Two dolphins on the swan and pilbara first visit!

Given the fact that Australia is well known for having lots sharks on its coasts, I thought that what I saw was the bloody big fish that kills so many surfers. Someone walking near byvand obviously well aware of the swan river's history, told me the two were dolphins! Nice! This the second time of my life that I actually see dolphins!

Famous Australia!

On the week of 11/2 I made my first trip to the pilbara region. I landed in Karratha! I visited the two ports that Rio Tinto operate on the coast. While landing, the view of Rio Tinto salt operations was amazing.

The ports are very important to what our CEO Sam Walsh consider to be actually a logistic business. I read an excellent "reportage" of the BOSS magazine belonging to the Australian Financial Review, in which Mr Walsh describes how he replicated the automotive industry continuous improvement model to Rio Tinto Iron Ore WA's operations!

He got the vision of transforming mining operations into integrated systems and processes supplying useful data to the famous operations centre located in Perth 1500 km away from the Pilbara Operations! From the mine to the port, everything is remotely controlled from the Operations Center, which look like the NASA control room!

I have been able to see ship loaders loading Iron Ore into ships automatically, with commands impulsed from Perth! Amazing!

I now understood where our competitive advantage lies in!

This visit to the port operations and rail division, showed me the extent to which we are a business in which safety, operational excellence as well as continuous improvement is at the core of everybody's endeavour!

I attended on leadership lunch in Cape Lambert. This forum was initiated to enable managers and superintendents to gather on a monthly basis to ensure that everyone has the right information to move respective teams as one towards corporate production goals as well as the most important zero harm objective! This is certainly s take away for someone like me!

While in Cape Lambert, a training coordinator took me through the reality side of the streamlining training dynamic in vigor in the operations here.

I also attended to a workshop organised by the training team, gathering leaders, to provide them with information that will enable a constructive as well as productive cooperation between training and other parts of functions within Cape Lambert operations. This is certainly a valuable take away!

I also visited the Mesa A Robe Valley mine. Two hours of drive from Dampier. Excellent opportunity to ride into the massive Komatsu 830 Haul truck!while in this truck, I have been able to notice during an hour, how it is important as a life saving commitment to focus on the journey not the destination, while driving any sort of vehicle on a mine site. ,

Teamwork....

The presentation through which I took the RTIO WA 2013 graduates for a virtual trip to Simandou is the result of teamwork. And there is a story behind this that I would like to share here as there is always a lesson to pick from life experiences.

I humbly acknowledged the good feedbacks from the auditorium and I cannot tell you how people were enthusiastic over the project scale, the partnership on which it lies and the engineering/environmental challenge it represent and also how beneficial it will be for the guinean people and therefore country's sustainable development.

Teamwork is one of the 4th values that make Rio Tinto a good place to work (others are accountability, respect, integrity). This is just not my opinion but also for many of my colleagues. The story is the following...

In the first quarter last year, there was a high level west african business and high ranking officials that were supposed to have a a series of economic meeting in Canada. The necessity to present something about Simandou came in and my GM HR designated me for this task.

The GM operations and I were the two to represent Simandou. I then had to do two things; get my canadian visa sorted out as well as work with one of our consultant and communications dept to prepare a presentation. however, I had to draft the first version and submit it for review. So did I and it went through the regular process of review/comments/amendements/suggestions....

And I remember that GM ops asked us to have a lot of pictures in it and I could see the value of it as last friday, graduated reallly enjoyed them.... So in your ppt presentations make sure you add some meaningful pics. It always helps to get people's buy in.

unfortunately, my visa came through two days after the meeting in our montreal offices during which I would have presented live in front of the Guinean minister of Employment Technical Training. I had to do it via teleconference. i remember our MD, GM ops (he could not make the trip either due to an unexpected emergency that occured) feeling sorry for me. It would have been the first time for me to get to Canada.

I could not imagine at that time, life would have offered me the opportunity to present these slides (on which so many people contributed within simandou), in front of a public of more that 150 persons.Last friday (feb 8) I just then realised that what you miss today may comeback to you later in another form. This also shows that wathever you do as a result of teamwork, try as much as you can to do it right. One way or another, as long as it takes, it will be recognised.

What have I been up to so far?

It's been a  while since my last post isn't it? The main reason for this is that I am getting very busy now down here! After my induction week, I joined the training team in the Central Park building on St George terrace.

As per corporate culture and customs, I got a warm welcome from the team around a morning tea ceremony.

Several meetings occured with various colleagues superitendents in the training dept. They took me through their respective sections, what they do and what are their plans moving forward.

By the end of last week, I met the person who is kind of my project sponsor. Yes because I am going to project mange an interesting leadership related project as part of other activities.
On monday this week (feb 4 2013), I was invited to participate to the first day of Graduates induction. A great day for the next RTIO leaders!

Our guest speaker, a senior leader here was himself a graduate 23 years ago. He took us through what is Rio Tinto today and also as a guest speaker, he showed us the extent to which it is good to work for such a good company, given the various experiences he benefited from and individual team member to a senior leaderhip role. It was a good motivational speech.

On this pic, I am having a chat with some grads that were keen to hear me sharing some on my experience. And also listening to them as well on their respective paths and where they are going to work.

On the last day, tomorrow Friday feb 8, I am invited to present over my 5 years of experience within RT as well as provide some insight over the Simandou Project. It is going to be a great moment for me.

Next week, I am flying up on site. My first visit to the Pilbara region. I will be accompanied by Anthony, a colleague that will take me through our port operations (Dampier and Cape Lambert) and also to some Iron Ore mines near Pannawonica. I will take this opportunity to be exposed to the way training centres operate their processes, their challenges etc and certainly be able to contribut to something positive.

I will certainly update you further over this site experience.