First Principles Consulting

Spending More, Getting Less

The mining industry is currently trapped in The Productivity Paradox.

Miners are investing record amounts in better technology, smarter equipment, more training, and yet McKinsey found that productivity is 25% lower today than in 2005.

Accenture’s Billion Dollar Blind Spot found that sites miss their own guidance by 2.6% on average, costing the industry $64B in forecast revenue alone.

This isn’t a failure of effort. It’s a failure of the system. You are being asked to run complex operations with teams facing a Competency Crisis — technically qualified, but operationally inexperienced.

Is your site chaotic, relying on heroics to hit monthly targets?

Are you chasing “Silver Bullet” tech projects?

Are you stressing over hitting the quarterly budget?

Book Coming Soon

Benchmark Your Site

Phase

Assess

Get your tailored Operational Alpha Blueprint.
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We identify the critical capability gaps limiting operations, and provide a roadmap to resolve them.

Phase

Mobilise

We identify and empower your “Early Adopters” (Volunteer Army) to drive the change from the ground up, avoiding resistance and change fatigue.

Get Your Personalised Blueprint

Phase

Transform

We provide the toolkit for your Volunteer Army to implement the Operational Performance Framework, creating speed to value.

Get Your Personalised Blueprint

Don't Optimise, Stabilise

Consultants try to optimise broken system elements. We reinforce the foundation first.
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Bridging the gap between your team’s technical skills and the operational maturity required to run a safe, high performance site.

Consultant led change is doomed to fail; instead, we guide your site as it moves up the Capability Curve, so you stop needing us.

Stop Guessing

Most operational leaders self diagnose and chase silver bullets.

One thing doesn’t get immediate results, they change course. The result? A series of half built bridges.

With a clear plan and timeline, operations and results become consistent, predictable, and reliable.

“Never enough time to do things right, always enough time to do things twice”

Status Quo

The Productivity Paradox: Spending more for less.

Continued Chaos: Perpetual firefighting, chaos, heroics, and instability.

Missed Guidance: Stressing about another bad quarter.

Career Risk: Uncertainty, and low delivery confidence.

Outperformance

Operational Alpha: Value creation independent of market prices.

Predictability: Hit targets safely and consistently.

‍Sustainability: A system that works without constant intervention or heroics

‍Profit: Less waste, lower costs, better margins.

Get Your Blueprint

Benchmark Your Site

Unlocked great value by improving systems and creating visual tools that facilitated a step change in our ability to identify bottlenecks, with an uplift in performance that paid back the investment multiple times over.

Stephen Fitch, former UG Mine Manager (2019)

Newcrest

Created a working environment conducive to improved cooperation and collaboration between stakeholders, with significant improvements in planning through execution and review cycles.

Manager, Performance, Telfer Operations (2018)

Newcrest

Built an effective and efficient Management System with a detailed roadmap that ensured processes remained in place and effective.

Costerfield Site Leadership Team (2017)

Mandalay Resources

Their Management Operating System reduced time chasing job completion, improved meeting efficiency, provided reliable information, and improved planning methodologies and compliance.

General Manager Operations (2022)

Resolute Mining Limited (Mali)

FPC was the key that unlocked our project's hidden potential, skillfully addressing a challenging cultural environment through detailed operational review and targeted MOS implementation.

Russell Taylor, GM, Surface Mining Australia (2017)

Macmahon Contracting

FPC has been the glue that united all aspects of our success, creating an accurate and trusted master dataset that enables timely and informed production decisions.

Prominent Hill site leadership team

OZ Minerals (now BHP)