Mines versus Mineralisation – Deposit

Quality, Mineral Exploration Strategy

and the Role of ‘Boundary Spanners’
T C McCuaig1,2, J E Vann3,4,5,6 and J P Sykes4,7,8

ABSTRACT
Resources added to the global metal inventory through exploration over the past 15 years have
been generally of poor quality (declining grades, recoveries and lack of acceptable financial return).
Similarly, companies opting for an acquisitions-based strategy have had to pick from a group of
poorer quality resources left from previous exploration booms, and will struggle to deliver this
metal to market economically. Increasing difficulty in obtaining sufficient social and community
acceptance of mining projects and potentially an energy-constrained future may exacerbate this
problem, redefining what is considered ‘ore’. There will need to be more focus on deposit quality,
defined as sustainable margin in the future business environment.
Traditionally there has been a lack of translation of ‘mineralisation quality’ back to mineral
project design and mineral exploration. This disconnect is due to two main factors: the first is
technical – inherent deposit variability; and the second is organisational and socio-psychological
–the mindset of explorers and project managers themselves.
There are four elements to value realisation for a mineral deposit: (1) social licence to operate;
(2) geological factors (depth, geometry, water and geotechnical, and geometallurgy – influenced
by texture, mineralogy, chemistry and grades); (3) financial engineering (capex, opex, future
commodity prices, future energy prices), and (4) operating factors (production rate, recovery,
energy consumption). These elements are strongly interdependent, and geology underpins and
drives linkages between them. A quality deposit addresses all of these elements and thus can be
developed in a time frame that allows acceptable returns to the owners of the invested capital.
Geological drivers of the above elements can be measured and mapped throughout a deposit.
Moreover, when viewed in the context of mineral systems, a predictive understanding of the
common causative processes of quality (despite deposit-scale variability) is emerging, and with it
the ability to target quality of mineralisation, not just quantity of mineralisation.
The second factor is a ‘heuristic software problem’. Current lines of education (and consequently
organisational and professional structures) are discipline-based, producing ‘silos’ that do not
speak each other’s language and work with different ‘mental models’. People who effectively
recognise systemic links between these silos are called ‘boundary spanners’, of which we propose
two distinct types: outside-insiders and inside-outsiders. Outside-insiders are people who are
within a community, but recognise advances in outside fields and effectively integrate them into
the community. Inside-outsiders start outside of a community, and successfully bring new ideas
into it. Common traits in boundary spanners are: they seek exposure to (and embrace) key ideas
that are outside of the framework of their own specialisation; they have high mental processing
ability (MPA) – the ability to connect systems that are currently not perceived to be connected;
and they introduce ideas from outside a field into a new context in a way that re-frames the field.
The challenge is to identify and nurture potential boundary spanners that can build critical
links, in particular between the (largely geoscientific) mineral exploration mindset and the (largely
non-geoscientific) project development mindset. Critical linkages to be built are between mineral
system science, targeting science, and whole of value chain modelling.

1. MAusIMM, Professor and Director, Centre for Exploration Targeting, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley WA 6009. Email: campbell.mccuaig@uwa.edu.au
2. Node Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Core to Crust Fluid Systems, School of Earth and Environment, The University of Western Australia, Crawley WA 6009.
3. FAusIMM, Group Head of Geosciences, Anglo American Plc, 20 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AN, UK. Email: john.vann@angloamerican.com
4. Adjunct Professor, Centre for Exploration Targeting, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley WA 6009.
5. Adjunct Professor, W H Bryan Mining and Geology Research Centre, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Qld 4072.
6. Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Civil Environmental and Mining Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide SA 5000.
7. MAusIMM, Centre for Exploration Targeting, Department of Minerals and Energy Economics, Curtin Graduate School of Business, 78 Murray Street, Perth WA 6000.
Email: johnpaul.sykes@postgrad.curtin.edu.au
8. Director, Greenfields Research Ltd, Hunters Chase, Highfield Farm, Stripe Lane, Hartwith, Harrogate, North Yorkshire HG3 3HA, UK. Email: john.sykes@greenfieldsresearch.com

NINTH INTERNATIONAL MINING GEOLOGY CONFERENCE / ADELAIDE, SA, 18–20 AUGUST 2014 33
T C MCCUAIG, J E VANN AND J P SYKES
IMPORTANCE OF RESOURCE QUALITY
Recent reviews of mineral exploration success and the
mining project pipeline have shown a trend of decreasing
effectiveness of exploration and declining quality of the
mineral project pipeline (McKeith et al, 2010; Schodde, 2013,
Figure 1). Figure 1 clearly illustrates that the current project
pipeline is challenged, and will struggle to bring the metal
required by society to market, leaving many of these resources
as marginal projects, effectively ‘stranded’.
The problem of a marginal project pipeline is likely to be
compounded in the future by at least two factors: increasing
difficulty in obtaining sufficient social and community
acceptance of mining projects, and a potentially energy and
carbon constrained future. We are living in an increasingly
environmentally aware society, which demands that our
industry reduce its physical, energy and environmental
footprint. These demands may progressively translate into
legislation in many jurisdictions. Even more challenging will
be the non-legislated social ‘licence to operate’9 – a complex
social exercise which takes long periods of trust building.
Mining is an energy intensive business. In Australia alone,
the energy consumption of comminution is approximately
equal to the consumption of the entire residential sector of the
nation (Bye, 2011). In this light, we are likely moving into an
energy (and probably carbon) constrained future of relatively
high costs. Despite the current political environment in
Australia, increasing pressure for the implementation of
some form carbon emissions regulations, such as a carbon
tax or trading scheme seems a plausible scenario for most
developed nations. Therefore, the real cost of mining could
continue to escalate.
These two factors of increasing social awareness and the
plausibility of an energy and carbon constrained future
would redefine what we consider to be ‘ore’ in the future;
ie viable mineralisation from which useful products can be
economically extracted. Many of the resources currently in
the global inventory of mining companies will not fall into
the ‘future ore’ category because rising costs of extraction,
combined with technical and socio-political constraints,
will render them unviable. In Figure 1, this will result in a
contraction of the envelope of economic projects and expansion
of the envelope of undeveloped projects, with many current
projects in exploration, feasibility and development stages
moving into the ‘stalled’ category.
Therefore, the challenge for the future is to focus on
resource quality (Schodde and Hronsky, 2006). Although
quality of mineralisation is clearly a multiparameter space,
at the highest level it is defined by sustainable profit margin
in the future operating environment. In practice, the industry
has largely explored for size, hoping that quality will emerge.
While it is true that all world-class deposits are large, not all
large deposits are high quality and world-class (Sykes and
Trench, 2014). In terms of the factors discussed above, quality
can further be measured in terms of extractable metal per
unit rock mass, or extractable metal per kilowatt-hour (kWh).
9. As an aside, we note that the term ‘licence to operate’ is somewhat misleading: licences
are generally binary: either granted or refused. The social and political acceptability of
a mining project by communities and governments (which is what ‘licence to operate’
denotes) is a progressive scale and much more complex than this binary concept
suggests. One of the authors (Vann) and a co-worker (Nathan Monash of Anglogold
Ashanti) recently suggested the term ‘socio-political enablement’ as an alternative. This
alternative term allows a continuous distribution from ‘complete and potentially violent
opposition’ to ‘active welcoming and promotion of the project by all stakeholders’. The
work of Vann and Monash related to scenario planning of gold mining development
projects and is unpublished at the time of writing.
34 NINTH INTERNATIONAL MINING GEOLOGY CONFERENCE / ADELAIDE, SA, 18–20 AUGUST 2014
Maximising the latter of these parameters within a constraint
framework that includes the ‘soft’ issues that influence social
licence to operate is an important way to address the future
social and energy scenarios highlighted above. It is important
to note that not all ‘social licence problems’ relate to size
of on-ground impact – the social component of sustainable
development is difficult to quantify and suffers from biased
perceptions arising from the fact that many aspects are difficult
to measure. In the paradigm of if you cannot measure it, you
cannot manage it, social aspects that are difficult to quantify
are frequently – at best – ‘below the radar’ of companies – and
at worst they may be blind to them. We flag this as a future
area of research.
In summary, in a scenario of more constrained social and
energy factors discussed previously, the winners of the past
may not be the winners of the future (Sykes and Trench, in
press, 2014).
FOUR KEY ELEMENTS TO DEPOSIT VALUE
REALISATION
The pathway to realisation of value from a mineral deposit
discovery necessitates more than the location of potentially
viable mineralisation in sufficient quantities. The four
required elements are illustrated in Figure 2 and are:
1. Social licence to operate – arguably the term ‘licence’ is
misleading here, because a licence is either obtained or
not; whereas ‘social licence to operate’ is a progressive
scale from complete socio-political enablement of a project
that is seen as highly positive by stakeholders, all the way
through to a project that is regarded as unviable and
socio-politically toxic to significant stakeholders. In any
case, a low degree of social licence to operate renders the
realisation of sustainable value from a project impossible
to most large mining companies, for whom delivering
multistakeholder value is an important organisational
objective.
2. Geological factors – the geometry, depth, geometallurgy
(informed by texture, mineralogy, chemistry, grade) and
other geotechnical properties of the deposit (including
hydrogeological context) are essential to evaluation of
financial viability. We discuss these factors further below.
However, it is important to note that projects without
economically viable pathways to solution of geotechnical,
water, mining, processing and waste stream engineering
options do not constitute an ‘orebody’ in any commercial
sense.
3. Financial engineering – the availability and cost of capital
and labour, infrastructure requirements, operating costs,
and future evolution of both energy and commodity
prices are pivotal to economic viability.
4. Operational factors – the ability of the owners to engineer
mining, processing, infrastructure and operational
solutions that enable sustainable, profitable operational
viability. Key factors are decisions around mining and
processing rates (and consequent infrastructure scale),
metallurgical technologies and operating policies that
enable sufficient recovery of saleable product, and
the ability to do this within the constraint of attaining
acceptable rates of energy consumption per unit of metal
production.
Note that these elements are not independent, and in fact
are tightly coupled. For example, the degree of social licence
will both influence and be strongly influenced by geological
factors such as the impact upon the local water balance and
 MINES VERSUS MINERALISATION: DEPOSIT QUALITY, MINERAL EXPLORATION STRATEGY AND THE ROLE OF ‘BOUNDARY SPANNERS’
FIG 1 – Graph of tonnes versus grade for all primary copper deposits in the world containing >500 Kt Cu (as of 2010). Symbols represent stage of
development. Also shown are envelopes for economic mines and undeveloped projects, reproduced with permission from Schodde (2013). Future
external pressures (eg social, energy constraints) will likely see expansion of the envelope for undeveloped projects, contraction of the economic
envelope, and more projects currently in exploration, development and feasibility stages moving into the stalled category. See text for discussion.
FIG 2 – Diagram illustrating the four key elements that must be addressed
to realise value from a mineral deposit: social licence, geological factors,
financial engineering and operating factors. If these four elements are not
addressed, then positive value realisation at step 5 is impossible: the project
cannot progress – eg element 1 social licence is not obtained, or there is
value destruction in that some combination of elements 2, 3 and 4 render
the operational cash flow insufficient to deliver positive Net Present Value.
the propensity of the operation to generate environmentally
unacceptable waste streams. Similarly, the cost of capital and
operational cost (and complexity) are driven by geographical
location and geological complexity. Nearly every factor
mentioned is connected to others in a complex system, and
ultimately the multiparametric geological character of the
deposit (at all scales) drives these linkages.
A ‘quality deposit’ is therefore one which can address
the elements described above, as shown schematically in
NINTH INTERNATIONAL MINING GEOLOGY CONFERENCE / ADELAIDE, SA, 18–20 AUGUST 2014
Figure 2, in a manner that allows acceptable value delivery to
the owners of capital, usually measured by Net Present Value
(NPV) and rate of return, etc. Having defined what constitutes
a quality deposit, it is therefore conceptually possible to
spatially ‘map’ in the mineralisation the relevant geological
parameters that enable or limit progression to value delivery
and include them in deposit models. Note that there are
always multiple alternative pathways to value delivery, and
choosing among them is a complex combination of trade-offs,
optimisation and seeking of robust solutions.
Today, many of the required parameters discussed above
are not regularly recorded, especially at exploration stages.
An example where progress is being made in this regard
is the mapping of mineralogy in enough detail to start to
build spatial models that can predict likely throughput in a
subsequent metallurgical process. This is straightforward
in deposits where texture and structure play small roles in
determining throughput (for example, the hard plant feed is
silicified and the soft feed has low quartz content).
However, most deposits have throughput performance
(and metallurgical recovery) that is strongly impacted by
texture as well as mineralogy. Some textures facilitate rapid
comminution (for example fissile laminated ores) while
other textures with essentially identical mineralogy and
geochemistry (eg massive or equigranular variants of the same
material) may resist comminution. These latter types, despite
having the same whole rock mineralogy and chemistry, may
imply materially lower throughputs. Variants of texture can
also depress metallurgical recovery. An example is to have
exactly the same proportions of pyrite and chalcopyrite
in a liberated sulfide grain which has a viable copper
content. However, in one case the pyrite totally encloses the
chalcopyrite and is separated as a non-economic grain and in
the other the reverse is true and the copper is recovered.
The impact of geometallurgical thinking (and the required
data sets as discussed above) goes further than impact on
processing. It directly bears upon key social and environmental
issues; for example, lower recoveries mean more waste, and
not extracting sulfide content and allowing it to go through to
waste streams increases the risk of acid rock drainage (ARD).
In this case, the economics of improving recoveries aligns
with environmental goals and we have a clear win-win.
The counter-argument against early geometallurgical work
– that this is ‘… just more costly work to do at an early stage,
35
T C MCCUAIG, J E VANN AND J P SYKES
thus something else has to be dropped to allow this …’– needs
to be addressed head on. The key problem is that cost of this
sort of work is anchored to the quantum of the exploration
budget and not to the value at risk. If this additional work
can determine early on that the pathway from discovery to
value realisation will be substantially thwarted by processing
or mining difficulties (or that a positive outcome requires
consideration of a novel project pathway) it is far better to know
this sooner than later. By considering geometallurgical data
collection as part of systems assessment, such investments in
earlier data may save us very substantial amounts of money,
rather than being an additional cost.
Silo mentalities and piecemeal consideration of costs
in the absence of benefit analysis as discussed above are
the antithesis of systems thinking. It is likely that the silo
mentality in mining companies leads to an over focus on each
specific silo, since no one wants to fail in the area they are
deemed to be responsible for. Therefore part of the resolution
of resourcing may be making professionals less responsible
for their silo, but commensurately more responsible for the
success of the overall project. Arguably, this would lead to
the logical outcome of more front-end loading of projects and
thus collection of key data sets earlier.
EXPLORING FOR QUALITY
Although knowledge of the required geological parameters
can help with the design and optimisation of mining extraction
and valuable mineral recovery, the parameterisation in
this manner is most applicable at the scale of the deposit
(or smaller). As such, it can be employed during resource
definition or modelling and simulation of downstream
mining and processing steps in the mining value chains.
But can one explore for quality? How far upstream in the
exploration process can the required geological parameters
that drive ‘quality’ (ie realisation of value) be mapped and
influence decision-making? Traditionally there has been
lack of translation of ‘mineralisation quality’ back to mineral
exploration strategy. This disconnect is due to two main
factors: the first is technical – inherent deposit variability; and
the second is organisational and socio-psychological – the
mindset of explorers themselves. The combined result is that
over the last decades, the focus of the majority of the industry
has been on locating and then delineating mineralisation, not
potential mines. We wish to explore how this could change
over time.
There is much variation on the mine scale that is currently
impossible to predict on the larger (district or regional) scale
during the exploration process. Many parameters determining
the quality of the mineral deposit – and thus likely success
in navigating a pathway to ultimately acceptable value
delivery – are dependent on a range of factors such as P-T-X
(pressure–temperature–composition) conditions of the fluid/
magma, the physical mechanism of fluid ingress, and the host
rock, which in turn control the mineralogy and textures that
form and the depositional mechanisms and deportment of
the metal (eg McCuaig and Kerrich, 1998). Every deposit is
unique in its own ways.
Given this complexity, there is no doubt that it is difficult to
explore for deposit quality.
Quality can be measured by empirical business performance
of deposit class types, for example, unconformity uranium
deposits globally contain the highest average uranium grades
by an order of magnitude, and therefore are priority targets
(Kreuzer et al, 2010). Such deposit class performance does
inform mineral exploration strategies (Penney et al, 2004;
Kreuzer et al, 2010). Yet even within such deposit classes,
36 NINTH INTERNATIONAL MINING GEOLOGY CONFERENCE / ADELAIDE, SA, 18–20 AUGUST 2014
deposit quality is quite variable. For example, many high
quality examples of porphyry copper-gold deposits exist,
and have long been a favoured target of mineral exploration
companies, yet many of the stranded resources in Figure 1 are
large porphyry deposits (www.minexconsulting.com).
This leads us to ask: what are common features of high
quality mineral deposits that can be mapped, and used in
predictive models for mineral exploration? With the ever-
increasing availability of large multidisciplinary data sets on
mineral deposits, should it now be possible to recognise the
empirical patterns associated with high quality mineralisation
in multiparameter space and model it throughout a deposit?
This is an important first step to spatial prediction of further
high quality mineralisation. The second step is to obtain
a predictive understanding of the underlying causative
processes that generate the empirical patterns and cause the
formation of high quality ore.
One of the most important advances in understanding ore
genesis in the past two decades has been the realisation that
high quality mineral deposits generally form very quickly
– geological lightning bolts on the order of 104 to 105 years
in a larger and longer lasting maelstrom of deformation,
magmatism, fluid flow and alteration lasting 106 to 107 years
(McCuaig and Hronsky, 2013, in press). The broader fluid flow
and alteration events may produce large metal anomalism,
but do not form high quality mineral deposits (McCuaig
and Hronsky, in press). Hronsky (2011) and McCuaig and
Hronsky (in press) demonstrate that these brief periods of
high quality ore formation likely reflect self-organised critical
behaviour of the fluid system. This behaviour is promoted by
the conjunction of two factors: energy supply (in the form of
magmas, fluids, heat) continues to be added to the system,
but a threshold barrier is established that prevents this energy
from dissipating into a sink. In the case of ore deposits,
the threshold barriers are usually a combination of local to
regional physical and geodynamic barriers that combine
to clamp permeability and cause the fluid system to self-
organise. The system builds up extreme gradients of energy
and fluid pressure, potentially with supersaturated metal
concentrations, then releases them in short ‘avalanches’, with
ore forming in the exit conduits above the threshold barrier.
The emerging understanding of self-organising critical
system control on high quality mineralisation has important
implications for understanding ore shoot formation on the
deposit to camp scale. Firstly, the fluid flow during high
quality ore formation is not controlled by actively deforming
structures. The fluid pressure creates its own permeability
pathways, taking the path of least resistance and exploiting
any weakness in the rock mass. These pathways can be quite
tortuous in nature, following combinations of structures and
lithological contacts as the fluid moves rapidly down pressure
gradient. In most hydrothermal ore systems, the fluid is
advecting vertically through the crust, and will at some scale
have vertical connectivity between seemingly isolated areas of
high quality mineralisation within a deposit. Mapping these
fluid exit conduits where they are not ore will be critical for
targeting further high quality mineralisation. There has also
been the recognition that multiple periods of mineralisation
often occur in the same volume of rock separated by long
periods of time, indicating that some architectures are
more favourable, acting as ‘lightning rods’ for fluid flow
and mineralisation. Therefore, it is critical to map the 3D
architecture of the mineral deposit and surrounding district,
detect the transient fluid exit conduits, then hunt the ore
within them (McCuaig and Hronsky, in press).
 MINES VERSUS MINERALISATION: DEPOSIT QUALITY, MINERAL EXPLORATION STRATEGY AND THE ROLE OF ‘BOUNDARY SPANNERS’

FIG 3 – Schematic diagram showing the connections between fundamental and applied geoscience (above thick dashed line) with the engineering
and largely non-geoscientific activities (below dashed line) required to deliver value from mineral deposit discovery and exploitation. In the mineral
exploration domain, the critical interface between the business of mineral exploration/discovery and the fundamental engine of geoscience is through
understanding mineral systems, and translating them through to targeting systems (shadow box; after Hronsky, 2010). In the project development
domain, the critical interface is the four steps of mineral deposit value realisation shown in Figure 2. Essential to the discovery of high quality/high
value mineral deposits in the future is the alignment of these two domains, particularly at these critical interfaces. See text for discussion.

Predicting the location of high quality mineralisation at
a range of scales is now becoming possible through the
application of a mineral system approach, whereby high
quality ore formation is viewed as the rare conjunction of
fertility (areas of the lithosphere or geological time periods
that provide a preferred source of metal), whole lithosphere
architecture (the pathways for mass and energy transfer
through the lithosphere), transient geodynamic triggers that
cause self-organised critical behaviour of fluid and magma
flow, and preservation of the primary depositional zone
(approximately the upper 10 km of earth’s crust) since the
time of mineralisation (McCuaig and Hronsky, in press). This
framework identifies high value questions for geoscientists
to address to aid the search for high quality mineral deposits
and districts at a range of scales:
•• more effective ways to integrate geology and geophysics
to image 3D architecture from deposit to craton scales
•• how to map the fluid flow system associated with
moments of high-grade ore formation
•• distinct methods to identify that a district has experienced
self-organisation of the fluid flow system
•• at the largest scale, a better understanding of terrane
fertility and methods to map it.
Figure 3 connects the realms of fundamental and applied
geoscience in mineral exploration with the engineering,
financial modelling and other largely non-geoscientific
activities required to deliver value from mineral deposit
discovery and exploitation. In the mineral exploration
domain, the critical interface between mineral exploration/
discovery and the fundamental engine of geoscience is
through understanding mineral systems and translating them
through to targeting systems. Targeting systems interface
with the business and technology components of mineral
exploration and deposit discovery. Yet within this process,
mineral exploration activity is still largely focused on finding
mineralisation per se, not high quality deposits and thus high
value mines.
In the project development domain, the critical interface is
the four elements of mineral deposit value realisation shown
in Figure 2. Ultimately this is a systems thinking problem:
to conceive and model the whole value chain (from the in
situ deposit to the final product) in a way that enables the
productive feed-back loops that can modify the fundamental
inputs to targeting geoscience.
Certainly, one aspect of the solution is to get a much deeper
and more sophisticated view of ‘geometallurgy’. To date,
geometallurgy (Walters and Kojovic, 2006; Walters, 2009) has
been preoccupied with the important topics of determination
of the linkages between fundamental rock properties and
metallurgical responses. We believe that the future of this
endeavour, however, will rest upon building useful spatial
models of rock properties and then connecting these to
models outside of the deposit models that allow ‘full systems
simulation’ of the value chain itself. This process has been called
‘Scenario Based Project Evaluation or SBPE (Jackson et al, 2014)
and is inherently multidisciplinary and systemic in scope.
We now propose a new challenge going forwards: to build
the connections and feed-backs between this full systems

NINTH INTERNATIONAL MINING GEOLOGY CONFERENCE / ADELAIDE, SA, 18–20 AUGUST 2014 37
T C MCCUAIG, J E VANN AND J P SYKES
value chain modelling effort with fundamental geoscience
and mineral deposit exploration science. Addressing this
challenge will require that we determine taxonomic structures
and generate models for fundamental rock properties
at scales that impact value realisation in the mining and
processing value chain. Since rocks are specified by their
mineralogy, geochemistry, textures, petrophysical properties
and structures, this work requires modelling of all of these
properties. The fundamentals of modelling geochemistry
and mineralogy are well understood (albeit there have
recently been great steps in technology enabling application
of this understanding). However, the quantitative modelling
of fundamental textural properties at small scales is a very
dynamic field. There has been significant work on this topic
in petroleum geoscience (eg Avseth et al, 2010) and some
interesting applications of mathematical morphology to the
problem (eg Maurício and Figueiredo, 2000), but the field is
very immature in relation to geometallurgy.
Connections between texture modelling and mineral
deposit characterisation, and ultimately exploration
targeting thinking, is a prime example of ‘boundary
spanning’ (Tushman, 1977 – see discussion in next section)
constituting a fruitful area for future investigations. It
would be unsurprising, for example, to find that advances in
understanding and modelling textures (and perhaps spatial
mapping of their variations) allow us to develop a richer
comprehension of the mineral systems discussed previously.
This may give interesting connections between macro-scale
textural variations (which drive important aspects of deposit
quality) with deposit-scale or even regional considerations.
In this instance the requirement is to enable individuals with
high-level conceptual knowledge of fundamental geoscience,
mathematical morphology, mineral processing and mineral
deposit targeting systems to construct a seamless interface at
the critical linkages shown in Figure 3.
THE NEED FOR BOUNDARY SPANNERS
The problem of developing links between exploration
thinking and targeting science (which is a geoscientific activity
par excellence) to downstream economic utility necessitates
a different cognitive approach. The concept of ‘boundary
spanners’ is useful to describe individuals who are capable
of forming such linkages. It was developed in the social
sciences and is most frequently associated with the work of
Michael Tushman in the field of organisational behaviour
(Tushman, 1977). The idea has been considered in assessing
the effectiveness of large scale organised research programs
(Mangematin et al, 2014), with the boundary spanners acting
as ‘scientific entrepreneurs’. As these authors (and others)
point out, through training and experience scientists are
‘discipline grounded’. We argue below that this can become
a limitation or an enabler depending on the contextualisation
of the education process. Increasingly, in many areas of
industry, providing answers to complex problems requires
that professionals combine different disciplines, technological
platforms or devices to produce solutions.
It is possible that formal education and organisational culture
can combine to encourage boundary spanning as defined
here. However the authors argue this will be a necessary but
not sufficient step. There are likely to be specific cognitive
traits for boundary spanners, for example, high MPA (mental
processing ability) as defined by MacDonald et al (2006).
The concept of MPA is imperfectly but positively correlated
to intelligence: higher order MPA denotes complexity of
thinking, specifically, the capacity to combine several systems
into a single view, albeit with ambiguities. In fact the ability
38 NINTH INTERNATIONAL MINING GEOLOGY CONFERENCE / ADELAIDE, SA, 18–20 AUGUST 2014
to tolerate ambiguity and paradox is a key component of this
ability. The best management education aims to promote
exactly this kind of synthetic and systems thinking. Synthetic
thinking is difficult for intelligent people who operate
perpetually in analytic mode (arguably this applies to many
professionals who are taught to ‘pull problems apart’ rather
than connect disparate problems). If a professional has deep
expertise, the capacity to look laterally can be hobbled.
It is noteworthy that having broad expertise is often
confused in the mining industry with being a ‘generalist’ and
erroneously as an indication of an inability to specialise. There
are implications in this for mining companies, universities and
professional societies that need further contemplation and
research: how do we train and enable ‘boundary spanners’?
The high order MPA described by McDonald and co-
authors is a measure of an individual’s capacity to link and
weave apparently separate systems together. The ultimate
expression of this is Thomas Khun’s ‘paradigm shift’ (Khun,
1996). Though now much hackneyed and overused, the
concept of paradigm shift originated in contemplating the
work of scientists (with geological examples) and is still a
startlingly original idea: in the face of general consensus
about the nature and specifics of a given system, one or more
observations are perceived that point to a re-framing of the
system. These are almost classically seen by outsiders. It has
been argued (Vann and Stewart, 2011) that, for geoscientists,
Alfred Wegener is the archetype outsider bringing a radical
idea to a scientific community. Wegener was a meteorologist
who proposed and relentlessly promoted the idea of
continental drift (Wegener, 1924) to an almost universally
sceptical geological community. Such people rarely work out
the implications of the new systemic view (they do not have
the deep expertise to do so), but they perceive the connections
against the grain of contemporary understanding, possibly
because they do not have the limited view imposed by deep
training in (and psycho-social commitment to) the current
paradigm.
Outsiders as boundary spanners can thus be of two types,
which we denote here as:
1. ‘Outside-insiders’ – who are inside a field, ie are part of an
accepted community – insiders (say in this case geologists)
bring in ideas from outside fields. Because they are inside
the community they are trying to shift, they are ‘allowed’
to do this and ideas may be more acceptable.
2. ‘Inside-outsiders’ – people who start outside a field, and
successfully manage to bring new ideas into it, which are
accepted, and they themselves are ultimately accepted as
an insider.
Like Alfred Wegener, Daniel Kahneman (eg Kahneman et
al, 1982) is an archetype of the second category, the inside-
outsider, starting out as a psychologist, but managing to be
accepted as an economist – even getting a Nobel Prize in that
discipline.
It was an outside-insider, Arthur Holmes, who proposed
the mechanisms required for Wegener’s shocking ideas
about continental drift and promoted (and put some inital
geological details to) a deeply unpopular idea (Holmes,
1929). The identification of the inside-outsider group raises
the question of how do we bring them into our field? For
example, we do not see very many economists (sensu stricto)
at economic geology conferences or contributing to economic
geology publications, partly because a degree in geology is a
prerequisite either explicitly, or tacitly to join the community.
What are the forums in our industry for inter-disciplinary
cross-pollination; or do we need to develop these? It is also
very difficult to criticise from the outside: geologists are
 MINES VERSUS MINERALISATION: DEPOSIT QUALITY, MINERAL EXPLORATION STRATEGY AND THE ROLE OF ‘BOUNDARY SPANNERS’
permitted to point to the flaws in geological and scientific
thinking (even so, this is risky) but they bristle when an
economist, ecologist or philosopher does so.
It is important to distinguish boundary spanning from more
basic collaboration. The idea of boundary spanning involves
a person with the right cognitive capacities (high MPA)
looking across traditional discipline boundaries and seeing
re-formulations of existing systemic thinking about a topic –
or connecting different parts of a problem in a manner that is
difficult for narrower specialists to do. This contrasts to more
basic forms of collaboration: getting geochemists to speak
to geophysicists, for example, is not boundary spanning,
it is effectively running a geoscience function within an
organisation. Systematically working collaboratively with
other colleagues (especially those whose problems we are not
fully familiar with) is the beginning of boundary spanning –
literally going beyond your own personal paradigm. But the
next stage requires one or more of the following additional
steps:
1. be exposed to (and embrace) key ideas that are outside
of the traditional training framework of our own
specialisation
2. connect systems that are currently not perceived to be
connected and/or
3. introduce ideas from outside a field into a new context in a
way that re-formulates the problem (‘re-framing’, see also
Kahneman et al, 1982).
We believe increased boundary spanning is required to
identify and solve new problems in geosciences (and mining).
However, there are significant barriers to the development
and success of boundary spanners in the mining industry.
The first obvious problem is the compartmentalised nature
of disciplines alluded to previously. The traditional main
technical professions in the mining value chain are exploration
geoscientists, production geoscientists, mining engineers,
mineral processing engineers and mineral economists (or
‘techno-economic specialists’). The boundaries between
some of these disciplines have overlaps (metallurgists and
geologists share mineralogy; mine planning engineers and
geologists share spatio-temporal thinking, etc). But the whole
of the value chain has not historically been seen by any of
these disciplines. The problems we now face to achieve step
changes in the value delivery of our industry require seeing
connections between the in situ properties of the mineral
deposits and all subsequent modifying and transformational
engineering and economic steps in the value chain (through
to the product in the hands of the customer). This is clearly
a complicated web of systems and a productive place for
boundary spanning to identify new challenges and new
solutions.
The barriers to boundary spanning can be conceived
as a ‘heuristic software problem’ of the current structure
and content of professional education (and consequently
organisational and professional structures within universities,
research institutions, mining firms and ultimately the industry
as a whole), which remain fundamentally discipline-based. In
practice, organisations, including mining companies, find it
very difficult to create systemic linkage between disciplines
not only because they do not speak each other’s language,
but also arguably because they work with very different
‘mental models’ of the business. This is then exacerbated and
reinforced by the ongoing separations of these functional
silos. For example:
•• geoscientists are split into exploration and production
streams
NINTH INTERNATIONAL MINING GEOLOGY CONFERENCE / ADELAIDE, SA, 18–20 AUGUST 2014
•• geosciences is a different career path to mining engineering
or mineral processing engineering
•• these disciplines are often seated in different parts of
offices (or even different geographical locations)
•• problems defined as ‘cross-disciplinary’ may
consequently remain unrecognised, or even if perceived,
remain ill-defined and dormant due to these fragmentary
organisational barriers.
The challenge: how to educate and develop professionals
in a manner that enables the high MPA individuals to
have sufficient vocabulary and conceptual perception to
move across the boundaries. Being a boundary spanner
effectively means being ‘multilingual’ across disciplines,
and usually comes with significant breadth of experience.
However, the most successful boundary spanners often have
another common trait – they were educated (and took an
interest) across disciplines at an early age, at least as early
as undergraduate level. Therefore, one possible pathway
for training in boundary spanning is by starting with the
small (but also artificial) boundaries first; eg geophysics and
geochemistry; mining engineering and mineral processing;
then moving onto bigger boundaries ie geosciences and other
natural sciences; geosciences and engineering, etc.
The traditional distinction between science and engineering
is a particular barrier to progress in this regard. Science is
conventionally defined as the endeavour of understanding
the origins, nature, and behaviour of the universe and all
it contains; engineering is about solving problems by using
fundamental scientific knowledge as a lever. The truth is that
most geoscientific work spans the boundary into problem
solving and technology, but mining industry geologists are
resolutely thought of (and think of themselves) as being
outside the domain of engineering. This is an artefact of
professional and educational cultures and an impediment
to progress of the complicated work required to enable
fundamental step-changes in the mining industry.
CONCLUSIONS
Mining projects are more and more challenged, with social
and environmental issues increasingly important. Unlocking
value in exploration and mine project development in the
future will involve the targeting and subsequent development
of projects that are viable in a world where environmental and
social issues are critical factors. While technical professionals
seek technically optimal project solutions that are socially
and environmentally acceptable; we will increasingly need
to seek socially and environmentally optimal projects that
are technically and economically acceptable. This turns the
traditional mind-set on its head.
We posit that a quality deposit needs to properly address
the following four key elements:
1. social licence to operate
2. geological factors (depth, geometry, water and
geotechnical, and geometallurgy (texture, mineralogy,
chemistry, grade)
3. financial factors (capex, opex, future commodity prices,
future energy prices)
4. operational factors (production rate, recovery, energy
consumption).
Importantly, all of these elements are interconnected, thus
cannot be considered in a linear manner and must be treated
systemically. Geological factors do however underpin all
these elements to greater or lesser degrees, thus they provide
a tool for understanding (and potentially modelling) these
interconnections. A ‘quality deposit’ thus requires that we
39
T C MCCUAIG, J E VANN AND J P SYKES
successfully address all of these elements in a time frame that
allows acceptable returns to the owners of invested capital.
Unlocking value from mineral deposit discoveries will
require changes to both the way we consider a mining project,
as well as a change in mindset of geoscientists and other
professionals within the industry. Emerging multidisciplinary
fields such as geometallurgy are beginning to tackle the
challenge of translating these elements into measureable
geological quality at the exploration stage; however, far more
research of a much wider scope is still required (for example,
can we translate specific social issues into measurable and
mappable quantities?). This work will first require the
development of an understanding of the empirical patterns
that distinguish high-quality mineralisation from low-quality
mineralisation, and then secondly will require a similar
development in our ability to predict the occurrence of such
mineralisation.
Exploring for high-quality mineralisation is likely to
require a better understanding of the elements of mineral
systems as a whole, rather than merely the parameters of
deposit models. In turn this means that a minerals system
approach to exploration is necessary, and it requires a better
understanding of the following areas:
•• understanding 3D architecture by integrating geology and
geophysics
•• mapping effects of fluid flow
•• identifying the signature of self-organisation of fluid flow
•• understanding and mapping terrane fertility.
Turning to the organisational challenges facing explorers
and mine project developers in identifying high quality
deposits, the requirement to connect various professional
silos (geosciences, engineering, management, finance,
environmental science, community engagement, etc) suggests
that ‘boundary spanners’ will become increasingly important.
Such people have the ability to bring together work from
several fields to solve complex systems problems. Developing
a sustainable and profitable mining operation from an initial
discovery is a ‘type-example’ of a complex systems problem.
Companies and professional organisations should therefore
focus on how to develop ‘boundary spanners’ within our
currently siloed and profession-focused industry. Boundary
spanners need to be developed from a young age, so the
reliance on the current system of younger workers focusing
in a silo with older professionals managing across silos
may need questioning. Similarly, a change in opinion
that generalists are merely failed specialists is required to
encourage professionals into such roles which often require
high, though different, cognitive abilities and skill sets.
Boundary spanners require the following cognitive abilities
and experiences:
•• high mental processing ability – the ability to connect
apparently unrelated systems
•• exposure to key ideas outside their field
•• the ability to introduce key ideas from outside a field into
a field allowing the reframing of a problem.
Two main types of boundary spanners are highlighted in
this paper:
1. outside-insiders – who currently sit within a professional
community and specialise on bringing outside ideas into
the community, eg Arthur Holmes
2. inside-outsiders – who start outside a community and
successfully bring ideas into the field and are thus accepted
as part of the community, eg Alfred Wegener.
40 NINTH INTERNATIONAL MINING GEOLOGY CONFERENCE / ADELAIDE, SA, 18–20 AUGUST 2014
Connecting these two types of boundary spanner is
important because the ‘outside-insiders’ can help bring
potential ‘inside-outsiders’ into the community, for example,
as Arthur Holmes (a geologist) did with Alfred Wegener (a
meteorologist) and continental drift. The development of such
boundary spanners is challenged by the current approach
to education and professional development. In the case of
geoscientists, we face the following challenges in becoming
boundary spanners:
•• geoscientists are separated into distinct exploration and
mining streams
•• geoscience is a different career path to engineering
•• these disciplines are often in different organisational and
geographical locations within a company
•• the requirement for cross-disciplinary work is often
missed – or unknowingly blocked – by organisations.
In the mining industry, the challenge now is to identify and
nurture potential boundary spanners that can build critical
links in particular between the (largely geoscientific) mineral
exploration mindset and the (largely non-geoscientific) project
development and sustainability mindset. The critical linkages
to be built are between mineral system science, targeting
science, and whole of value chain modelling.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors acknowledge numerous discussions with
colleagues from the Centre for Exploration Targeting and
industry, including Pietro Guj, Allan Trench, Richard Schodde
and Jon Hronsky. Richard Schodde is thanked for permission
to publish Figure 1. Sykes acknowledges the financial support
of a Curtin International Postgraduate Research Scholarship
(CIPRS). Vann acknowledges his former colleagues at QG
Consulting (Scott Jackson and Stephen Coward in particular),
AngloGold Ashanti (Nathan Monash) as well as Stuart
Masters of CS-2 Pty Ltd, for various discussions in recent
years which influenced his contributions to this paper. This
is publication number 473 from the ARC Centre of Excellence
for Core to Crust Fluid Systems (www. ccfs.mq.edu.au).
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