The results of our simplified financial analysis for this hypothetical gold processing facility are to be considered indicative and were used to show the significant impact of extended production ramp-up times. Delays in ramp-up represent delays in production revenue, which directly impacts NPV. Obviously, the huge variance between the NPV of a Series 1 versus Series 4 ramp-up impacts the project’s ability to be considered a success. Understanding how ramp-up performance impacts NPV is essential to protecting the business case for stakeholders and shareholders. 7. CONCLUSIONS The present authors echo the important reminder of the 1998 McNulty paper to owners of a new project to be diligent and careful, have some experienced hands on the project, to use common sense, and to question the validity of available information. The results of the present authors simplified financial analysis for a hypothetical gold processing facility demonstrate the significant impact of extended production ramp-up times. The McNulty curves serve as a powerful tool to assist project owners in building trust for the business case to support transformation and de-risk new technology to enable more successful ramp-ups. It is important to have the right team with phronesis and to design for successful delivery to set today’s project owners up for success in delivering the minerals the world urgently needs, faster, smarter, and more responsibly. Project owners can achieve successful ramp-up performance by being mindful of the dominant factors of success and failure, i.e., quality of underlying information, development of the necessary process design criteria, providing the experience and sustained commitment of the owner's project team, and avoiding commitment to unrealistic fast-track schedules that could undermine previous project plans and suppress managed decision making. The McNulty Curves serve as an empirically based planning tool to facilitate mature and active derisking of projects. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to acknowledge the contributions from John Bryant, Mike Fedoroff, Kerry Hill, Isabelle Plante, James Nguyen, Melfi Villanueva, and Nils Voermann. We would also like to give special acknowledgement to Professor Bent Flyvbjerg’s reference to Aristotle’s description of practical wisdom as “phronesis” to show how it enables teams to deliver successful capital projects [8]. REFERENCES McNulty, T. (1998). Innovative technology: Its development and commercialization. In M. Kuhn (Ed.), Managing innovation in the minerals industry (pp. 1–14). Society for Mining, 203
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