A conversation last week sparked a question that’s been nagging at me: why do some view Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as meaningless paper exercises? For mine surveyors, whose work underpins the safety, efficiency, and profitability of mining operations, this perception feels particularly off-base. The tasks surveyors perform—measuring excavations, ensuring compliance, and maintaining precise records—have tangible value, yet quantifying their impact through KPIs often falls short. This article explores the critical contributions of surveyors, drawing on their day-to-day responsibilities, and proposes a fresh perspective on how KPIs can better reflect their role in mining’s bottom line. => The Heart of Mine Surveying Surveyors are the custodians of spatial accuracy in mining. Their work ensures that every dig, blast, and haul aligns with the mine’s design, directly affecting costs, safety, and regulatory compliance. Let’s break down their key responsibilities and why they matter. => Timely End-of-Month Reports End-of-month (EOM) survey measurements are a cornerstone of operational reporting. A late EOM report can ripple through an operation, inflating labor costs as finance teams scramble to catch up, eroding management’s trust in data, and delaying decisions that could save millions. In some contracts, late reporting even triggers financial penalties, squeezing cash flow. Surveyors using tools like Datamine Studio ensure timely, accurate EOM reports, providing the data backbone for strategic decisions. => Drive Compliance Mining without a design is illegal in most jurisdictions, and surveyors ensure excavations stay within specified parameters. Non-compliant drives—whether overbroken or underbroken—carry steep costs. Overbreak increases material movement, hauling, and support expenses, while diluting ore with waste rock. It can also destabilize pillars in room-and-pillar operations, risking collapses, or enlarge voids, spiking ventilation costs. Surveyors’ compliance analytics pinpoint these issues, saving costs and enhancing safety by aligning excavations with geotechnical recommendations. => Shotcrete Measurement Shotcrete, a sprayed concrete used for support, demands precise measurement to verify coverage and thickness. Surveyors’ detailed surveys—using total stations or point clouds—enable accurate surface models, optimizing material use and reducing waste. This precision ensures contractors are paid fairly, supports quality control, and prevents structural failures, all while providing as-built records for future maintenance. The result? Cost efficiency and safer underground environments. => Record Keeping Mine plans, built from meticulous surveyor data, are high-value assets. Peg coordinates, observation logs, and development records form a cohesive picture of the mine’s progress. Accurate plans enhance safety by identifying hazards, like undercutting risks in SLOS retreats, and ensure compliance with regulators like South Africa’s DMR or Zambia’s MSD. They also streamline resource planning, from equipment to manpower, boosting operational efficiency and stakeholder confidence. => Spatial Control Surveyors provide the visual references—via survey notes or memos—that guide miners to execute designs accurately. These instructions, generated quickly with tools like Datamine, minimize downtime and ensure precise dimensions, dips, and directions. Efficient memos reduce overbreak, lower material costs, and enable surveyors to cover more headings, directly boosting productivity. => Volumetric Measurements Whether it’s ore, waste, or access tunnels, surveyors measure the volumes moved across the mining value chain. These measurements feed accounting inventories, optimize resource allocation, and ensure environmental compliance by tracking waste generation. Accurate volumetric reports also flag safety risks, like unstable slopes, and support reclamation planning, preventing costly miscalculations down the line. => Quality Control in Open Pits In open-pit mining, surveyors ensure the pit shell matches the design, adhering to geotechnical limits and repose angles. By collecting spatial data to build digital terrain models, they highlight deviations, enabling early interventions to prevent slope failures or regulatory violations. Real-time monitoring optimizes operations, cuts downtime, and protects the environment by keeping excavations within limits. => Subsidence Monitoring Surveyors support geotechnical engineers by tracking ground movement, measuring points over time to calculate velocity and predict subsidence risks. This data protects miners, nearby infrastructure, and ecosystems, while improving subsidence prediction models. Timely monitoring allows operations to implement preventive measures, safeguarding both people and profits. => The KPI Conundrum Each of these tasks delivers clear value, but translating them into KPIs is tricky. Some contributions, like drive compliance analytics, have a direct line to profitability—reducing overbreak can save millions in material costs. Others, like Weisbach triangle quality or gyro base establishment, are less understood outside surveying circles, making their value harder to quantify. Yet, these “esoteric” tasks ensure the precision that prevents costly errors or safety incidents. The skepticism about KPIs often stems from a disconnect: metrics that don’t reflect the core business. If a surveyor’s KPI is tied to the number of memos or survey notes issued, it misses the bigger picture—how those memos reduce overbreak or downtime. A better approach is to align KPIs with mining outcomes: 1- Accuracy: Percentage of excavations within design tolerances, reflecting compliance and cost savings. 2- Timeliness: Delivery of EOM reports within deadlines, ensuring operational continuity. 3- Safety: Number of hazards identified through monitoring, like subsidence or slope risks. 4- Efficiency: Reduction in material waste or downtime due to precise spatial control. 5- Compliance: Adherence to regulatory standards, avoiding fines and building stakeholder trust. => A Call for Clarity Surveyors are not just measuring points—they’re enabling smarter, safer, and more profitable mining. Yet, their value is often underappreciated because KPIs fail to capture the full scope of their impact. By rethinking KPIs to focus on outcomes—cost savings, safety, compliance—mines can better recognize surveyors’ contributions. Tools like Datamine Studio amplify this impact, streamlining data collection and reporting, but the real shift lies in how we measure success. Let’s move beyond paper exercises and craft KPIs that reflect the true worth of surveyors’ work. After all, in mining, precision isn’t just a task—it’s the foundation of progress.