acQuire Connected episode 43: From data migration to mastery
Geological data is the foundation of any successful mining operation but managing that data efficiently is no small task, especially across multiple sites, legacy systems, and evolving workflows. At Northern Star Resources, Susan Androvich, Database Superintendent, knows that challenge all too well.
In the latest episode of acQuire Connected, Susan shares her team’s experience in completing a large geological data migration of Northern Star Resources’ Jundee mine site from a legacy database to GIM Suite, acQuire’s enterprise geological data management solution. We also explore common data challenges and what the future of data management looks like in the resources industry.
Common data dilemmas in the resources industry
Geological data quality remains a persistent challenge in the mining and resources industry. Time pressures often result in geologists entering data hastily, intending to clean it later, but when that time comes, key contextual knowledge may already be lost.
As Susan shares, “I’m sure everyone in the industry has seen so many projects where, ten years later, someone is finally coming back to clean up the data and all the people that were involved in it have left the company. They might even have changed the logging style. I think having good, clean data from the start is probably key to resolving 90% of the issues.”
Fragmented systems across multiple sites only compound the problem. Each site may have different workflows and field naming conventions, and this lack of standardisation creates barriers to efficient, consolidated reporting.
Migrating databases: Moving Jundee to GIM Suite
Northern Star’s Jundee site was the final and one of the more complex operations to migrate its data to GIM Suite due to the high volume of data throughput, with up to 15 rigs running daily.
The migration process involved mapping data from the legacy system into GIM Suite, rigorous workflow testing, and validating reports with site geologists.
Susan shared, “We ran all the exports and all the reports that they currently produced and got the resource geologists to confirm that the data coming out of GIM Suite was the same as the data that had come out previously. Because we’ve reported things to the stock exchange, we can’t have values changing because we’re calling something different and the models had to be the same so that for future planning everything lined up.”
Despite “everything changing,” the goal was for the transition to feel seamless to users. The process took six months, including intensive on-site training to support adoption and ensure user confidence.
Embedding GIM Suite into Jundee wasn’t just a technological change, it was a human one. Supporting people through the change management process was just as critical as the software itself.
Of this time, Susan shares, “One of the key things I think for anyone, and I don’t think this is software related, I think for any change in any industry, you’ve got to identify the key people that are going to be affected and involved and get them engaged in it. If the people who are going to have the change impact them are engaged and are looking forward to the change and what it’s going to bring, then it’s going to be a positive outcome.”
The future of geoscientific information management
Emerging technologies, like KORE Geosystems, are transforming how core logging is done at Northern Star Resources. AI-assisted logging improves both consistency and speed, generating automated logs that geologists can then validate. This collaboration between human and machine reduces the time geologists spend on repetitive tasks.
“There’s still a lot of review needed because the geologists need to actually review the core logging. But it means that when the data comes through, it’s clean, it’s valid, it’s consistent.”
While automation is advancing, people remain essential to interpreting, validating and managing geological data. Roles may evolve, but the need for expertise and oversight will continue to be central.
“I can see it just opening up more opportunities for that clean, valid data collection,” shares Susan.
“In terms of how it’ll affect my role, to be honest, I don’t think it’ll affect it dramatically… People will still want to know where this data goes, what happens with it, how they can extract it, where the data was captured, and all that needs to be still captured. So, there’s still a role for a DBA (Database Administrator), even in an AI world.”
“I do think in the next five years, there will be a much larger use of AI to do…the day-to-day things, not the project work, not the things that require you to make jumps of logic, but even simple things like putting the infrastructure and apps in place where you can say, ‘I want to write a computer program that does this using this language”.
To learn more about Susan’s experience migrating a mine site’s geological data to GIM Suite, listen to the full episode here:
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Read the full transcript here:
Jaimee Nobbs (00:10): Welcome to the acQuire Connected podcast. I’m Jaimee Nobbs, your host for this podcast, and today we sit down with Susan Androvich, Database Superintendent at Northern Star Resources to talk about her experience migrating a mine site across to GIM Suite, as well as look at some of the common challenges that she’s faced working with data in the resources industry and how her role has changed with the implementation of new technologies. Thanks for joining me today.
Susan Androvich (00:36): You’re welcome. Thank you for inviting me.
Jaimee Nobbs (00:39): So let’s kick off perhaps with an introduction. Would you be able to introduce yourself, your role, and provide a little bit of a background on how you’ve got to where you are today?
Susan Androvich (00:51): Okay. So I’m Susan Androvich, the Database Superintendent at Northern Star Resources. I started in the database field in 2007, so I was teaching computing at the local tafe and one of my ex-students had been the database administrator at KCGM at the Superpit, and he was leaving the role. He reached out and said, would I be interested in leaving academia? So I went, yes. So that was me going into the industry and actually doing the things that I’d been teaching about, which was really cool and interesting. So I left the Superpit after about seven years. Went out to industry for a couple of years, and I’ve been with Northern Star for 11 years now.
Jaimee Nobbs (01:41): Has your role evolved since being at Northern Star?
Susan Androvich (01:45): It has. When I came in, we were a small team and I was definitely the junior in the team. Aaron and Jen taught me how to use GIM Suite, how to work in Northern Star, the Northern Star workflows, and how to align the knowledge that I had before to bring it into a bigger company and a company that has multiple mine sites. And then over the years I’ve progressed and moved up and yeah, now I’m database superintendent managing a team of six.
Jaimee Nobbs (02:21): That is an interesting role evolution as a database superintendent. What are some of the common challenges you’ve seen the resources industry face in the data space since starting back in 2007?
Susan Androvich (02:35): The ultimate challenge for anything that’s data related is having clean data. There’s so much of a tendency, everyone’s working under pressure and everyone’s got time constraints and they need to get the data in and get the data in now, and they’ll worry about cleaning it up later. So I think one of the biggest challenges is getting cleaned data in the first place, not rushing, not grouping things together, just making it clean, valid, usable, retrievable, and doing that right from the start rather than just putting it in a little bit messy and someone will clean it up later. I’m sure everyone in the industry has seen so many projects where 10 years later, someone is finally coming back to clean up the data and all the people that were involved in it have left the company. They might even have changed the logging style. So yeah, I think having good, clean data from the start is probably key to resolving 90% of the issues.
Jaimee Nobbs (03:42): You mentioned that at Northern Star you look after multiple sites. How does someone in your role ensure that the data remains clean and valid at the point of entry across numerous different sites?
Susan Androvich (03:56): Yeah, it’s a challenge. I mean, we obviously use GIM Suite software and use the validation that’s built into that or having that validation on, we make sure that the data that comes in is valid and is as clean as possible. Another issue that we face is that because we do have multiple sites and they had all been using acQuire prior to, or a lot of them had been using acQuire’s GIM Suite prior to joining Northern Star. So we have a lot of differences and separations in the way that the fields are named and the coding is done. So we have a large project on at the moment, it’s a five-year project to standardise so that every site has the same field set. Every site can use the same objects. If they’re doing the same task, they’ll use the same objects with the same lookups and the same validation. And by doing that, it’s a mammoth project, but once it’s complete, we’ll have consistency of clean data. Everyone will be calling the same piece of data, the same name, so consistent across the company so we can do company-wide reporting really easily.
Jaimee Nobbs (05:12): That sounds like an exciting project. I guess that leads nicely onto my next question. You spoke at this year’s acQuire Connect Tech Summit about a migration project at one particular site, Jundee, to GIM Suite. And I’d love to unpack that presentation a little bit more. Perhaps for someone that wasn’t at the event, can you talk us through what that migration process was about and why you considered that change? You’ve kind of touched on it a bit already, talking about standardisation across sites, but perhaps there are other reasons you undertook this project to add to that as well?
Susan Androvich (05:46): The main drive for it was to standardise that we had all of our sites in GIM Suite except for one. And the reason that they hadn’t been migrated prior to that is just they’re a very busy site, very large. I mean, they have 14, 15 rigs running daily, so there’s a lot of data throughput every day, but the decision was made to bring them in and align them with the other sites. So we had to look at their existing workflows and map them from their previous software into GIM Suite, but also try to align them with the other workflows from our other sites as much as possible. So while every site is unique, a lot of the individual tasks they do are the same. So when they’re doing their geological logging, the logging process is the same. The data that they’re putting in and the way they do it, it’s subtly different for each site obviously.
So we had to map the fields from the other software into what we chose to bring them into acQuire, had to map their previous logging codes and all their reference tables and then bring that across prior to going live. It was an enormous project. So we mapped all their data, migrated it across into what was going to be their GIM Suite application and structure, and then we ran all of the exports and all of the reports that they currently produced got their resource geologists to confirm that the data that was coming out of GIM suite was the same as the data that had come out previously. Because we’ve reported things to the stock exchange, we can’t have values changing because we’re calling something different and the models had to be the same so that the future planning everything lined up. So there was no major data change from the previous software into GIM Suite knowing that of course, it’s new software and everything changes. So it had to be everything changing but nothing changing. Both equally important and both had to happen.
Jaimee Nobbs (08:03): And I guess it does allow you to scale and grow with standardised data management across the sites as well as for reporting. So it does take a bit of time and consideration in a change management process like that. It’s not as simple as switching systems. How long did it take you to do the migration process? Would you say it’s done or is it something that evolves over time?
Susan Androvich (08:27): For that one site? It’s definitely done. 18th of May. Last year, we switched over, we seconded an extra DBA from one of our other sites, and then the team of us spent six months pretty much. So there were three of us working on it full-time for six months.
Jaimee Nobbs (08:45): Wow.
Susan Androvich (08:45): Yeah, it was huge. It was immense. In that also was the setting up of their GIM Suite workspace and their GIM Suite objects and training because a lot of the people on that site hadn’t used the acQuire GIM Suite application before. So we did weeks and weeks of training. We went to site. In terms of the data migration, we probably could have switched them over two months earlier, but because you’re interacting with people and dealing with people, you had to train them, and it’s a mine site with fly and fly out, so you have to catch both swings. So probably the last two months was just the being on site, watching exactly what they do day to day, sitting next to them and saying, okay, so after we go live, you’ll be doing it this way and that’s how you do it today and that’s how you’re going to do it tomorrow.
Jaimee Nobbs (09:40): I guess that ties into when we consider software, particularly at acQuire, we talk about the people, process and technology working together. It’s not just the technology, it’s also the people and those people learning the processes that they have to go through when using software. One can’t work in isolation to the others. You’ve raised an interesting point here about change management, particularly like you said, you’ve got a team of six and many other stakeholders now using GIM Suite. It can be a bit daunting now that you’ve gone through it. What should companies consider before going into change management across any system? What are some of the key considerations for a company that is looking to go through that now, given your experience? Having gone through that?
Susan Androvich (10:29): We now have a much more robust change management process in place. So any major changes, we have to involve all the key stakeholders, get everyone’s approval, explain the change, why we’re doing it, what we’re doing, and what the outcome will be. One of the key things I think for anyone, and I don’t think this is software related, I think for any change in any industry, you’ve got to identify the key people that are going to be affected and involved and get them engaged in it. If the people who are going to have the change impact them are engaged and are looking forward to the change and what it’s going to bring, then it’s going to be a positive outcome. If the people who are going to be affected by the change the most are not engaged and don’t see the benefits of it, I guess it raises the question, is the change good or bad? Unless it’s a requirement.
Jaimee Nobbs (11:28): And now that you’ve gone through the migration process, has there been anything that you would take away as a learning or if you were to go through another migration project that you would consider doing differently next time around?
Susan Androvich (11:41): Yes, I think I’d do it quite differently if I was going to start the whole project today. When we migrated Jundee, we tried to match their existing workflows and existing data fields as much as possible to reduce the impact of the change on the people on site. We made fields the same names rather than trying to align them with what we had at the other sites. At the moment, we sort of have four key types of fields with our different sites. There’s two with one structure, there’s two with another structure, there’s one with a third structure, and now Jundee has a fourth structure. So in hindsight, probably should have picked one of the existing sites and said, we’re going to change you to this. Probably would’ve done that differently. That’s probably the only change in terms of the time we took, the way we approached it, the training we provided, the systems we used. I think most of those would probably stay the same. So the only difference would be rather than creating it more custom for the site, we would push them into an existing workflow and an existing workspace.
Jaimee Nobbs (12:54): The training aspect is fascinating, and that is a very good piece of advice in terms of the people aspect. What sort of internal training did the team undertake, particularly a team that have never used GIM Suite before to get skilled up in it?
Susan Androvich (13:13): For this site, some of them were existing users, a lot of them. So it was more introducing them to GIM Suite. So it was how to use the application, how to open the application, what the different licences are. We migrated them straight to the new licence structure. So what a contribute licence allows you to do what an Analyse licence allows you to do and how to operate a data entry object, how to open it, how to filter, understanding the different objects and when to use a form to view your data, when to use data entry, when to generate a report. And so it was all about how to use your objects and how they fit into their workflows. So we took them through one workflow at a time. That’s like we’re doing the geology logging, so this is the object you’ll use. This is how you’ll use it when they’re creating a drill hole.
Okay, well, from the start of the process when you’re planning it, these are the objects that you’ll use and this is how you use it. So it is very much task-based training. We provided most of the sessions online through Teams. So it was a set of eight different classes that were repeated over and over again for the four weeks so that people could come in, join one, if they got out of it, everything they needed that was good. If not, they could join in again. And as anyone who’s done training knows, if you have different people in the room, they’ll ask different questions. So while the basic content gets covered the same every day, there are differences. Someone will ask a question and all of a sudden you’re going down a rabbit hole. But it’s good because it’s another area and it’s a question that would’ve come up while they were doing their work. So to be able to have that happening in the training was good because it meant that by the time we went live, they’ve had that experience and that exposure and they knew what to do. It was interesting. After providing all the training sessions, I went to site and one of the first things I saw was someone go, oh, I just need to filter that. And they popped up the filter and they put in their codes. They had a little moment like, oh, I’m so proud. They just did that.
Jaimee Nobbs (15:37): Yeah, it sounds very thorough. It sounds like a big process, but one that is important if you’re going to use any piece of software. Well, so at acQuire Connect, you also touched on some pretty cool work you’re doing with the KORE Geosystems team. Can you tell us a bit about that and how, well, that’s obviously quite new software and technology, so if we look at your role and the way you work and the way your team work, how has technology changed the way you do your role to date and how do you expect that to evolve into the future?
Susan Androvich (16:14): Okay, so the KORE Geosystems product is amazing. So it does the imagery, it does takes the images of the core. And then on that, it uses machine learning models to recognise the pathology from preexisting models, the RQD, it can identify where the breaks in the core are and identify the differences between them. So one of the things that that’s giving us is that valid, clean, standard data, right from the point of capture. So the project is still in the phase, I believe, where we’re human logging the geology core, but we’re also AI logging the core. And then one of the geologists will review the AI log and change it, modify it, and then accept it and post it. And by posting it, they’re actually writing it back to the acquired database. So having the capacity to log all the production core through the KORE system will reduce manual logging.
It will reduce man hours of the core logging. There’s still a lot of review needed because the geos need to actually review the core logging, but it just means that the data that comes through, like I said, it’s clean, it’s valid, it’s consistent. It is logged by AI. So there is a lot more consistency in it. So getting back to that very first question, what’s a major challenge? Plain, valid data at the point of capture is vital. It’s great. One of the things that will change potentially is the way that we set up the workspaces. So maybe the geos don’t need to all be on site. So some of them might be in the office, some of them will be in different locations and they can still do their job AI and how it works. In this instance, I can see just opening up more opportunities for that clean, valid data collection. In terms of how it’ll affect my role, to be honest, I don’t think it’ll affect it dramatically, mainly because a large part of what we do is working with people and people will still be there, people will still be asking questions. People will still want to know where this data goes, what happens with it, how they can extract it, where the data was captured, and all that needs to be still captured. So there’s still a role for a DBA, even in an AI world. I do believe
Jaimee Nobbs (18:59): The work you’re doing with KORE Geosystems sounds really cool. And I think you’ve made some interesting points there in how the DBA role will evolve and also how the role of the geologist has changed with AI becoming more embedded into Northern Star. You’ve talked about how the evolution has changed the way you work with data. Do you see further opportunities either within Northern Star or across the wider resources industry to adopt more digital technologies? And are there some you’re already seeing into the scene or expect to see over the next decade or so?
Susan Androvich (19:39): I think it’ll be very interesting to see, not so much the things that we’re seeing now. We’re getting hints of them, but I do think in the next five years, there will be a much larger use of AIs to do roles and maybe not the day-to-day things. Oh, well, maybe exactly the day-to-day things, not the project work, not the things that require you to make jumps of logic, but even simple things like this infrastructure in place and apps in place where you can say, I want to write a computer programme that does this using this language, and it will write it for you the first two years of my degree. So I think it’ll be interesting to see how larger companies embrace that and take that on while also keeping in mind the issues of cybersecurity and network security and intellectual property. So how that’s all maintained, but you can take advantage of AI technology and using it think in 10 years time, a lot of our roles will change, but into something that I can’t predict yet.
Jaimee Nobbs (20:56): That is the beauty of technology. We don’t know what new roles will be created and ways to create efficiencies in roles we’re already doing. It’s an exciting space and it’s interesting seeing companies like Northern Star who are already adopting that. And you mentioned right on the end there, balancing that with security risks is obviously a massive consideration at the moment. It’s a lot to manage. I think that is a good place to lead this conversation today, though. I really enjoyed hearing your experiences and learnings, particularly after covering such a big migration project. I think it’s all a very, very exciting space. So thank you so much for sitting down and chatting with me today.
Susan Androvich (21:36): You’re welcome. Thank you for inviting me.
Jaimee Nobbs (21:38): Thanks for listening to this episode of acQuire Connected. If you enjoyed today’s episode and want to keep up to date with the latest episodes on tackling your data management challenges, and please hit subscribe. We will be back with more episodes. So make sure you hit that subscribe button to keep up to date with when the next episode drops.
Outro (21:56): Thanks for listening to the Acquire Connected podcast channel. Find us at acQuire.com.au
