INX Software
Designing Best-of-breed Solutions for Mining Human Resources

Mining companies are changing the way they do business to remain viable. These companies are facing a lot of challenges in terms of training and managing an effective work force. “Skills are hard to come by and people become very expensive,” says Garry Back, Managing Director of INX Software. Headquartered in Perth, Australia, INX Software offers powerful tools for managing logistics, safety, competency, and compliance. The INX system has been adopted by hundreds of mining companies worldwide.

Back further reveals that years ago mining companies’ social licence to operate was under threat due to the regularity of serious and sometimes deadly incidents. Government was pressed to take action. The safety management culture in the industry had to change. The INX InControl system was a part of that cultural swing. Making safety a management priority, providing the right information at the right stage of decision making and reporting outcomes led to a vast improvement in safety practices. These changes led to the WA mining sector witnessing its first fatality free year in 2012.

The INX product grew out of consulting work undertaken for mining companies in the 1990’s.The company built a flight and accommodation system called INX InFlight to support Fly-in Fly-out operations and decided that an ERP focused on workforce management would provide a single source of truth about who is on the mine-site. INX Software’s INX InControl and INX InTuition utilise the INX database of staff, contractors, consultants and visitors to meet the requirements of the industry in terms of safety, risk, training and compliance.

The INX InControl helps to take control of customer’s occupational health, safety and environmental requirements. It provides a means of building and maintaining a structured risk register. InControl also provides an event management model that records all significant safety related events such as incidents, injuries and near misses and links them to the risk register for analysis of control failures. The solution also records lead indicator events such as hazard observations, safety audits, behavioral analyses, safety meeting and other significant events. The InTuition solution defines the competencies, compliances and procedures that are required to perform each role.

It records the status of each member of the workforce.It makes possible the task of managing requirements of an entire workforce without an army of administrators. Role requirements are mapped against an incumbent and a training needs analysis is immediately evident.

We provide an event management model that records all significant safety related events such as incidents, injuries and near misses and links them to the risk register for analysis of control failures

For an understanding of the INX solution consider the example of a large iron ore miner who manages a workforce around 20,000 in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. They have 16 mines and around 35 camps and most staff are on a fly-in fly-out roster typically 8 days on and 6 days off. Typically each mine would manage its own travel and accommodation. Using the InFlight system the company has been able to centralise travel and accommodation rostering, booking and management reducing the number of administrators by hundreds and making possible the automation of flight bookings. Accommodation utilisation can be readily monitored and tools to schedule shutdowns around accommodation availability aid in reducing costs. The InFlight solution also provides access to a mobile app that FIFO workers and their families can use to check rosters, flights and accommodation.

“Australia is the biggest market for Fly-in Fly-out systems and Canada would be close behind. In Australia we fly crews into the desert, in Canada into the tundra. We have deployed our system in Australia, Asia, Africa and North and South America, and now with offices in Australia, South Africa and Canada we expect to substantially increase our ability to support multi-national companies.” concludes Back.