By Erik Ronald, P.Geo
4 February 2023
Minimum, Good, or Best Practices? Many industry folks love to throw up the term “industry best practice” without thinking too much about it. Here are items to consider when disclosing practices and whether “best practices” are the goal.
At a minimum, data, interpretations, and workflows must adequately support the Resources given the level of study, level of complexity, and associated project risks. A initial exploration stage project needs reliable data, but the goal is to determine if there is even a project, not to refine a monthly mine plan. The level of detail required to provide confidence will dictate the level of “good practices” required. E.g., relying on dodgy logs from the 40s showing gold grades from unknown assays. Good news if you’re an explorer, bad news if the project is in construction.
There’s no industry cookbook. When QPs state that their QA/QC or drill logging is done to “industry best practice”, they’re guessing and mean “we think is sufficient, probably”. There are documents that provide suggestions (CIM), but there are no tablets from Mt. AusIMM which state “thou shalt check >95.64% of ye assay certificates, thus rejoice, as thee holy database be harbored from evil”. Instead, a QP should understand common practices, then tailor the work to meet a deposit’s complexity, level of study, and risks.
Often, the difference between minimum and “best” practices come down to trials, comparisons, understanding what works, and clear documentation with discussion on alternatives. E.g., if a Li pegmatite is estimated using IDW2 within a peg volume using Li2O grades from ICP, that is considered minimum industry practice. This provides inferences on grade distribution, exploration, and may provide some inferred resources. If instead you estimated Li grade using various linear and non-linear techniques, domained by mineralogical domains, assess deleterious elements, model post-mineral dyke dilution, quantified areas of uncertainty, and were able to reconcile grades to annual production. Most QPs would agree this is generally “good industry practice”.
In conclusion, “best practices” are subjective and many QPs may dispute whether “best” is even necessary from a cost to value perspective. Does your project need to lead the world in total number of duplicates and blanks? Do you need to perform complex geostatistical analyses of drill spacing or spatial continuity? Perhaps, maybe not. A great saying when it comes to good practice is “horses for courses” or align work practices to address the level of complexity, uncertainty, and risks specific to the deposit. A QP should recognize what is critical and not try to apply the same practices to a large limestone quarry than to a diamondiferous kimberlite.
