My Story, Your Future | Meet Shane

Shane in outback South Australia

Today, Shane works as a Senior Geologist with a uranium mining company in South Australia.

Originally from Malaysia, Shane moved to Australia at 16, completed Year 12 and went on to study at the University of Adelaide.

While his original goal was to pursue a career in petroleum engineering, a changing industry and an opportunity with a uranium mining company led Shane down a different path. From production geology and exploration to underground gold mining and now a senior geology role, his career has continued to evolve through new opportunities, networking and a willingness to build his skills.

In this interview, Shane shares how he found his way into mining, the different areas of geology he has worked across, the skills he uses every day and the advice he'd give to anyone considering a career in the industry.

Key Facts

• Current Role: Senior Geologist

• Location: South Australia

• First Mining Role: Graduate / Production Geologist

• Roster: 4:3 Four days on Three Days Off

Favorite Part of the Job: Mentoring and coaching younger geologists and helping them find their way in the industry.

Advice in One Sentence: Build your work ethic and attitude, stay humble, keep learning and enjoy the journey.

Tell us a little about yourself, where you come from and your current role:

I am originally from Malaysia, and I came over to Australia when I was 16. That's about 12 years ago. I came over, did Year 12 and then went into the University of Adelaide, studied there and now I just live and reside in Adelaide. And I work here as well.

The current role I'm working in is the position of a Senior Geologist at a uranium mining company.

What are some of the key skills that you need?

With a company of the size that I'm currently working in, having a cool, calm, collected attitude to things is important because you meet different people within the company and you want to try and manage everyone efficiently as well as taking it with care.

So, a bit of conflict resolution, clear and concise ways to communicate to stakeholders as well.

Because I work in a fairly technical background, trying to make sure that that gets across to all the other managers and all the other departments is pretty important. Otherwise, misinterpretation could happen and then that could create more issues down the road.

Practical-orientated solutions are important as well, along with acknowledgement of the flow-on effects, time management and project management.

Then with the more hard skills or technical skills, because my background is as a geologist, knowing the context of the land that I'm working on, the geology that I'm looking at, knowing what I'm looking at, what to look for and how to use the software as related to it.

It's mainly stuff that you kind of pick up on the job as you go throughout your career.

The soft skills, I reckon, are a bit more important because they set your work ethic and your attitude for any job, any industry, wherever you are.

What does an average day in the life of a Senior Geologist look like? 

Every day is a bit different for me, but there are some things that I do every day that are a bit more consistent with what I have to do to just make sure the operation keeps going.

That involves doing QAQC on any of the work that my geologists do. If they've got a backlog on their end, I would just help them out with that backlog as well. There's stuff like geophysical interpretation and data uploads.

On top of that, there's a bunch of value-add projects, like updating geological models and drill planning. I've got my own personal project as well, which is off my own interest, full stack projects like making websites and databases just to help with the data efficiency side of things.

Then there's also contractor management and the actual coaching and mentoring of my geos, which I actually do quite enjoy.

So not every day is the same for me. Every day presents different challenges, but it makes it fun.

The soft skills are more important because they set your work ethic and your attitude for any job, any industry, wherever you are.

https://youtu.be/1FS4NykMWfQ

Shane's My Story Your Future Interview

How does your role contribute to the overall operation?

Pretty much in the whole mining industry, the geology department, first and foremost, their job is actually just data gathering.

We obtain samples and we extract the data from these samples and put them into a database, so on and so forth, and that gets interpreted by either the geology department again or some contractors somewhere else.

How does that contribute to the overall operation? Well, the current project that I'm working in is in the BFS stage, so that's the Bankable Feasibility Study.

After that, you've got the FID, which is the Financial Investment Decision, and then you can actually start a producing mine.

So all this data that we collect feeds into the BFS, which then eventually goes into the FID.

We're collecting all this data and all these samples, and it helps increase our confidence of the resource. It helps us understand how much volume of, in this example, uranium we have, and then turns the project into a more and more economical project.

Eventually, with the final investment decision, if that's a yes, because of all the data that we've gathered, we can eventually progress it into a full functioning production mine.

What do you enjoy most about your role and the industry that you're in?

What I enjoy most currently, what I feel like the most amount of gratitude I get from my role, is actually the mentoring and coaching of my geos.

They're only slightly younger than me, but knowing that their viewpoints were similar to what mine was when I was their age a couple of years ago, me giving them the wise words or extra boost or giving them the direction where they should go makes me a bit glad that I'm kind of contributing back to, I guess, the younger generation and people that are trying to find their way within the industry.

"It's all about networking and getting to know people in the industry. It is a pretty small industry after all."

Your current roster or work schedule, how does that fit in with your lifestyle? Are you on a roster?

Four days on, three days off.

So every Friday to Sunday, I would be at home. Work-life balance is pretty good in that sense.

It does fit in quite well with my lifestyle. My bosses do acknowledge the hours that I put in, so a lot of flexibility is being included in my roster and my work schedule.

If it means leaving work an hour earlier one day, etc., it's all understandable because at the end of the week or month or whatever period, as long as we meet our deadlines, deliver the results and products, all good.

At age 15 or 16, what did you want to do? What was your career objective then?

When I was 15 or 16, right before I went into uni, the purpose or the goal was to graduate with a petroleum engineering degree, which I currently do have.

I do have geology as a secondary degree.

It struck me that as I graduated, the whole petroleum industry was in a bit of a rut and there weren't really many jobs going on in Australia.

That was a career objective at that time, but the first company that hired me was also actually a uranium mining company that had pretty similar concepts to an oil and gas industry, petroleum.

So that's why they took me in.

But ever since then, I've kind of gone pretty deep into the geology pathway career.

Learn to self-reflect, know your limits and enjoy the journey. Nothing good really comes easy. It's mainly the soft skills, the work ethic and the attitude.

When you finished university, did you go onto a graduate program? How did you progress to where you are now?

I think the important one here for me was that at the University of Adelaide, there were these, I guess you could call them networking groups for us.

They would usually host one or two networking nights every year, and it's a pretty good idea. I mean, there's nothing to lose. It's a pretty good idea to just join these events.

At these events, there would be company representatives sitting there explaining what they do, and that's your chance to actually talk and have a good idea as to who some of the players are around in your area, in that state. You could actually form connections. And that was actually how I managed to get into that first uranium company that I was in.

I managed to do an internship with them and then the following industry night, they were there again. They chased me up. They said, "Hey, do you want to become a graduate instead for us at the end of this year?"

And it kind of just rolled from there. Graduate and then became a Production Geologist.

Uranium mining, or the way we mine at this first company, it's called in situ leaching, which is a pretty niche method of mining. In the mining industry, you usually hear a lot about underground or open pit mining, but not really much about in situ leaching, which is pretty similar to oil and gas, injectors, extractors, and not a lot of disturbance up on the surface.

After being at that company for two or so years, I realised how niche that part of the industry was. I realised that I needed to expand my skill set and see other things as well. Then from there, I moved over to BHP and worked at an exploration project there, kind of similar to what Olympic Dam is, a massive IOCG deposit.

I worked there for two years. There was no open pit or underground mining involved because I was an Exploration Geologist. Deep diamond drilling, which was pretty interesting. Also, a bit niche.

And then from there I went into gold, which was underground and this was in WA. That one was pretty fun. Getting used to being underground is a bit challenging. In the beginning, there was a fair amount of novelty to it.

And after that, then I am now in the senior role that I'm currently at with another uranium ISR mining company.

What advice would you give to someone considering a career in mining? 

Those soft skills, the work ethic and the attitude automatically puts you in the top 30%.

Picking up skills on the job from others, learning from them, that's very important as well, but then also remaining humble.

However, it's good to self-reflect from time to time, knowing your limits and what your journey has been and making sure that you stay humble. Because there's always people out there that know more than you. Learn from them as well.

Learn to self-reflect, know your limits and enjoy the journey. Nothing good really comes easy. It's mainly the soft skills, the work ethic and the attitude.

Any of the hard skills you can pretty much pick up on the job as long as you're willing to learn, and people, a lot of people, are willing to teach you how to do things.

Thank you to Shane for sharing his career journey as part of RESA's My Story, Your Future campaign. 

Every career journey is unique. Through sharing the stories of South Australians working across the resources sector, we're helping students, job seekers and career changers discover the many different pathways into rewarding careers in mining.