Cook open pit model - the hurdles: how we leapt, lunged, stumbled and overcame them.

At Newmont's Jundee Operation, Western Australia, exploration and resource geologists collaborated to produce a resource model; an open pit model gave better results for the low-grade ores (0.2-1.5 g/t Au) than those of a previous underground assessment. Three methods were used to create the mineralisation and geology wireframes: implicit Leapfrog volume and vein modelling, Vulcan section polygon modelling, and Vulcan categorical modelling. Underground and open pit block modelling procedures both had to be used for grade estimation, with open pit block sizes significantly larger than underground block sizes. By sharing skills and knowledge between the resource and exploration departments, both sets of personnel learned new skills; the exploration team learned more about the estimation process and the geologists developed new databases for model validation, reconciliation and reporting. By collaboration and the use of a variety of modelling and estimation techniques but no new data, the uneconomic underground target has been converted into a potentially economic open pit evaluation.
At Newmont's Jundee Operation, Western Australia, exploration and resource geologists collaborated to produce a resource model; an open pit model gave better results for the low-grade ores (0.2-1.5 g/t Au) than those of a previous underground assessment. Three methods were used to create the mineralisation and geology wireframes: implicit Leapfrog volume and vein modelling, Vulcan section polygon modelling, and Vulcan categorical modelling. Underground and open pit block modelling procedures both had to be used for grade estimation, with open pit block sizes significantly larger than underground block sizes. By sharing skills and knowledge between the resource and exploration departments, both sets of personnel learned new skills; the exploration team learned more about the estimation process and the geologists developed new databases for model validation, reconciliation and reporting. By collaboration and the use of a variety of modelling and estimation techniques but no new data, the uneconomic underground target has been converted into a potentially economic open pit evaluation.