I N D U S T R Y L A B R E P O R T - Triple Performance Mine
An experiment in integrated mine design.
Mines are still designed in sequence rather than as systems. Production is optimised first; environment, water, closure, safety, community relationships, and decarbonisation are bolted on afterwards, once the pit shells are fixed and the technology selections are made. The cost of that sequence shows up later — in permitting delays, contested water licences, deferred rehabilitation that never gets caught up, and trust deficits that the next crisis exposes.
CEEC International and GMG built the Triple Performance Mine lab as a way for mining professionals to practice integrated design before they have to do it on a real project. Three teams of six played the leadership of a hypothetical mining company developing Snow Apple Mine — a $4B capital build, 40-year life operation, open pit transitioning to underground, a water-stressed catchment, three Indigenous rights-holder communities, a regional town 15 km away, and a heritage-listed ridge. Teams made foundational design and technology decisions in Round 1 and then faced challenge cards across the simulated life of the asset, with environmental, water, community and economic consequences arriving as direct feedback to choices made in the first hour. It is deliberately a game: the simulation gives participants permission to make decisions they would not normally make, to surface assumptions they would not normally name, and to see what their own design choices look like under stress.
Our purpose in developing the lab is twofold: to give mining professionals a tangible experience of what an interdisciplinary, non-siloed approach to mine design actually feels like and produces; and to surface, in the industry’s own words, the barriers to working this way and the changes that would make it possible.