Increasing Efficiency With Greater Document Control

By InEight

OCEANAGOLD INCREASES EFFICIENCY WITH GREATER DOCUMENT CONTROL

 

OceanaGold, a multinational gold producer, needed a way to efficiently manage the thousands of documents created each year to support its mining activities. It was especially critical that workers operating heavy equipment underground could access these key documents. Project data scattered in siloed point solutions simply wasn’t acceptable anymore. OceanaGold needed to store project information in a single, searchable repository. The solution was InEight® Document, an industry-leading collaborative document management solution. With InEight Document, OceanaGold project teams are now managing a single source of controlled project truth, helping to ensure project certainty.

 

The Challenge

Headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, OceanaGold has considerable global operating, development and exploration experience. Its operating assets include: the Didipio Gold-Copper Mine on Luzon Island in the Philippines; the Macraes Goldfield Mine on the South Island of New Zealand; the Waihi Gold Mine on the North Island of New Zealand; and the Haile Gold Mine located in South Carolina, U.S. In all, OceanaGold produces more than a half-million ounces of gold per year.

The company has a significant pipeline of organic growth and exploration opportunities in the Australasia market and the Americas. Employing more than 2,000 people and running both open-pit mining and underground operations, OceanaGold was searching for a way to better manage and control thousands of project-related documents.

Before InEight Document, OceanaGold was wasting valuable time searching for project documents. Chris Cawood is chief information officer at OceanaGold and reflects on life before InEight. “Managing documents wasn’t done very well. Everything was in localized file shares, on file servers, and there was very little structure and governance over document management.”

 

Why InEight

Seeking a way to manage controlled documents from a single, trusted source, OceanaGold chose InEight Document, a collaborative document management solution. With InEight Document, OceanaGold now has a document repository that allows for the capturing, controlling, versioning and distributing of corporate, operational and project documents.

Because InEight Document is cloud-based, OceanaGold has a document control system that can be accessed from anywhere, including hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth. OceanaGold workers are often underground operating several pieces of equipment — pumps, ventilation systems, powerplants — and each must be operated by a standard procedure. “Our workers will be underground with a tablet, and they’re able to see all the procedures they need to operate it safely,” says Cawood. “InEight Document forms a key part of that.”

OceanaGold works with Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractors, which makes for challenging times when it comes to acquiring documents and storing them in a place where people can find them. “It’s always difficult,” says Cawood. “InEight Document gives us a repository where we can store everything. It gives us a lot more control and governance for that compliance piece.”

Cawood says InEight Document is also easy to use. “People are up and running with the product very quickly, and it’s been quite painless compared to its competitors.”

 

Project Success

Since deploying InEight Document, OceanaGold has been able to manage, protect and distribute tens of thousands of documents via a single, controlled source of truth. Cawood says OceanaGold originally used InEight Document to support the development project teams who were building the mines. They have since transitioned into using the tool to manage operational documents and store legal contracts. Underground mining is a heavily regulated industry, and with that comes compliance requirements and a myriad of controlled documents such as standard operating procedures. OceanaGold manages all those documents using InEight Document’s version control and document control components. By integrating the tool with Microsoft SharePoint®, the documents can be accessed by more than 2,500 people.

“We can find documents in one place,” says Cawood. “You don’t have to dig through multitudes of file servers and unstructured data all over the place. That’s a big benefit.”

The ability to control and manage documents on a global basis was also a key differentiator. “Because we are global, we didn’t want to have document storage spread all over the world,” says Cawood. “It was critical to have a solution that would support our teams and their needs, such as handling transmittals and drawings.”

OceanaGold is currently managing more than 35,000 documents under a single source of controlled project truth with InEight Document. However, numbers only tell part of the story when it comes to the company’s satisfaction with the software. “We are continually improving our governance and efficiency around document management,” says Cawood. “Now, it’s not a problem.”

OceanaGold is now seeing a higher level of efficiency with greater document control. InEight Document streamlines the process of capturing, controlling, accessing and tracking project documentation. This allows companies such as OceanaGold to create the controlled, secure and accessible environment necessary to run successful projects.

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