The Competent Person is one of the most important roles in the Mineral Resource industry. It is also one of the least understood — not in terms of its technical requirements, but in terms of what it actually demands of the person who holds it.

The JORC Code is clear on the formal requirements.

A Public Report concerning Exploration Results, Mineral Resources or Ore Reserves is the responsibility of the company acting through its board of directors. However, that report must be based on, and fairly reflect, the information and supporting documentation prepared by a Competent Person. The supporting documentation must be prepared by, or under the direction of, and signed by a Competent Person. The company must also obtain the Competent Person's prior written consent to the form and context in which their work appears in the Public Report.

Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC), 2012

A Competent Person must be a Member or Fellow of AusIMM, the Australian Institute of Geoscientists, or an approved Recognised Professional Organisation. They must have at least five years of experience relevant to both the style of mineralisation or type of deposit under consideration and the activity they are undertaking. The experience required for exploration, Mineral Resource estimation and Ore Reserve estimation is not necessarily interchangeable (JORC, 2012).

What the Code cannot capture is the weight of that responsibility in practice.

When a Competent Person signs the supporting documentation and provides written consent for public reporting, they are doing more than confirming that an estimate has been calculated correctly.

They are accepting responsibility for the technical work on which that Public Report is based.

They must be satisfied with the underlying data, geological interpretation, estimation approach, assumptions, classification, material risks and the way the result or results are presented.

Experience that cannot be written into a standard

The JORC Code sets a floor. It defines the minimum qualifications required to act as a Competent Person. But the difference between a CP who meets the minimum requirements and one who has spent twenty years developing an instinct for what a resource estimate is really telling you — that difference cannot be fully captured in a standard.

So — what is that experience?

• The projects that went well and the ones that did not.
• The calls and decisions that were right and the ones that were wrong.
• The ability to recognise patterns and see trends — the kind of pattern recognition that develops only through sustained exposure to real data and real consequences.
• The capacity to look at a dataset before a single step of the modelling process has begun — in Leapfrog, Micromine, Datamine or otherwise — and already understand where the risks are likely to be.
• The decisions that proved correct and the decisions that had to be reconsidered.

This is the knowledge that the industry most needs to preserve. And it is the knowledge that is most at risk of being lost.

This does not mean allowing instinct to replace evidence.

The work before "the model"

The visible product of Mineral Resource estimation is usually the model, the estimate, the classification and the supporting report and documentation.

But much of the most important work happens before those outputs are produced.

It happens while:

• understanding the geological and mineralisation controls;
• reviewing the history and purpose of the drilling programme;
• assessing sampling and analytical quality;
• determining whether the available data are representative;
• identifying gaps, biases and unresolved inconsistencies;
• testing alternative interpretations;
• understanding the wider project context;
• deciding which assumptions can reasonably be supported; and
• determining what level of confidence the available evidence can sustain.

A model does not begin when the software is opened.

It begins with the quality of the questions being asked of the data — and yes, software is used to assist with that process. This is why two professionals can work from the same database and the same modelling software yet arrive at different outcomes. The difference is not always found in the calculation. It is often found in how the problem was framed, how the geology was understood, and which risks were recognised before and during the modelling process.

In practice, the estimation step accounts for roughly 20% of the overall process. The preceding modelling work — litho-structural, mineralisation, weathering and domain models, together with exploratory data analysis — accounts for the remaining 80%. This is the inverse of what is commonly described by the Pareto Principle when applied to the process as a whole.

That is the experience the industry needs to preserve. It is also the experience most at risk of being lost.

What happens when experienced CPs stop talking

In my own professional network, I can see a generational transition taking place.

The professionals who built their careers in the 1990s and 2000s — who developed their expertise through cycles of boom and bust, through projects that succeeded and projects that failed — are moving towards the end of their careers. Their experience was built through changing markets, evolving technologies, successful projects, failed assumptions and projects that did not perform as originally expected.

When they go, they take with them a body of knowledge that cannot be recovered from the technical reports they signed. The reports document the conclusions. They do not document the thinking.

The reports also rarely capture:

• every interpretation that was considered and rejected;
• the moments when something did not feel right and an experienced practitioner decided to investigate further; or
• why one technically reasonable pathway was chosen over another.

The next generation of Competent Persons may be technically proficient. They may meet the formal requirements and have access to better software, larger datasets and more advanced analytical tools. However, they may not have access to the accumulated wisdom of the professionals who came before them — unless someone makes a deliberate effort to capture it.

The conversation that needs to happen

Over the course of my career as a Mineral Resource professional, I have come to appreciate that the most valuable knowledge in this industry is the knowledge that does not make it into the public record. It is the knowledge that is absorbed through close mentorship, through asking a great many questions, and through sustained participation in conversations with other Mineral Resource professionals. It develops by surrounding yourself with experienced practitioners and listening carefully to how they work through uncertainty.

The importance of this form of knowledge transfer has been recognised within the industry for some time. Coombes (2006) described technical mentoring as a means of transferring experience, improving the quality of modelling and strengthening decision-making. The paper also argued that stronger mentoring relationships could help bridge generational gaps within the industry.

The conversation cannot remain only technical

Conversations with technical peers are critical. Mineral Resource professionals need people around them who understand the detail, can test their reasoning and are willing to say when something does not make sense. However, the conversation cannot remain confined to the technical discipline alone.

The Mineral Resource estimation process and its outcomes form part of a much larger project and decision-making system.

• The technical professional may be focused on data quality, geological continuity, estimation uncertainty and classification.
• The operational manager may be asking whether the model reflects what can realistically be mined and delivered.
• The executive may be considering project sequencing, capital allocation and whether further investment is justified.
• The board may be considering governance, disclosure risk and whether the organisation has sufficient confidence to proceed.
• An independent reviewer may be examining whether the evidence, assumptions and conclusions are transparent, traceable and defensible.
• The analyst or investor may be trying to understand what the estimate means for project risk, growth and future value.

Each person may be looking at the same project, but they are not necessarily asking the same question.

That is where important information can become lost.

A technically sound result may still fail to influence a decision if its significance is not clearly communicated. Uncertainty may be well understood by the technical team but poorly conveyed to management, the board or the market. A project may continue accumulating data without answering the questions that actually determine whether it should advance, pause or change direction.

Mineral Resource professionals therefore need more than technical depth. They must also understand how their work connects with project strategy, operational reality, governance, capital allocation and communication. That does not mean allowing commercial pressure to override technical evidence. It means understanding the decision that the technical work is intended to support — and communicating clearly what the evidence can and cannot justify.

Preserving the judgement behind the number

The Mineral Resource industry has become very good at preserving databases, models and final reports. It should become equally deliberate about preserving the experience and reasoning behind them. This is not only a matter of optimising thinking processes, decision-making and strategies — it is about preserving and sharing knowledge that the next generation of Mineral Resource professionals, and indeed current practitioners, would be unlikely to find directly in academic literature, professional courses or public reporting.

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Note: The views expressed in this article are the author's own. References have been cited and applied to the context as accurately as possible.

Coombes, J. (2006). Mentoring — Fostering relationships to enrich decision-making. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Mining Geology Conference (pp. 291–296). Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

Joint Ore Reserves Committee. (2012). Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves: The JORC Code, 2012 edition.