What does mining's largest consultancy recommend at this moment of global uncertainty?

Mining Magazine spoke to two WSP leaders from Australia and Canada on the sidelines of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada's (PDAC) 2025 conference about the barriers to productivity, bringing engineering and approvals right to the front of mine design, and using ‘skin in the game' to drive faster mine development.

"There's a lot of nervousness right now. There's a lot of uncertainty in projects in terms of where funding is going to come from," said Canadian Ryan Dutrisac, WSP vice president of major projects. He had noted a trend in people seeking investment at this PDAC.

"Projects specifically in the lithium market in North America, a lot of those projects are in question. There's uncertainty about where BEVs [battery electric vehicles] are going to go, which is heavily driven by the lithium market."

"There is hope," said Adrian Chapman, WSP director of capital projects - mining. Chapman travelled to PDAC from Australia and had been struck by the similarities between the Canadian and Australian mining experiences.

Those with a sustainable cost basis will expand their operations and take advantage of copper and gold being in a very strong position

"I think there's nervousness, coming from out of town and hearing the concerns around the tariffs and what's happening in the geopolitical situation. But I still think there are really solid investment opportunities and growth opportunities around copper, especially, and gold," Chapman said. "Those with a sustainable cost basis will expand their operations and take advantage of copper and gold being in a very strong position."

The rapid introduction of the unknown by US President Donald Trump has exposed new veins of nervousness in miners. Dutrisac said he'd been approached by a client that planned to source a lot of equipment from the US. "Now they're saying, ‘Do we need to rethink that strategy?' It's changed so fast in the last 30 days."

New nerves meeting old frustrations

"One of the underlying issues with projects that we're seeing in Australia, the same here in Canada, is just the time it takes to develop new projects," said Chapman.

"Projects that might have had a runway of 10 years from identification to development now take 15-plus years. The situation hasn't improved, and that's going to potentially lead to capital being spent in geographies that perhaps haven't seen that investment before."

Dutrisac said that Canada's experience had been similar over the last decade, "But I'm starting, finally, to see a change".

They want us to bring different ideas to the table to do these projects cheaper

"We've had a long history of projects going over budget. Competing in the nickel market with the likes of Indonesia, we've got to figure out a way to do projects cheaper. Now, finally, we're starting to see [miners] looking at alternate delivery models and looking at doing things differently with technology."

Dutrisac gave an example of a construction client in Brazil that was not using any health and safety staff. "They use AI and cameras to monitor all the PPE, and the activities and the behaviours of the workforce. They can reduce their staffing and their workforce on-site by doing remote monitoring using AI technology. Maybe it's driven by AI, but I think we're starting to see that they want us to bring different ideas to the table to do these projects cheaper."

"Part of it is the workforce, but part of it's the way we work. It's not going to be easy, so we have to change the way we deliver projects," Dutrisac said.

The crux

Chapman said that the first thing clients ask is how to improve worker productivity. However, WSP benchmarking revealed a surprising cause of workforce slowdowns.

"The time it takes to pour that cubic metre of concrete or to place that ton of steel is not the factor that's gone up in the issue of productivity," he said. "It's what we call the indirect, everything that goes along to support the person who's doing the actual physical work, that has gone up by 100% in the last decade," he said. "It took one person per 10 people to support the workforce; now that's doubled."

"It's only now that we've done the benchmarking with our clients that we can truly see what the levers are that we can pull to move productivity. Anecdotally, just saying that workforces are less skilled or lazier - that just doesn't cut it, said Chapman. "You got to get to the crux of the issue, and then you can tackle a few [issues] at a time."

Chapman said that WSP's clients in Australia were increasingly looking at partnership models to keep "continuous resources on their projects" having identified that getting a workforce up to speed was a limiting factor on productivity. 

"They're looking at how they can keep that knowledge in their project delivery partnerships. They're now looking for a programmatic approach to projects," he said. This would see engineers and contractors kept on a project "so they're not continually having to reinvent the wheel or come back to the site."

It's only now that we've done the benchmarking with our clients that we can truly see what the levers are that we can pull to move productivity

Chapman noted that the approvals process in Australia was a challenge, with too few people available to help miners facilitate engagement with traditional owners.

He said that he would like to see engineering and approvals teams working closer.

"If the two are disconnected, you get to a point where the approvers have gone so far, and the engineering says, ‘Oh, hang on, we can't construct, or we need to pivot, because our ore body knowledge tells us that we need our infrastructure in a different location'," he said. "Bringing together the engineering and the approvals teams at the start of a project, and that community engagement, is paramount."

Chapman emphasised the importance of making a decision after a feasibility study and sticking to it.

"We're trying to get to the minimum viable solution. That's what our clients want. Holding the entire client organisation to that minimum viable solution is key in those early stages. Lock in scope and just get on with it," said Chapman.

IPD: "Something different"

"That's why some of those alternate delivery models in mining could work," Dutrisac responded. "Because everybody's got skin in the game."

Dutrisac told Mining Magazine that he had recently presented an alternate delivery model called integrated project delivery (IPD), which originated in the UK and has since been adopted in the construction sector in North America. Under the IPD model, individuals from different companies are combined into one team where "everybody's got skin in the game". 

"The whole idea about IPD is to select the best athlete," he said.

"What you're doing [in an IPD] is you're bringing the contractors and all the parties together to jointly develop [the feasibility] study, and they come up with what the cost is going to be, and what the schedule is going to be. And they all sign up to that cost and schedule," Dutrisac explained.

The whole idea about IPD is to select the best athlete

Putting out bids to contractors after a cost and schedule have been developed can lead to disputes by contractors over those elements—then the project could take twice as long or cost twice as much.

"But now [with an IPD] you're jointly, as a group, developing this so, you spend about two years developing the execution plan, which includes the cost schedule, advancing the engineering, and then you jointly go into this project," he said. 

Dutrisac noted that the early contractor involvement (ECI) model is somewhat similar but suffers from a lack of incentive. "And I think some contractors worry about market intelligence," he added. 

"The mining industry really is way behind some of the other projects where they've delivered quite successfully in these models. People will point to some that aren't successful, but I think by majority, there are a lot more successful IPDs than traditional project delivery," he said. "It might not be right for everything, but for some projects, it might be the right model."

"We've had some very successful infrastructure projects [under an IPD]. It hasn't been applied in mining that I'm aware of anywhere, but we've had our first mining client that said, ‘Hey, let's try something different'."

With large numbers of capital-seeking explorers and junior miners struggling to find ways to distinguish themselves from the pack, trying something different might be the most important thing to making their projects happen.