Investing in education is a key pillar of Maptek’s ability to attract and retain a great team, says BlastLogic Team Leader Peter Iannella.
It’s something he’s experienced first hand.
‘I found out about Maptek when I was awarded the Maptek Mining Engineering Scholarship at the University of Adelaide. When I realised there was actually a mining software company in Adelaide, it caught my attention immediately,’ Peter says.
‘Maptek invests very well in education. We provide many awards to various universities and I think that once people are aware of Maptek, the career opportunities and culture they can be a part of is what attracts them.’
For Peter, the scholarship led to an internship with Maptek 8 years ago and he hasn’t looked back.
‘Maptek means innovation. It's taking the cutting edge of computer science and applying it to mining problems.
‘Maptek does a great job of really identifying a customer need on the mining side and we take the best of computer science - the evolutionary algorithms, machine learning, cutting edge tech - and apply it to mining problems.’
He is proud of seeing the drill and blast optimisation package BlastMCF, which applies evolutionary algorithms to the process, through from inception to its upcoming release in BlastLogic 2021 and looks forward to cloud-based solutions developing further.
‘I think we can offer a lot more to customers by having all of our solutions available in the cloud online.
‘They do not have to worry about installing desktop software on every machine. Setting up automatic tasks that take a block model directly from the geologists straight through to the drill and blast engineers is more efficient than having to send files back and forth.
‘That all-encompassing automatic cloud solution will even automatically calculate new designs without needing heavy input from the engineer. This way we help engineers into more of a decision-making role, rather than a tedious job of doing little edits here and there.
‘It’s certainly the big picture for solutions we are aiming for in the next 5-10 years.’
Watch the full interview here.