Modern Mining November 2017

COVER STORY

‘Centre of Excellence’ status boosts

Notwithstanding the downturn in South Africa’s mining industry, WorleyParsons RSA, the South African arm of the ASX-listed WorleyParsons project delivery group, has managed to maintain a healthy workload, with work from around the globe making up for the reduced level of mining activity locally. “We are the Mining and Minerals Processing Centre of Excellence within the wider WorleyParsons group,” says Denver Dreyer, CEO of WorleyParsons RSA. “This means that engineering work related to mining and minerals processing projects being undertaken by WorleyParsons internationally is channelled into our offices here in Johannesburg.”

D reyer says the involvement of the South African company in global projects has huge benefits. “Apart from the fact that it has kept us busy through a long down- turn, another major plus is the fact that our local engineers are getting exposure to some very exciting projects being executed in countries and regions such as Canada, South America, Asia and Australia,” he says. “This is extremely good for staff morale and means that WorleyParsons RSA can offer its employees a career path which is unequalled.” Most of the engineeringwork thatWorleyParsons RSA does for global projects encompasses the pre-execution phase. “Essentially, we’re work- ing from the concept stage through to detailed engineering,” Dreyer explains. “Once a project moves into execution, then our involvement

Denver Dreyer, CEO of WorleyParsons RSA.

WorleyParsons RSA is the EPCM contractor for the Venetia Underground Project (VUP) of De Beers.

would normally reduce although we are still available to provide support as required.” WorleyParsons RSA, of course, has its own execution capability and, over the past decade, has been involved – generally as EPCM contractor – in some of the big- gest mining projects undertaken in the Southern African region. These have included Impala’s 20 and 17 shafts and the Bakubung and Styldrift platinum mines, all in the Western Bushveld, the Shondoni coal project near Secunda and a broad range of work at the Black Rock mine complex in the Northern Cape. North of South Africa’s borders, the company has participated in the Konkola Deep project in Zambia and the Kibali gold mine project in the north- east of the DRC. Says Dreyer: “We’re actually coming out of an intense phase of execution and, given market conditions, the emphasis has now shifted towards study work as clients plan for the next upswing in the minerals cycle. Many of these studies

18  MODERN MINING  November 2017