Case study

Enabling Whitehaven Coal To Seize New Mining Opportunities Without Delays

Energy and Resources
Coal master machine from an overhead view

Challenge

Whitehaven Coal, the leading Australian coal producer, sought to integrate operations and data from new mine sites into its existing custom-built systems. On a tight deadline, the company sought a partner to help update the functionality of its systems and support data integration.

Outcome

By partnering with Endava, Whitehaven Coal was able to smoothly integrate and update its systems ahead of operation commencement at the Queensland mining sites. This enabled teams to start on time and avoid any revenue loss during the transition period.

Having operated for more than 20 years in New South Wales, the leading Australian coal producer, Whitehaven Coal, acquired two new mines in the Queensland Region.

 

With existing operations exclusively in the state of New South Wales, it needed several systems and processes to be established and modified to enable Queensland operations to begin. With a tight deadline to ensure teams could start as soon as the acquisition was complete, Whitehaven turned to Endava for engineering and technological support.

Coal mining equipment site

Developing strong foundations

Having previously supported Whitehaven Coal to enhance its custom-built operations and logistics platform, CoalTrak, our team was familiar with the engineering and workings of the system. This existing relationship meant we could hit the ground running with new work, scaling up our team to deliver at high velocity.

 

The business needed to make modifications to CoalTrak in order to integrate Queensland port and rail services data, and to be able to export that data to other software used in the Whitehaven Coal ecosystem. They also required the capacity to filter and track Queensland sales, rail and port logistics within CoalTrak to allow marketing and logistics teams to manage operations across the two states independently or in unison, a required.


Over three phases, we supported Whitehaven to execute two projects. The first involved the delivery of functional changes to the CoalTrak application, including to the core interfaces and componentry. The second phase included further changes to enable the management of Queensland logistics and sales.

Alongside this, our collaboration also enabled Whitehaven to manage the data integration of its Queensland rail and port services into CoalTrak for use by the application and connected systems. To do so, we worked closely with a third-party data supplier DXC Technology to deliver the integration work, which was achieved through Mulesoft, a platform from one of our partners, Salesforce.

People writing on paper

Collaborative working for innovation

Our team – comprised of a Project Manager, Product Manager, Business Analyst and Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer, along with a full engineering team – worked closely with Whitehaven throughout. Initially, we confirmed the scope of work and wrote requirements outlining the necessary changes and ensured that delivery met these requirements and fulfilled business needs. The Principal Engineer collaborated with technical stakeholders across Whitehaven and the third-party data supplier to understand and document data integration requirements while overseeing the development team.

 

This leadership and collaboration were critical for the success of the project, and to ensuring Whitehaven could meet its crucial timelines. With the positive alignment of technical teams and requirements, Whitehaven Coal was able to commence operations at the Queensland mines on time, ensuring that no revenue from the sites was lost during the transition period.

 

We’re pleased to be supporting the Whitehaven team as it works to continuously enhance the CoalTrak software and deliver transformational change within the Whitehaven Coal software ecosystem.

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