Destination overseas

My name is Stephen Manning. I studied Mining Engineering at the University of New South Wales. After four years of much interest, fun, study, mayhem and exams, I graduated at the end of 2001 and was offered employment with Brandrill Torrex, an Australian/South African contract mining company operating in South Africa. Brandrill Torrex is 51% owned by Brandrill Australia and 49% owned by Torrex South Africa.

Since graduation I have been working at Maandagshoek Platinum Mine which is owned by Anglo Platinum, 30km outside of Steelpoort in the Mpumalunga Province of South Africa. A few months ago it was renamed to Modikwa Platinum Mine, a traditional name and part of the ongoing changes that are taking place in the country.

In 2001, Brandrill Torrex won the contract to construct six declines (mine access tunnels) as well as all the underground development work for the new the platinum mine. The contract’s original value was for 2 years and valued at R360 million ($AUD100milion) but has since been extended. The contractors have achieved an average advances rate of 600 m per week using a fleet of drill rigs, LHD’s (excavators) and dumptrucks.

I am employed as the Technical Assistant to the Site Managers. In my first year, I was involved in various projects. Some of these involved data analysis, blasting and dumptruck efficiency studies, construction planning, drawing up schedules for construction preparation and some underground time.

Now that I am in my second year my role has expanded to include work as a Quantity Surveyor for the mining construction contract, dealing with the daily issues of supervising the contract. I am responsible to ensure see that the work done complies with the conditions of the contract, dealing with and maintaining a register of additional work the client may instruct be done outside the scope of the contract, preparing all claims for extensions of time and cost, and reporting on daily progress to the client.

Being the on-site person accountable for ensuring the smooth running of the contract involves responsibility in seeing that we earn as much as possible from the contract, do not get any contract penalties invoked by the client and making sure that we get paid for any work we do outside of the contract’s scope.

So far the work has been interesting in dealing with people, technical issues and contract management. Also having the opportunity of living in South Africa and seeing a different part of the world has been great and was certainly not something I had expected.