< Back to Nova Partners

What’s in a name?  wHole Solutions is about “hole” solutions (drill holes) as well as “whole” solutions (fitting into the entire business system).

wHole Solutions is a Brisbane-based private company that offers boutique data management services for the exploration and mining communities in coal and precious metals.

Who benefits?

  • Miners and explorers globally
  • Coal mining geoscientists
Miners and Explorers globally.

If you are a miner or explorer at a junior, mid-tier or major mining organisation, you will have a need to manage your geoscientific information.

Experience indicates junior companies seem to manage with free off-the-shelf systems until the data gets to a certain size. However, there comes a time when a proper systems approach to managing geoscience information is required.

wHole Solutions can help any sized mining company wanting to consolidate and grow their geoscientific systems at any stage of growth.

Some key tasks during these growth stages comprise:

  • Building a Geoscientific Information Management (GIM) business case for your management team,
  • Selecting a fit-for-purpose GIM system
  • Post-implementation services of a GIM system
  • Migration of legacy data to a new GIM system
  • Integration of GIM with other mining systems.
  • Database management.

wHole Solutions can guide you through these tasks.  If these tasks are large and/or many, wHole Solutions has the capacity to leverage its well-established networks for additional human resources.

Coal Mining Geoscientists

The resource model is the geologists’ best estimate of the location, style, quality and tonnage of the in-ground resource.  It is the foundation of all future mine planning processes within a coal mine.  Reserve runs, JORC statements, mine plans, valuations, and other similar mine planning activities all build on the geological model as the foundation.

But is the model really the foundation?  How often we hear of stories that involve greater effort in preparing and validating the underlying data sets before the modeling process can even begin.  Preparing often means collecting the various bits of data from disparate sources to one location.  Validating can be a long iterative process involving many intricacies. So is the model the foundation for all future mining activities or is a good quality data set of underlying drill holes, coal quality etc the real foundation of all future mine planning processes?

There is no doubt a well-organised, validated and maintained GIM system is a major factor contributing to a vastly reduced turnaround time for a resource/reserve model.

wHole Solutions can assist Coal geologists with the kind of data preparation needed for resource models and provide advice on GIM systems capable of storing and delivering relevant information for model related activities from the following knowledge domains:

  • Coal quality (including washability)
  • Geological logging
  • Casing/cementing
  • Drilling invoice reconciliation
  • Down hole geophysics
  • Depth adjustment
  • Engineering geology
  • Tenure management
  • Migration of legacy data to CoaLog format
  • Site rehabilitation

Technologists

Jared Armstrong - GIM Suite Professional

Jared is an engineering geologist by training with a first-class honors degree. While working in a database technology company, he helped with selling, designing and building user-focused, business-conscious GIM systems all around the globe.  Prior to that, he accumulated many years of coal mining experience in all aspects of coal geology, from exploration to mine geology, engineering geology and coal quality.

Jared gets excited when he sees opportunities to make a geologist’s life easier using well-designed, enduring technologies. It does not matter whether you are at the coal face or leading your business unit, he has observed opportunities for optimising geologists’ tasks that exist in every mine. His philosophy is, a geologist should be freed from the shackles of poorly stored data to do what they were trained to do; think about how to better utilise geology/geotech and use their time increasing personal productivity and contributing to better business outcomes.

Back to top