementation of technology from start up.