Shiftwork Solutions was engaged to work with Ok Tedi Mining Limited when the mine was nearing the end of its mine life.

The PNG government wanted to investigate options to extend its operating years to 2025 to keep jobs open and reduce impacts on the local community associated with the termination of a residential mine in a remote location.

The Brisbane-based company said it tackled challenges posed by a variety of onsite roster arrangements and a flight schedule that did not support team change-outs, resulting in employees regularly travelling on rostered shifts.

Shiftwork said the fly-in, fly-out rosters allowed for numerous days off onsite resulting in the character of the site to be more residential than FIFO and the accommodation occupancy rates were 75% for FIFO workers.

Roster and travel patterns were complicated to the point where supervisors and managers were unsure of who would report for a shift and overtime was regularly used to backfill shifts.

Other challenges included poor data quality and systems support, workforce undergoing considerable changes due to voluntary departure offers and new hires and cultural differences between expats and the national workforce.

Continuous changes in ports of hire also affected the effectiveness and efficiency of the flight schedule.

And halfway through the project, the PNG government passed a bill allowing the state to take ownership of the mine.

Rostering expert Arjen Wassenaar said Shiftwork Solutions had two key objectives, to lower the cost base and manage this change throughout the organisation.

“We worked closely with the mine over a number of months designing customised solutions to meet the objectives,” Wassenaar said.

“We designed new FIFO rosters and a flight schedule to suit, an accommodation plan based on verified data and the use of in-house modelling tools.

“A single day transition of 1150 employees to new rosters was also implemented alongside rooms and new flights.

“We will continuously review the results in the coming months to ensure the methods implemented meet the objectives and overcome the challenges but, from first reports, this has proved a successful change with cost reductions, improved health and alertness, better team cohesion and other goals met.

“We not only created optimal rosters to overcome the mine’s challenges but also worked closely with the organisation to implement the necessary changes and monitor the results, which led to a successful project outcome.”