Driving success

The Maptek Technical Services team has deepened its partnership with Rio Tinto on the Simandou project in a collaborative relationship which has strengthened over the course of two and a half years.

The Simandou project in the Republic of Guinea, West Africa, is Rio Tinto’s largest single capital investment and Africa’s most extensive mining and infrastructure development, with over 1.5 billion tonnes of high-grade iron ore.

In late 2023, Rio Tinto reached out to Maptek for our expertise in design execution at Simandou. The huge scale of the project, coupled with challenging terrain, meant that an exceptional level of precision and coordination was required.

With capable tools, highly skilled users, and comprehensive technical knowledge, Maptek was well suited for the task at hand.

During 2023–2024, Maptek focused on the development phase of the project, creating access routes and mining plans across complex topography. By 2026, this work has evolved to a more advanced stage which focuses further on staging design. While initial efforts targeted a five-year plan, the team soon expanded to a full life-of-mine (LOM) approach, covering 11 stages.

Maptek Vulcan Automated Pit Designer (APD) created a ‘final’ design for each stage.

APD decreases turnaround time dramatically, allowing users to quickly make changes to ramp and wall locations so that the most desirable solution is identified in a short time. This allows for minimal disruption to operations, crucially with each phase of mining integrating seamlessly with each other while maintaining access to mill and waste dump areas.

The adoption of Vulcan’s advanced software suite has helped to improve design speed, accuracy, and integration compared with earlier, more manual phases.

Pit/dump design tools were used to integrate geotechnical data from the block model, ensuring compliance with safety and structural parameters. The 2025 release of the Build Road Tool further enhanced efficiencies by simplifying ex-pit road design and reducing manual work, and the team has also used Vulcan Gantt Scheduler for visualisation and reporting purposes.

Continuous feedback between the Maptek design team and Rio Tinto’s on-site engineers ensures that digital models translate effectively into real-world results. Ahmed Gad Shams El-Din, Senior Mine Planning Engineer at Rio Tinto said:

‘The collaboration with Maptek has been instrumental in advancing our mine design strategy at Simandou.’

‘Their technical expertise and tools have enabled us to progress from high-level concepts to fully optimised designs, incorporating our learnings to deliver the safest and most efficient options with speed and precision. This partnership ensures that our designs are robust, efficient, and adaptable to the unique challenges of the terrain, setting a strong foundation for safe and sustainable operations.’

Maptek’s focus is now on optimising each stage’s efficiency while remaining flexible to topographic, technological, and operational changes. The goal is to build sustainable, long-term safety and productivity. The Simandou project exemplifies how collaborative design and advanced software like Vulcan can drive large-scale mining success. 

Maptek is proud to support Rio Tinto in delivering one of the world’s largest and most complex mining developments.