De Beers Group

Industry:

Mining & Industrial.

The US$ 2.1 billion project is the biggest investment in the South African diamond mining industry in decades and is expected to be in full production in 2025. The development is expected to extend the life of the mine to 2046 and deliver approximately 96 million carats in diamonds. The company currently operates an open pit mine employing 3731 people of whom 1411 are DBCM employees and 2320 are full-time contractors providing specific services and skills.

The Challenge:

A project of this size and complexity requires experienced and reliable partners and De Beers Group assigned the quantity surveying and contract management to Professional Cost Consultants (PCC), with Murray & Roberts Cementation as the contractor. As a result, they needed a system that would allow for multiple stakeholders. Similarly, a multi-year endeavour like this requires tight monitoring of costs, equipment, parts, and labour required through the various phases of the project.

To deal with such complexity, the De Beers Group needed a reliable and proven project management platform to effectively and transparently deal with every aspect of the project and provide in-depth reports on the same standardized platform.

What they needed

The De Beers Group needed a Standardized Platform for their Project Estimation. RIB could provide them with a Project Estimation tool to assist in producing clear Project goals and helping the management team to not just adhere to these goals, but to achieve them more accurately and efficiently with more control.

The Solution:

For the Venetia project, the Candy Estimating & Project Control Software from RIB Mining & Industrial was chosen. The software is a multi-faceted, all-inclusive project control solution, which caters for different scenarios and industries. It is also able to integrate and exchange data with a host of industry business applications.

The Results:

Simplified control of complex projects

Candy contains and controls all aspects of the project, saving all parties involved time and avoiding the frustrating miscommunications often seen on large projects.

Record keeping

Every change that is made is recorded meaning changes to estimates can be viewed and understood immediately

Effective forecasting

Candy is an excellent valuation tool, providing forecasting revenues that are accurate and detailed.

One platform

Despite the project’s complexity, Candy provided every stakeholder with one platform to access all information. This made project estimation control much easier. Candy can export and import data from many applications, including Excel. The benefit of the speed of the application and the detailed data one can extract from the platform for interrogation and analysis is incomparable.

Time saving

Previously it took up to two days to handle the various sub-projects’ financial systems. Using Candy, that has been reduced to four hours.