Want to build a mine?

The downside was hyper-inflation of project costs and baked in productivity declines. Building dams, roads and mines is one thing, technology projects are another challenge altogether. Vogts outlines the challenge.

"The challenge for the mining sector boom is a legacy of hyper-inflation in an environment, particularly in Western Australia, and of poor productivity largely because of the hyper-inflation."
Marc Vogts, Inaugural executive director John Grill Centre for Project Leadership, University of Sydney

So how well did the operators do? The John Grill Centre for Project Leadership was established to build Australia's project management expertise. JGC chief executive Marc Vogts spoke to BlueNotes about effective project management, a critical skill for projects large and small, public and internal.

“There is a global deficit of infrastructure,” Vogt says. “The challenge to overcome that is, one, it needs significant stakeholder engagement and alignment because you are affecting communities, you are affecting the way people live.

“But one of the biggest problems for infrastructure to be able to be successfully implemented is to be able to fund it.”