Since the original presentation of project planning and risk reduction concepts, the fundamental interpretations of success and failure, expressed as rate of achievement of design capacity or production rate, have remained almost unchanged, except for minor revisions reflecting new case histories. Dominant among those interpretive criteria have been quality of underlying information and solid testing in advance of design work, extent of development of process design criteria, experience and commitment of the project owner, and avoidance of unrealistic fast-track schedules and/or excessive cost-cutting that appeared to suppress careful decision making. As companies are increasingly wanting to accelerate activities to bring on-line new critical mineral projects – either treating primary ores or secondary materials such as used EV batteries, spent magnets, etc. – this background to project development is more important than ever. 2. OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE Today’s project owners face a critical challenge: how to deliver the minerals the world urgently needs, faster, smarter, and more responsibly. To overcome this challenge, we need trust, transformation and technology. The McNulty curves serve as a valuable tool to help project owners with building trust, supporting transformation and de-risking technology. Project owners asking the question “how much can we shorten project timelines without dangerously cutting corners?” can draw important lessons from past project case histories and proven strategies to safely accelerate ramp-ups. This paper explores how to apply the McNulty curves to enable trust, transformation and technology in new projects. While enabling trust, the McNulty curves and methodology provide a basis for a conversation on risk and mitigation and should be used by owners, service providers and investors to have a common basis of understanding on project risk. The causes of successful and unsuccessful plant start-ups are well understood, enabling the owners of new projects to make a reasonable assessment of project profitability if they are objective. Adoption of new technology does not necessarily result in a poor start-up, provided it is done very carefully. The importance of forming a strong and cooperative project team led by an experienced project owner cannot be over-emphasized. It is essential to provide sufficient capital for modifications after commissioning and during start-up. While project owners hope for the best they need to plan for a realistic outcome based on the complexity of the project and introduction of new technology. To avoid unplanned delays or worse, derating of a planned capacity, sufficient capital needs to be available post commissioning to address the inevitable modifications required due to the scale up or introduction of untested technology and the operational duty cycle. A well-planned and properly executed metallurgical process development program is essential for robust financial performance of a new plant. If that 197
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