KEEPING
Engagement and Compliance on track
Adani’s requirement was to maintain consistent engagement across a diverse group of stakeholders and to ensure project approval conditions and requirements were being systematically managed.
Solution
Introduce a best practice software solution that was accessible across the business and integrated with business practices and processes.
Results
With Borealis, we are able to provide a platform across our internal teams to track engagement with stakeholders that have relationships across the business. This is critical in ensuring we plan and manage those engagement activities. We can also now prepare a range of reports to measure our engagement planning and activities. The reporting and analytic functions of Borealis are simple to use yet very sophisticated.
Over 5000 individual and 1000 organisational stakeholders in the engagement database.
More than 120 compliance documents managed.
GIS system integration.
Data analysis and reporting to comply with regulatory requirements.
Borealis modules used
Stakeholder Engagement
Social Investment
Grievance Management
Regulatory & Compliance Management
Environmental Monitoring
About the Carmichael Mine & Rail project
The Carmichael Project is an integrated thermal coal mine and supporting rail project in central Queensland. The first stage of mining production output is 10 mtpa and the coal will be transported to Adani’s Abbot Point Terminal via a new 200 km rail connection and the existing Queensland rail network.
The environmental and social impact assessment process for the project commenced in 2010 with Federal, State and Local government approvals obtained from 2015 through to 2019. The project approvals contain an extensive set of compliance, management and monitoring conditions over the life of the project.
Mine location: In the North Galilee Basin more than 300 km from the Queensland coastline and approximately 160 km northwest of Clermont
Estimated coal production: 10 million tons of coal annually (during the mine’s first stage)
Employment: Over 1,500 direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs in the region; further jobs will be created as the mine’s capacity grows to 10 mtpa.
Economic benefits: Estimated at billions of dollars in mining taxes and royalties for the Australian government in the mine’s first 30 years of operation
Staying on track during a lengthy approval process
In October 2015, the project was approved by the Commonwealth Environment Minister. To reach this stage, Adani Australia managed to successfully obtain over 112 approvals for the project and win multiple court challenges. An impressive feat by any count, this shows that by comminting to carefully and diligently follow all processes they can achieve project approval event in the face of adversity.
“The number of stakeholders related to our project has grown tenfold over the last few years. Borealis makes capturing information easy, which allows our teams to engage with more people.”
The need for greater flexibility and consistency
Adani had been using another stakeholder engagement software solution during the Environmental Impact Assessment phase of the project. However, with an increasingproject profile and the need to consider a holistic software solution, the decision was made to investigate a more sophisticated, flexible, consistent and responsive system for the organisation’s needs.
Additionally, consideration was given to a system that could support the compliance management and reporting requirements associated with project approvals, the extensive environmental monitoring programs required and also track the implementation of social impact activities such as Adani’s community partnership program.
Exploring «off-the-shelf» software products
Ideally, Adani wanted a software that had been implemented in the local market for similar operations or industries. In addition to saving a considerable amount of development time, the software would be directly relevant to Adani’s legislative requirements. Also high on the list of “nice-to-haves” were innovative features to assist in project delivery and built-in flexibility for reporting purposes.
Mining endless opportunities with Borealis
The Adani team says that right out of the box, Borealis software brought lots of functionality to the table:
Borealis is a flexible and accessible cloud solution that has been used globally across a range of industries, notably in mining, since 2004.
The software is constantly being improved based on its global community of practice – in other words, based on the direct feedback of day-to-day Borealis users.
These ongoing updates will allow Adani’s stakeholder relations team to stay on top of best practices as they evolve over time, thereby keeping its own internal expertise current.
The software includes a number of highly configurable modules to improve other areas related to stakeholder engagement, such as:
The Borealis team offers full on-site user training and onboarding, regular software updates, and end-user support lightening the load for its IT team.
The ability to integrate GIS mapping into the compliance module to better visualise and analyse compliance efforts was yet another bonus.
The software included a number of modules, including a powerful regulatory and compliance management module. Having a structured and transparent process for managing compliance according to industry best practices was a big bonus for Adani, considering the complex framework of requirements it faced with its proposed mining project.
One software, multiple gains
Adani implemented Borealis stakeholder engagement
software in 2017. Since that time, it has gained the following
capabilities:
- The ability to collect, manage, analyse, and report technical and non-technical monitoring data such as water quality, ecological parameters, fuel, energy etc. Data can be collected both manually and automatically, such as picking up information from email attachments and other sources.
- The ability to interface with existing software such as Outlook and SAP to allow alert issues, reporting and more.
- Web-based functionality to provide a “Portal” for provisioning data/reporting to external stakeholders such as government agencies.
- A flexible interface that makes it easy for administrators and external users such as contractors to input data and generate/ obtain reports based on access rights.
- A web platform so that team members on the field can enter and access data from the system.
- The ability to capture and manage approval conditions, permits and compliance requirements.
- A suitable data interface with other systems and external contractors, records management and reporting capability to meet business requirements.
- The ability to generate both standard and customized dashboard reports, including analysis functions.
- Quality assurance capabilities to ensure internal management system standards are maintained, and records and data are managed in accordance with legal and other requirements.
- The ability to incorporate current and emerging technology, including remote data (e.g. telemetry), web based portal access, mobility platform for in-field records entry and information interrogation, GIS database interface, etc.
Getting end-users and IT staff on-board
Implementation and integration of the Borealis system was approached by Adani in a sequential manner.
The migration of information from the previous stakeholder engagement software was seamless and allowed users to ensure continuity of process and records. Adani then subsequently developed and rolled out the other modules along with accessing training and support from the Borealis team.
Adani says support from the Borealis team has also been very good and that if any issues arise, they are resolved quickly. Overall, the business has embraced the use of the system and the IT Department appreciates the fact that it makes their work easier, too.
“Borealis is very supportive for implementation and growth. It’s not like other vendors who implement the system and then say ‘good luck.’ The Borealis team makes adjustments to the system based on our feedback. These continuous improvements are helping us stay up to date on the latest trends, instead of going through development and waiting while these trends continue to evolve. There’s no heavy burden for the IT team to manage Borealis. Users simply access the system and that’s it. So it frees up time for the IT team as well.”
Empowering more strategic stakeholder engagement
A number of departments with the organisation have now adopted Borealis software and are using it to support their engagement across a range of functions, stakeholders and interest groups. These include the Environmental Management, Stakeholder Engagement, Community and Regional Development teams.
The system has strengthened engagement activities and reporting and the compliance management module is used to support a range of activities from site based compliance with monitoring, auditing and reporting.
Taking stakeholder engagement further
Adani says its next step is to start using the advanced stakeholder analysis tools in Borealis, particularly for stakeholders with which it has long-term relationships. The resulting additional insights will be used for regulatory reporting purposes and for informing its stakeholder engagement planning.
