Name
Lightning Rounds III
Date & Time
Thursday, November 26, 2026, 10:50 AM - 11:40 AM
Speakers
Jacob Bennetts, Technology Enhanced Asset Management
Oliver Chikumbo, Hancock Iron Ore
Gary North, Snowflake
Jacob Bennetts Oliver Chikumbo Gary North
Description

  1. AI + Optimisation: Turning Tacit Maintenance Knowledge into Better Shutdown Schedules 

  • Capturing tacit knowledge with AI – turning the experience, rules and judgement held by maintenance planners into structured, usable planning constraints. 

  • Rapid creation of shutdown schedules, using optimisation algorithms to produce critical path schedules early, before options to make changes disappear. 

  • Building better, faster and more explainable shutdown schedules – demonstrating how AI and optimisation can augment planners, improve scenario analysis and support more robust maintenance decisions. Helping new staff produce quality plans faster. 

  • Flag SimOps risks early! 

Speaker: Jacob Bennetts, Director – Innovation, Technology Enhanced Asset Management 

  1. Leading Through Disruption: How Mining Executives Are Building the AI-Enabled Enterprise  

  • Aligning AI investments with long-term business strategy. 

  • Creating an organisational culture that embraces innovation. 

  • Balancing operational performance with digital transformation. 

  • Developing the leadership capabilities required for an AI-driven future. 

  • Lessons from enterprise-wide transformation programmes. 

Speaker: Oliver Chikumbo, AI Solution Specialist, Hancock Iron Ore 

  1. The Growth of AI in Enterprise Data Management for Mining 

  • From experimentation to enterprise adoption – understanding how the rapid evolution of AI is changing the way mining companies manage, access and use data. 

  • Beyond content generation and coding – exploring the shift towards autonomous reasoning and more advanced AI capabilities, and what this means for mining operations. 

  • Building the foundations for AI at scale – examining how data quality, governance and accessibility need to evolve to support enterprise-wide AI adoption. 

  • Turning AI into measurable business value – identifying where mining companies can move beyond pilots and experimentation to deliver practical, scalable outcomes across the organisation. 

Speaker: Gary North, Senior Solution Engineer, Snowflake