Minex and the codes your reserve statement has to survive
KCMI, SNI 5015:2019, JORC, SAMREC and NI 43-101 bind the Competent Person, not the software. What Minex decides is whether that person walks into the review with evidence, or with a recollection — and whether your RKAB and feasibility study hold together where the technical work meets the economics.
What a reporting code actually binds
Worth saying plainly before anything else, because a good deal of software marketing gets it wrong.
No software is JORC compliant. Nor is Minex.
JORC, SAMREC, NI 43-101, SNI and KCMI govern the Competent Person who signs the statement — their qualifications, their judgement, and the material they must be able to produce if challenged. They do not certify software, and a package cannot make an estimate compliant.
What software can do is decide whether that person has the evidence to defend the boundary they drew, or is arguing from memory.
That is the whole of our claim on this page, and it is the only one worth making.
The codes an Indonesian coal operation works under
Most operations answer to more than one at a time, which is usually where the duplicated effort comes from.
Domestic — SNI 5015:2019 and KCMI
SNI 5015:2019 is the Indonesian standard for reporting coal resources and reserves; it requires the estimate to be signed by a Competent Person. The KCMI Code covers the same ground and uses the term Competent Person Indonesia (CPI) for the signatory. The two terms are not interchangeable, and it is worth knowing which one your report is being read against. Groups that also hold mineral assets report those under SNI 4726 instead. This is the reporting your regulator, your RKAB submission and your feasibility study are read against.
International — JORC, SAMREC, NI 43-101
Applies where the parent company, the lender or the listing sits offshore. Structurally these align with KCMI — Measured, Indicated and Inferred for resources; Proved and Probable for reserves — so one properly built model can serve both, if the spatial evidence behind the boundaries exists.
The practical consequence: a model built only to satisfy a domestic submission, with the classification reasoning left undocumented, has to be rebuilt when a lender asks for an internationally reported statement. Building it once, properly, is cheaper than building it twice.
RKAB and Studi Kelayakan: where accuracy stops being optional
Two Indonesian deliverables cause more late nights than anything else in coal planning, and both fail in the same place — the join between the technical study and the economic one.
RKAB — the deadline that never moves
RKAB requires a resource and reserve statement, a production plan and a waste movement plan that all reconcile: with each other, with the previous period's realisation, and with the classification your Competent Person is prepared to sign.
Where it goes wrong is rarely the geology. It is that the reserve number came from one place, the schedule from another, and the reconciliation was assembled in spreadsheets in the three weeks before submission — by which point nobody can explain why this year's tonnage differs from last year's.
Studi Kelayakan — technical meets economic
A feasibility study has to hold up on both sides at once. The resource has to be classified defensibly. The pit outline has to be the one the economics actually justify, at a stated price and strip ratio. The schedule has to be achievable with the fleet and the haul roads that exist.
Studies come apart under review when those three were produced separately and only reconciled at the end. The technical work says one thing, the economic model assumes another, and the reviewer finds the seam between them.
What Minex puts on the table when you are challenged
Not compliance. Evidence — produced from one model, in a form that survives being checked line by line.
- Boreholeswhat you drilled
- Variogramhow far it correlates
- Variance gridhow sure, and where
- Classificationthe boundary drawn
- Reserve statementthe number signed
Every step leaves something a Competent Person can put in front of a reviewer
- Spatial grounds for the classification. Kriging variance, sample count and average sample distance grids — the three measures from which a Measured, Indicated or Inferred boundary can actually be argued, rather than drawn by eye and defended afterwards.
- Variograms you can show. Experimental variograms across multiple orientations, model fitting, and a variogram map that exposes the direction of maximum continuity. Jack-knifing closes the loop against the holes themselves.
- Quality carried through, not bolted on. Washability curves and quality grids modelled with the seams, so the product specification and the reserve statement come from the same source.
- Reserves keyed to real mining volumes. A reserves database on pit, bench, strip, block and layer — Status/Null for total waste and coal, Reserves DB for quality variables with full control over what is reported, and List Layers.
- Economics attached to the outline. Pit optimisation with three pricing modes, breakeven strip ratio, and the structural and quality grids the optimiser demands. The outline is defensible because the price and constraints behind it are stated.
- Cost that comes from the plan, not a spreadsheet. Truck cycle time built from spot, load, travel, unload and queueing, with distance and grade from the Ramp Distance Generator — so the operating cost in the study traces back to the schedule.
- Reconciliation as a step, not a scramble. This period against last, with the reason for any movement attached before the number reaches a board paper.
- Repeatable by someone else. SQL and Tcl turn the monthly and annual cycle into something a second person can rerun, which is what makes an audit trail an audit trail rather than one person's recollection.
Where teams actually get the time back
Stated as the problems they replace, because a benefit with no problem attached is a brochure line.
One source instead of three
Resource, reserve and schedule from the same model. The reconciliation that used to consume the weeks before an RKAB deadline becomes a check rather than an investigation.
Classification you can argue
When a reviewer asks why a block is Indicated rather than Measured, the answer is a variance grid and a sample distance, not a recollection of how the polygon was drawn.
Survives the person leaving
Scripted, documented workflows mean next year's submission does not depend on whether the person who built this year's model is still employed.
The disciplines behind all of this — geostatistics and resource classification, resource reporting, pit optimisation, reserve reporting, scheduling and truck cycle time — are taught in our training curriculum. Where an existing model has to be rebuilt and reconciled first, that is implementation work.
What buyers ask about reporting
Is GEOVIA Minex JORC or KCMI compliant?
No software is, and any vendor who tells you otherwise is worth a second look. Reporting codes bind the Competent Person who signs the statement, not the package that produced the numbers. What Minex does is generate the evidence that person needs to defend a classification — kriging variance, sample count and average sample distance grids, QA/QC records, and a reconciliation against what was reported last year. The judgement stays with your CP. The auditable trail behind it is what we help you build.
Which code applies to an Indonesian coal operation?
For domestic reporting, SNI 5015:2019 and the KCMI Code, which cover the same ground with different names for the signatory: SNI 5015:2019 says Competent Person, KCMI says Competent Person Indonesia (CPI). If the parent, the lender or the exchange sits offshore, JORC, SAMREC or NI 43-101 usually applies in parallel. The good news is that the four are broadly aligned in structure — Measured, Indicated, Inferred for resources, Proved and Probable for reserves — so one well-built model can support both, provided the spatial evidence behind the boundaries is actually there.
How does Minex help with RKAB?
RKAB is where a resource model stops being a geology exercise and becomes a number you have to defend. The resource and reserve statement, the production plan and the waste movement all have to reconcile with each other and with last year's realisation. Minex holds the reserves database keyed on pit, bench, strip, block and layer, and produces the schedule that feeds the production plan from the same source. When the model is the single source, the RKAB pack stops being a reconciliation exercise carried out in spreadsheets three weeks before the deadline.
Can Minex support a feasibility study?
It covers the technical and economic core of one: the classified resource, the pit optimisation that establishes what is economically mineable, the design, the schedule, and the haulage costs that sit underneath the operating cost estimate. Financial modelling, permitting, environmental and social studies happen elsewhere. What Minex removes is the gap between the technical study and the economic one — the place where feasibility studies most often come apart under review.
Our last reserve statement was built in spreadsheets. Can you reconcile it?
That is one of the more common jobs we take on. We rebuild the model in Minex, then reconcile it against the last reported statement before anyone signs anything off. If the numbers move, you find out from us first, with the reason attached — not from an auditor after the figure has reached a board paper.
Do you sign off the resource or reserve statement as Competent Person?
No — and be wary of a software supplier who offers to. The Competent Person is your appointment: someone with the qualifications and the deposit-type experience the code requires, who takes personal responsibility for the estimate and for its public disclosure. Our job is to make sure that person walks into the review holding the evidence — variance and sample-count grids, variograms, QA/QC records, and a reconciliation against what was reported last year. We do not act in that capacity unless it is separately agreed in writing, which is a different engagement with different terms.
Do you prepare or submit the RKAB for us?
No. Compiling the pack and lodging it stays with your team and the people who sign it. What we do is the geology and mine planning work underneath: the seam model, the classified resource, the reserve statement, the schedule and the haulage numbers — produced from one source, so they reconcile with each other and with last period’s realisation instead of being argued into agreement three weeks before the deadline. Minex is a tool for that work, not a document-preparation service. The same boundary applies to a Studi Kelayakan: we cover the technical and economic core, not the compilation, the permitting or the financial model.
Tell us what your last submission cost you in time
Commodity, seam count, which code you report under, and how this year's reconciliation was actually assembled. That is enough for us to answer with a scope rather than a discovery call.
Related: Implementation & data migration · GEOVIA Minex training