RIO TINTO

Kylie McKay’s career as an environmental scientist in the resources industry has spanned the last 20 years. In her current role as the lead Closure Planner for Rio Tinto’s Hope Downs operations, Kylie identified the opportunity to meaningfully improve closure consultation with Traditional Owners and other stakeholders, by moving away from conventional formats and approaches.

In 2022, Kylie pioneered the development of an interactive end-to-end portal for Traditional Owner and other stakeholder engagement. The portal is an experience driven platform that provides a resource for understanding closure planning content, allowing users to explore different stages of mine life (pre and post-closure), key landscape features as well as guided tours of closure strategies and outcomes linked to the landscape.

To achieve this, Kylie collaborated with a multidisciplinary team to overcome significant challenges including access to Traditional Owners and other stakeholders, accommodating stakeholder’s limited exposure to the technology, available internet access in remote locations and designing a platform that could incorporate variety of approaches into one user friendly, interactive platform.

Early feedback from Traditional Owners has been extremely positive, referring to the portal as a ‘tangible way to view and understand closure outcomes’, and the consultations as “one of the best consultations they have ever attended”. This feedback, combined with that of other stakeholders, confirms the value of interactive tools and technology to visually communicate closure planning and work together to achieve positive closure outcomes for all stakeholders.