PROFILE

you are going to lose specialists , so we better make everybody into something of a specialist .”

Acknowledging the difficulties of approaching the industry with this outlook , resulting in a more constrained workload as they have a lot of work to do in other areas , Moody-Stewart adds ; “ If you want to be robust over cycles , you better embed it everywhere .”

Use minimal expats Both men agree that in some areas expats must be used at the start-up as local talent is not available . “ As we develop these programmes , they can ’ t be staffed by expat specialists . There has got to be a few , but staffed by local residents and people from these countries ” says Albanese . He points out that major projects can handle the strain of resource reductions when a project moves into that phase .

When a project winds down or reduces its capacity , expat workers are the first to be pulled out , but as Albanese points out , “ the local residents have developed those skills so if they are given a sufficient level of resources then they can continue at least in some capacity .”

Learn from China Over the last few years , China has fast become a dominant force in the global resources industry and has seen a huge boom in the economy as a result . Sir Mark Moody-Stewart believes that despite centuries of mining resource experience , businesses in more developed countries have a lot to learn from China .

“ We shouldn ’ t think it ’ s all about us explaining to them how to do it ,” he says .

“ China has more knowledge of lifting people out of poverty than anyone else in the world and they achieve this through infrastructure and connecting villages to markets . We have a lot to learn from our Chinese colleagues .”

10 J uly 2016