By Matt Chambers

September 15, 2017 - In Australia, on the 10th floor of a Queen Street office building, overlooking the Brisbane River and the Story Bridge, a team of 212 BHP Billiton mining workers have started running the nation’s biggest coal system.

After six months of moving key operating roles from the Bowen Basin, Mackay and the Hunter Valley to Brisbane, BHP is now operating an integrated ­remote operating center that it says will drive lower costs across its suite of Queensland coking coalmines and its Mt Arthur thermal coalmine in New South Wales (NSW).

And in a first for the miner, the center team has more women than men, achieving a gender balance target that chief executive Andrew Mackenzie said last ­November he wanted in effect across the whole organisation by 2025.

The center, which operates on two 12-hour shifts, is the latest in an industry-wide trend towards remote hubs. It was started by Rio Tinto in Perth for its iron ore ­operations and followed in WA by BHP and Fortescue.

Now on the east coast, workers in Brisbane are stationed at hubs of computers taking data and video from mine sites and ports, directing and overseeing mining trucks and shovels, and scheduling train and ship loading.

“One of the competitive advan­tages we will be able to achieve is by rapidly replicating best practice across the business,” acting BHP IROC head Andrew Wilson said yesterday.

“We’re now quickly able to see where best practice exists across the coal business, pick it up and plug it down in another area.”

Having key operating roles at nine mining operations all working in the one room, in conversation with each other, also helps drive the transfer of best practice.

IROC fixed plant manager Michelle Elvy, who moved to Brisbane from the South Walker Creek mine site to work at the center, says a different recruitment model was used for new roles.

“We moved away from the traditional model of ‘you must have this sort of experience and ­exposure’ to ‘what are people capable of?’,” Ms. Elvy said. As a result, workers have come from areas as diverse as air traffic control, nursing and medical science.

The coal center has been fully ­operational across all sites since March and has linked the Daunia, Caval Ridge, Peak Downs, Blackwater, Goonyella Riverside and South Walker Creek coking coalmines in Queensland with the Hay Point port at Mackay. The Mt Arthur thermal coalmine in the Hunter Valley is also now ­operated from Brisbane.

The establishment of the center has helped create about 30 new roles.

“The aim was to replicate and drive best practice (not reduce ­labor costs),” Mr. Wilson said.

BHP's Mt Arthur Mine Control Center