Ndifelani Oriel Nkabelane

I am a proven technical expert within the mineral exploration and mining space. With over 18 years of international experience in mineral exploration and mining, I have consistently delivered projects that generate strong returns on investment while ensuring compliance with regulatory and strategic requirements.

My career spans diverse commodities including base metals, rare earth elements, gold, platinum group metals, diamonds, industrial minerals, sedimentary copper, uranium, sulphides, HMS, and coal. I have worked across multiple stages of the mining lifecycle from exploration and evaluation to project delivery and operations across countries such as Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, Rwanda, Mozambique, and South Africa.

Key strengths I bring include project generation, project evaluation, finance and funding, project management, cost-benefit analysis, SHE compliance, and ore body knowledge. I am also experienced in evaluating resources for reporting and mining purposes, with the authority to sign off on mineral resource validity and compliance.

In my role as Senior Geologist, I managed quality control across projects, led consultant teams, and ensured delivery within agreed timeframes and budgets. My responsibilities included conducting mineral exploration, due diligence, mine feasibility studies, environmental impact assessments, compliance audits, and compiling social labour plans. I also managed water use licence audits, borehole certification, pump tests, and lodged permits and licence applications under South African laws such as NEMA and MPRDA.

I am confident that my technical expertise, strategic leadership, and international experience will enable me to make a meaningful contribution to your organization. I welcome the opportunity to discuss how my skills and background align with your needs.

• Between 2012 and 2016, I was one of three accredited trainers within RTX responsible for delivering the CRM rollout across the organization. After obtaining trainer certification, I facilitated the implementation primarily through structured training workshops. Meeting records, incidents, action items, observed hazards, and interaction were logged onto Rio Tinto Business Solution.
• Base in the Rio Tinto offices in Sandton, Johannesburg South Africa I provided support to projects in Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique and Namibia. As an exploration geologist, as was involved in CRM implementation and rollout on a project level. My role therefore included:
• Workshops in office settings: Focused on CRM fundamentals, process familiarization and outlining the objectives CRM seeks to achieve.
• On-site training at exploration and mining projects: Delivered practical rollout sessions tailored to operational environments.
• Training materials: Comprehensive guides supplemented with role-playing exercises to demonstrate real-world application of CRM processes.
• Key Elements of Success
• Risk register awareness: Ensuring staff understood how to identify and manage risks potentially high consequences. (Commonly referred to as SPI’s: Significant Potential Incident)
• HSE interaction: Encouraging active participation in health, safety, and environmental practices. Encourage employees to talk about their HSE observations.
• Permit-to-work process: Reinforcing compliance and safe operational procedures. Demonstrate a permit-to-work scenario and incident reporting process and ask staff to share examples of risks they’ve encountered and how they applied controls.
• Incident reporting: Training staff on accurate and timely reporting mechanisms.
• Hierarchy of controls: Building understanding of risk mitigation strategies.
• Toolbox meeting: conduct HSE meeting at beginning of each work shift, keep records and visually inspect if everyone is fit for work.
• Hazard observation: Encourage employees to report all HSE hazards and unsafe conditions.
• Critical Success Factors
• The foundation of the CRM rollout was staff buy-in. Engagement and acceptance by employees were essential to embedding CRM practices into daily operations and ensuring long-term sustainability of the process.
• Ownership of the process; we also identified and trained CRM champions on each project site. This allowed the locals to take ownership of the CRM processes.
• As part of my job, I used to compile monthly HSE stats, reporting on CRM processes; how many HSE we conducted, incidents, SPI’s, toolbox meeting, and LTI’s. to encourage employees to participate I introduced weekly safety share. Participating employees were given awards – certificates, coffee mugs etc.
• Outcomes
• My observations were, initially, when the CRM rollout starts just about numbers or stats. As the people gets used to the system the quality of interactions, meetings and safety shares improves a lot. It is through this that we were able to achieve consistency, cultural integration and sustainability.
• Regional Consistency: CRM principles were adopted across multiple countries, harmonizing safety practices.
• Cultural Integration: Staff developed stronger ownership of risk management and safety processes.
• Sustainable Impact: The rollout embedded CRM into operational routines, ensuring long-term compliance and effectiveness.