Agnew Village

COLLABORATION DELIVERS ON-TIME AGNEW RESULT

When Mintrex was called in to help Gold Fields manage a $30 million mine accommodation project, there was a risk of the development falling behind schedule.

The 800-room village for workers at Gold Fields’ Agnew gold mine near Leinster in the Goldfields had a May 31, 2019 deadline for opening the first stage. Mintrex came on board in mid-September 2018 with the mission of helping to make that happen.

A delayed completion would have added to Gold Fields’ costs by extending existing accommodation arrangements. To meet the deadline, the job needed to be handed over to a builder by Christmas, so time was of the essence.

The Agnew village project manager moved to Mintrex’s offices, where weekly meetings with agendas were conducted and minutes taken. Action plans were kept up to date. A risk register was compiled and the schedule revised with sufficient breathing spaces inserted.

Working together, Mintrex and Gold Fields resolved that the best way forward was to preserve embedded project knowledge and maintain existing relationships with service providers.

The consultants met builder McNally Group, which had concept designs under way with ACOR Consultants. That stage was nearly complete and the proposal to complete the detailed design had been fairly priced. So rather than bringing the work into the Mintrex office, it was awarded to ACOR and McNally.

The construction contract was tendered to four builders. At the same time, regulatory approval work for the village’s water and sewage systems was carried out with the ACOR McNally design team.

As a result of the tight focus on achieving the schedule, the main builder construction contract was inked at the end of November, about 10 weeks from the time of Mintrex’s appointment.

“We had absolutely outstanding collaboration from Gold Fields’ procurement and contracts division,” Mintrex executive engineer Tom Kendall said. “Those guys really moved heaven and earth to make that happen.”

Mintrex handed back the project to the Gold Fields Agnew management team in January 2019, providing one Mintrex staff member in a support role until the first stage was completed.

“We did it well under our quoted budget and they were able to take the project over, confident that it was properly organised,” Mr Kendall said. “They had contracts in place that they could administer properly.”

The 450-room stage was ready by the end of May. The remaining 367 rooms were ahead of schedule to be completed in September and were delivered by the end of July.

Instead of taking the most lucrative route for Mintrex, prioritising the client’s interests gave GFA a less disruptive, lower-cost process.

“You do a lot better to look at things from the client’s point of view from the get-go rather than what might necessarily suit you,” Mr Kendall said.