FrontEdge Consulting Get in touch

AI training and automation for technical mining teams

Backed by 15+ years of real mining experience.

Get in touch

Much of a mining professional's week goes into work that doesn't need an engineer. Some of the biggest time sucks include "PowerPoint engineering" the weekly plan, executing reconciliations, or babysitting a haulage simulation. FrontEdge trains technical mining teams to use AI to handle the mindless grunt work, so the week goes back into the problems engineers were hired to solve. The hours that come back give your team a better chance to get ahead instead of chasing their tail, to spend time learning or mentoring, and to cut some stress and actually finish the day on time for once.

AI training for mining professionals

The sessions are built for teams starting from zero. Options include:

  • Awareness workshop

    • A one hour session, running through AI fundamentals
    • Topics include prompting, agents, data governance

  • One day practitioner sessions

    • The team works on its own workflows, in its existing AI licence (Copilot, Claude, etc), so nothing sensitive goes anywhere new
    • Groups capped at 12 so everyone gets time on their own work
    • On site or remote
    • 15 minute 1-on-1 or group check-ins a few weeks after to confirm learnings

Get in touch to arrange custom training for your team's specific needs.

Automating the day-to-day

Tools that take a defined job off the team. The system produces the draft, an engineer reviews it. Common starting points:

  • Reconciliation. How a dig went against how it was planned, run automatically, with every quantity validated before an engineer relies on it.
  • Reporting. The standard stack automated to a draft for review. This boring daily task usually sits with a grad that could be learning and developing their skills.
  • Self-auditing. AI checks schedules, reports, plans and decks, so mistakes get caught before they go out.
  • Custom builds. We'll build whatever workflows your site needs, always with a human in the loop.
  • Only using AI when it's needed. Tools are built with AI but the end product can often just be a Python script or Power Automate workflow.

Tools already built

Schedule auditor

In:
a raw schedule output with source, equipment, process, dump destination, rates and dates.
Out:
a flagged list of the breaks. Blocks sequenced below ground, blocks mined before drill and blast, too many diggers in one area.

A first-pass audit that used to take a day by hand takes about 5 minutes.

Haulage string generator

In:
the designed haul roads, a topo surface for each period, and the schedule's source and destination list.
Out:
a complete source-to-destination haul route for every scheduled pair, following the designed roads where they exist and generating graded surface paths to bridge the gaps, ready to drop into the scheduling package as a network.

Realistic haul roads that follow a known path and fill in the gaps. No weird hauls through the air, under the surface, or up pit walls.

Other tools in the kit: a presplit estimator, a bulk dependency and constraint builder for scheduling, and a data washer.

Where your data goes

Data protection comes up with every site, and it should. Handing data to a consultant is already standard practice; what AI adds is the question of where the data ends up. FrontEdge can treat your data in line with your IT policy:

  • Inside your SharePoint and Microsoft Copilot, with your existing data protections.
  • With FrontEdge working on washed data (no site-specific info, no grades), building tools that run without any AI once delivered.
  • With FrontEdge on AWS Bedrock, where we can run frontier models (Claude, GPT) with comparable protections to Copilot (SOC 2, data isolation). (Additional cost)

About FrontEdge

Kurtis Weins, founder of FrontEdge Consulting

I'm Kurtis Weins, a mine planner with more than 15 years of experience working with sites across Australia and internationally in gold, coal, lithium, copper, rare earths, and many other resources. I'm not a software engineer and I don't pretend to be one. Every tool on this page was built by a mine planner using AI.

Bachelor of Applied Science (BASc), Mining and Mineral Engineering
University of British Columbia
MAusIMM

Mine planning

We take mine planning work at any or all stages.

  • Life of mine planning
  • Scoping, pre-feasibility, and feasibility studies
  • Pit optimisation
  • Design in Deswik.CAD and Vulcan
  • Scheduling in Micromine Spry
  • Haulage modelling and equipment selection
  • On site planning support, short/medium/long term
  • Technical reviews and subject matter expert advice
  • Training mine planning staff

Get in touch

Let's talk about how FrontEdge can help your team win some time back. Tell us what you're after, whether that's training for the team, a job that eats hours you want automated, or you're not sure yet, and we'll come back with a suggested starting point.

Or email [email protected]

Common questions

“We only have access to Copilot.”
That's enough. There's an option for training to focus solely in Copilot, in your tenant, and on your team's own workflows inside it. Automation can be built the same way for sites locked to Microsoft.
“I'm/We're not very techy.”
The training is built for exactly that person. The tools have removed the need to be technical; the sessions are about knowing what to ask for and how to check what comes back. As long as you can read and write you can use AI.
“My team doesn't have time to learn how to use AI.”
The first gain you get back from learning this is your time. The sessions run on your team's own work, so it isn't a course on top of the day job.
“How is my data protected?”
Three options depending on your IT policy. See Where your data goes above.