A growing business has an easy narrative. ‘We’re growing’, ‘We plan to grow’, ‘The story of our growth’ – I personally believe we’ve all read these headlines about many different businesses in various industries. In mining, it seems more common. Whenever I read a thought bubble, article on LinkedIn or in the news, I’ve always thought that saying ‘we’re growing’ is a lot easier than saying to someone ‘we are one bad job away from the scrapheap’. It’s mining. There’s a lot of puffed out chests and tall tales, always has been. It’s far more fragile than most would ever know. I don’t believe people are misrepresenting the situation, more so that we don’t tend to want to dwell on stories that don’t uplift us.
Growth is an easy sell. If you judged mining and resources based around the stories you see, you’d think that growth was easy because everyone seems to be doing it.
Our story of growth at Roc-Drill is nuanced. Yes – we’ve grown exponentially. No – it’s not been all beer and skittles. Yes – we’re still bedding it in. Maybe – we got most of it right by prioritising people, and risk.
Since I started with Roc-Drill back in 2016, we have grown from 40 employees to 256 employees and sub-contractors. We’ve developed from running two sites in Queensland simultaneously to ten projects of varying commodities, complexity and services across Australia. We’ve gone from 9 drills operational to 55 drill rigs.
As General Manager, I look back on where we started from the viewpoint of where we are today. I look at the key players during this period, the planning and perseverance they put in, and I’m genuinely astounded at their skill and commitment. Throwing a pandemic into the mix made it interesting.
Commercial growth in mining presents with varying forms and natures of risk. People often view risk in our industry from an operations and safety perspective. When you seek to expand a mining business, the world of commercial risk presses in from all sides.
As we assessed the commercial landscape, and risk factors, to identify the potential in becoming Australia’s pre-eminent blasthole drilling contractor (it was a go big or go home strategy from the get-go), every stakeholder in the business was aligned. All the principal requirements were relatively straight forward to identify – more projects, more plant, more capital, more people.
When it came time to unpack the elements of risk that could stand in our way, or negatively impact our plans, conversation and planning diverged. Operations were principally concerned about maintaining quality. Safety was focussed on about scalability of systems, making sure they were not only heard but that we all knew the pressure points of concern for them. There was uniform excitement about the concept of bigger budgets. Except from Finance. HR had a singular focus on culture and change management.
“If people aren’t placed front and centre of any growth strategy, it’s not just that gains we make may be more fragile, or short-term. Our assessment is that the biggest risk is losing that magic that we currently have. What makes us, us.” I’ve paraphrased a bit, but that was the thrust I recall.
Thanks HR.
In 2016 we all knew each other by name. It’s easy to be across it all when there’s less to be across. A tight-knit unit, lines of communication and reporting were easily understood and managed. We were great at what we did. We knew it. We had the confidence that came from being a small, dynamic team with a nascent yet strong reputation for delivering.
The engineer in me saw scaling that successful environment as an exercise in replication. This underestimated the unique nature of modern, diverse workforces. Maintaining and evolving our powerful Roc culture, nurturing those unique elements that made it powerful while embedding its mentality in newly expanded operations was to be fundamental to ensuring our planned growth was sustainable.
Culture doesn’t have KPI’s. It doesn’t easily lend itself to measurement. At Roc-Drill, our culture has always been strong. Nigel wrote a blog last month about our being a ‘family’ business. He hit the nail on the head.
What emerged from this key focal point on people and culture during our growth was an enhanced focus on due diligence for additions to the team. A substantial investment in HR to give them what they felt they needed to ensure the substantial increase in on-boarding had a goal not just to get people going as quick possible, but to bring them into the business with a soft landing – on both sides. We knew what was most vital was retaining what made us Roc-Drill. That this was our best, 360-degree approach to managing risk while delivering growth. Our talent retention results are indicative of our success in attracting aligned professionals who have embraced and added to our culture.
By placing our key values of Integrity – Safety – Expertise as the fixed points of our growth strategy, with people and culture at its centre, we took a less traditional and technical approach to risk mitigation. The results speak for themselves. We’re proud of what we have accomplished so far, and excited for the future ahead.
General Manager
Roc-Drill is one of Australia’s largest blast hole drilling contractors. It is part of the Norcliffe Group of Companies, one of Australia’s fastest growing mining services providers.