782 During the design of the process facilities, the focus will need to be placed on minimizing capital intensity while maintaining reliability, availability and maintainability. This means that the operating and maintenance philosophies need to be defined / established as early as possible and then stress tested in the feasibility and execution stages via Reliability-Availability-Maintainability (RAM) modelling. The operating and maintenance plans will be tested with respect to equipment sparing and the impact this has on plant availability. Plant footprint is another key focus area as this serves to influence the amount of bulk earth works needed to establish the site prior to construction and quantities of the major commodities; by optimizing the footprint, it allows to minimize mass concrete requirements while not compromising the accessibility for maintenance and safe egress from the plant for the operators. The selection of off-the-shelf equipment is crucial to ensure that spare parts are available from the vendors. This minimizes the possible downtime while waiting for bespoke spares should a breakdown occur. As the design progresses, the attention turns to the constructability and transportation of materials and equipment from the nearest port to the project site. The key to constructability is the ability to prefabricate or preassemble structures off site to avoid the cost of assembly on site in remote locations. During the detailed design phase, it is vital to establish the project team, including owners, contractors and original equipment manufacturers, that will be responsible for developing and delivering the commissioning and ramp up plan. This will include operational readiness subjects like systems readiness for asset maintenance, supply chain systems and human resources systems including recruiting, training and local labour relations. The ultimate aim of the commissioning and ramp up plan is to achieve both the nameplate throughput and nameplate metal recovery within the desired timeline (with this being less than six months for medium throughput single line concentrator projects and less than twelve months for dual line and multi product operations). Faster and steady state ramp up translates into financial success, improved net present value and reduced payback period for the owner. 6. CAPITAL COSTS OVER THE DECADES The change in capital intensity of projects over the last three decades is examined in this section. A selection of projects from Australia, the United States, Peru, and Chile have been reviewed, many of which are characterized by remote locations and constraints on critical resources such as water and power. Looking at the projects in South America one can see that most of them require a port for final concentrate export. Coupled with the need for a port is the need for desalination to provide treated water for the project site inland. This is due to scarcity of water resources or constraints at the project location. Connecting the mine site to the port requires a combination of concentrate slurry pipeline from the mine to the port and from the desalination plant to the project site inland.
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