Training and support consultant Kayleigh Cooper recently spent a successful 9 days at Asanko Gold’s Obotan site in Ghana. Various customised training courses were created for this visit and attendees ranged from 10-13 for each. There was a very enthusiastic class consisting of exploration, production and grade control geologists as well as a Database Management and GIS specialist. Each day Kayleigh selected a “Star Microminer” and the lucky person received a little prize, the competition was tough as most of the users are fully competent in our software.
Each course was specifically tailored to suit the requirements of the attendees. The team started the week with an Introductory course, a refresher for most but there was one new user, followed by an intermediate exploration and surface drilling course showcasing the drill hole planning and drill hole calculation tools of Micromine 2018. The next few days were spent working their way through a customised site-specific enhanced workflow course. The objective was to create a section control file and plot templates for 5 different deposits. The team then looked at incorporating the drill hole planning tools learnt from the previous course into the current workflow. During this process, they also looked at creating bench or flitch plans as well as some implicit modelling techniques that might be helpful in the future. The last 2 days were left for Resource Estimation training. This was meant for one of the Senior Exploration Geologists but the other attendees had so much fun in previous courses that they also wanted to attend. This meant that every day the training room was always filled with eager geologists and this made for such a fun environment to train in.
Kayleigh was lucky enough to be given a tour around the site. She was able to visit 3 of the open pits, Nkran, Akwisiso and Dynamite Hill. Very impressive indeed. This gave everyone a nice break in between the courses. The team worked through a public holiday “May Day” or “Workers day” and they took time after their busy day to meet up for some drinks at the local bar, there is no better way to spend the first day of spring!
