Professional

Thiess has been awarded a $212 million contract to deliver further civil works on Chevron’s Gorgon Project in Western Australia. 

Under the agreement, Thiess will deliver earthworks, underground services, concrete and building works over the next two years. 

The Gorgon Project is one of Australia’s single biggest developments with an estimated resource base of more than 40 trillion cubic feet of gas and a nominal development life of around 60 years. 

Atlas Iron has issued civil and mining contractor, Brierty with a notice of award to undertake the construction of approximately 60km of access road for the Abydos Mine Project. 

The contract, valued at about $15 million, includes bulk earthworks, drainage and pavement layers for the proposed Pilbara mine. 

The work is scheduled to start in March this year and be finished by the end of June. 

Brierty will require civil and construction operators, trades, engineers and supervisors.

In March 2013, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) released its Industry Dimensions of the Resource Boom research paper. 

Despite sweeping job losses across the industry since September 2012, the resource industry continues to be the fastest growing source of employment for Australian’s having created 130,000 direct jobs over the past five years and 28,500 new Australian jobs in 2012 alone*.

Key findings of the RBA report include: 

There has recently been a great deal of debate and media coverage of the 457 skilled migration scheme, leading many to believe there has been widespread rorting of the system by companies and that a significant number of jobs are going to foreign workers at the expense of Australians. 

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As Sam Walsh, the Director of Rio Tinto says “There are many lessons to be learnt from manufacturing”.

By Therese Lardner
Mining Family Matters careers specialist

I was as recently speaking with a client who told me that after more than 20 years with the same employer, his role had been made redundant. Although he'd really wanted to change careers, he said he didn't know where to start. So instead he found a new job that was very similar to his old role.

Welcome to our latest Project Update.

Monadelphous has received a notice of award for a major iron ore construction contract associated with Rio Tinto’s Western Turner Brockman Project in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

The contract is for the supply and installation of structural, mechanical, piping, electrical and instrumentation works for the construction of the Western Turner Brockman iron ore plant.

The project forms part of Rio Tinto’s expansion of its Pilbara infrastructure to increase iron ore capacity to 360 million tonnes per annum by 2015.

Mining is one of the world's most dangerous occupations. Over the years, many serious accidents have occurred in various parts of the world, often with significant loss of life. Mining is often listed as one of (if not the most) dangerous job (especially coal mining) each year in various dangerous jobs lists.

It is without doubt that miners face many dangers on the job. Some of the most hazardous are listed below:

Although we are always thinking about salaries, we never talk about them, except in hushed tones, and we never let others know precisely how much we earn. Thus it is difficult to get a grip on what others earn who are doing the same as we do.

The mining and oil and gas industries have confirmed their spot at the top of Australia's (and the worlds’) wage scale. Here are some of the highest paid roles in the mining industry: