Rio Tinto

SWAEI Logo West Australian Notice 6th Sept 2010 Rio Tinto ECC Standards Map Info Error Checking

Rio Tinto is the winner of a Certificate of Merit for the Golden Gecko Awards for Environmental Excellence 2010.
The ECC project (detailed below) was an intergral part of this project. Read more about it here.

Rio Tinto is a large, multinational company that operates several sites within Western Australia through companies such as Pilbara Iron.

We have undertaken a range of projects with Rio Tinto since December 2004. These have included several large projects that involve considerable use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). These have included;

Each is detailed below.


During the course of our work with Rio Tinto, we have provided them with a client area on this web site. The client area contains copies of all of their main documents, and has specific database-driven tools that allow for staff at Rio Tinto to dynamically query the progress of their projects.


West Angelas Environmental Review and Management Tool

Our first project was working on capturing a range of historical information on the West Angelas site, a project that we undertook in conjunction with Biota Environmental Sciences. This project involved:

  • Undertaking a literature review of all biological studies or surveys carried out on or near the site,
  • Obtaining copies of the reports for these surveys,
  • Capturing the component GIS datasets where they could not be sourced from the authors, or did not exist as GIS datasets already,
  • Creating comprehensive metadata for all GIS datasets captured or sourced,
  • Reviewing the methodology of the reports against current standards for biological surveys,
  • Developing index datasets (both spatial and aspatial) for site staff to use to query the data,
  • Converting the GIS data to the required ESRI Shapefile and MapInfo table formats, and
  • Packaging the resulting data onto a DVD for delivery.

Initially, most of the work on this project was undertaken in ArcView 3.2 - but upon receipt of ArcView 9.1, we switched the whole project to that package. ArcView 9.1's powerful ArcCatalog module allowed for quick and easy update of the metadata and enabled quicker development of other products for the final delivery.

Delivery of the final product was made in March, 2006.

This was a long-term project that required considerable management over time. We provided fortnightly update emails, and maps that detailed progress at regular intervals.


Environmental Characteristics and Capabilities Project

The Environmental Characteristics and Capabilities (or ECC to use its acronym) Project is a major project that involves consolidating a range of environmental data for Pilbara Iron. Components of this project have included:

  • Undertaking the necessary corporate training in Rio Tinto software,
  • Development of a strategic plan,
  • Development and delivery of a range of presentations for the project to a variety of audiences,
  • Development of technical design documents, and
  • Deployment of a secure Internet-enabled database to use for project management tasks.

The ECC project has evolved to include additional work, such as considerable development of procedures and standards. The end result has been a better environmental data management for Pilbara Iron, and from that, better environmental outcomes.

In 2009, Andrew Dennison spoke at the WALIS forum detailing the project processes and outcomes. A copy of the white paper can be downloaded here.


Other bits and pieces

We've also participated in a range of other projects, or looked at different technologies on behalf of Rio Tinto staff. These include:

  • Investigating remote camera technologies for Rio Tinto's Riverine Tree Health Monitoring research, and
  • Portable Digital Assistant (PDA) technologies, including sourcing new PDAs

We always try to provide our clients with the best possible solutions; if that means a little extra work to get a better outcome, then that's what we do.