PNG Gold Mine Asset Management Improvement Program

MMJV operates Hidden Valley, an open-pit, gold-silver mine and processing plant in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea.

Hidden Valley will process an estimated 4.7 Mt/y of ore from two open pits. Annual production is expected to be around 250 000ounces of gold and four million ounces of silver annually.

Ausenco Rylson completed an Asset Management Improvement Program (AMIP) at MMJV. The program comprised the following activities:

• Provision of reliability engineers onsite
• Development and implementation of a work management system via the provision of work management system expertise and additional planning resources to coach and mentor local staff
• Development of maintenance strategies including primary and secondary actions with the additional output of activity based maintenance budgets
• Completion of a stores rationalisation and validation of existing spares and inventory cataloguing
• Establishment of site warehousing set-up and tooling requirements
• Development of standard job instructions

Achievements

As part of the AMIP Ausenco Rylson undertook a complete plant strategy review based on the principles of reliability centred maintenance(RCM). Out of this process, Ausenco Rylson were able to deliver a full suite of maintenance routines.

The outcomes of the AMIP for MMJV include assurance that equipment reliability will meet production needs, ready access to labour and material costing information and an increase in the integrity of its Computerised Maintenance Management System(CMMS).