Lihir engineer feted with prestigious award

AN electrical engineer with Newcrest Mining Ltd’s Lihir gold operations power and utilities department is the proud winner of the company’s “Living Our Values” award.
Lyndon Gorie, who hailed from West New Britain province, was a third-year graduate electrical engineer when he devised the award winning system for introducing wireless technology to the geothermal steam fields at the Lihir mine operations, increasing reliability as well as reducing costs and power usage.
His project was the only one chosen from the Lihir site this year in the “We value innovation and problem solving” category.
The Newcrest “Living our Values” awards recognised individuals or teams within Newcrest who demonstrated exemplary behaviour consistent with the company’s values of “We care about people; we act with honesty and integrity; we seek high performance in ourselves and others; we value innovation and problem solving; and we work together.
It was an important part of the company’s vision of being the “miner of choice” and growth strategy.
Gorie said he felt humbled in a way as there are many deserving projects site-wide and also across the company operations that also deserved such an award but since there’s only one winner, “my project was lucky to be chosen”.
The award had now motivated Gorie to do his best in every project he was “tasked to do regardless of the size of it”, John McCormick, the power and utilities manager on Lihir mine, said.
Gorie was presented with a boxed one-ounce gold coin and an award certificate during a special presentation dinner held in Melbourne on Oct 21 for all the LOV award winners from across all Newcrest sites worldwide.
“I cannot speak for other departments but I realised that from P&U department right up to the pinnacle of the company, they wanted us to achieve or realise our full potential by assisting us in any way possible. In that way we give our best back,”
McCormick who nominated Gorie said.
He was full of praise for Gorie for winning the award. “Lyndon demonstrated that challenging the status quo and thinking outside the box can open up a whole new range of potential solutions to problems,” he said.
“The pressure instrumentation on the steam fields, are constantly repaired due to the acidic environment that causes corrosion in the wires, and the long distances involved, this was Gorie’s challenge,” he said.
He started working on the project last year and it took him a year and a half to do his research until he came up with the system.
In January this year, he presented an overview of the project to the company’s business leadership team and got their approval.
The new system enhances the operators’ ability to optimise performance of the steam fields through greater control and decreases further the cost of power.
The wireless system had been installed in a pilot project, and will be run out to the rest of the geothermal operations after an evaluation period.
“What was very pleasing was Lyndon continued to consider others throughout the project and arranged specialised training for them in Australia so the project could be implemented for less cost and the technical know-how remains within the site work group,” McCormick said.
He also said that upon receiving his award, Lyndon thanked his colleagues within the P & U team who assisted him in bringing the project to fruition.
“Seeing work mates gain an award like this spurs others on so I have a feeling many more great ideas are just around the corner,” McCormick added.