2024 AusIMM Consultants Society Conference: Consulting and Clients in the Future World – Navigating the Changing Landscape

Title: Can You Dig It – Modifying Factors and Multi-Factor Risk

Abstract: The resources sector is offered confusing advice from numerous performance, reporting and disclosure frameworks, and legal standards often lag public expectations. Against this contradictory backdrop, developing an understanding of the ethical implications of project impacts is crucial to obtaining a ‘social license’ to operate’, formalised within land use agreements and permits.

The Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) Code update Exposure Draft (JORC 2024a), amongst other things, modernises disclosure requirements for Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) matters as a class of Modifying Factors. The update Code is a response to greater complexity, lower risk appetites and demands for greater transparency from financiers, regulators and the public.

The update Code maintains its original principles of Transparency, Materiality, and Competence. By requiring project disclosures of all material ESG and other matters, it enables stakeholders to evaluate the ethics, risks, and merits as they progress. Multi-factor risks, such as cumulative uncertainties arising from ancillary developments, can greatly affect project value and are rarely considered.

Competence ‘in context’ is essential for properly assessing materiality. For advanced projects, this requires multidisciplinary teamwork, and the updated Codes also requires competent persons and specialists to lodge CVs of Record on the JORC website. Overall, the updated Code ensures advanced project studies go beyond being geological assessments with Modifying Factors on the side. The updated Code offers a full disclosure road map and is complemented by the comprehensive studies framework set out in the AusIMM Study Processes Handbook (AusIMM 2024b).