Modern Mining February 2016

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February 2016MODERN MINING37
COMPANIES
opportunities for WorleyParsons’
Improve business, one of its four
business lines. “Improve focuses
on providing customers with global
best practice solutions for the opti-
misation of assets and is positioned
to do well in the current mining
environment,” he says.
He also notes that WorleyParsons
is still seeing a healthy number of
studies coming through from cli-
ents across all the sectors in which
it operates. “These are now han-
dled by our new advisory services
business line, Advisian, which is
designed – amongst other things – to
allow us to dominate the front end
of the project cycle,” he explains.
Advisian – which now employs
over 3 000 people in 19 countries
and which offers a unique combi-
nation of technical, business and
strategic consulting services – has
been deliberately positioned to have
a degree of independence from the
rest of the WorleyParsons Group.
“Advisian in Africa, for example,
does not report to me but to its own
global CEO. Obviously, though,
WorleyParsons’ involvement in
projects will sometimes start with
Advisian so it will be a key driver
of growth within the Group and the
key of course is to convert some
of the Advisian studies into actual
work on the ground which can be
executed by our Services or Major
Projects business lines.”
Looking at WorleyParsons globally, McNiff
says the Group – which employs approxi-
mately 30 000 people around the globe – has
thus far managed to remain resilient, posting
aggregated revenue of $7,23 billion in FY 2015
and securing 105 significant contracts in 2015.
“The Group has been undergoing a restructur-
ing since 2014 to align it with market shifts and
this has seen the establishment of the current
business line structure, which will position it
for sustainable growth in a very fast changing
business environment,” he says. 
The steel headgears of
the Venetia Underground
Project (VUP).
WorleyParsons has been
involved with the project
since the feasibility stage
(photo: De Beers).