[robchez]

I am a Mining/Mechanical Project engineer and have had the extreme pleasure of visiting a lot of these underground operations (although Kidd is still on the bucket list!)

Due to precious and base metal prices as they are, there are a lot of mining deposits that were once not viable, but now seem quite profitable. There is a huge push to deeper levels and this is leading to some awesome engineering advances in the field (that I am proud to be a part of).

Mining is a market for hackers waiting to be tapped(!). This industry pushes two things, safety and efficiency. These mines work 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, any loss of work costs serious money. If you could develop software to have mines be both safer and more efficient, you have a signed pay check.

[wmat]

I'd be curious to know what kind of software systems are in place now? Googling turns up some pretty big players, like http://www.gemcomsoftware.com/, http://www.minesight.com/, etc. I interviewed once many years ago at Vale-Inco in Sudbury, Ontario and at the time they were still hiring Fortran developers.

[robchez]

Design software. Forget the scheduling and geology software, its managed by the big guys.

Every mining/mechanical engineer I know uses a collection of spreadsheets they have created/collated. It's cumbersome, its crap, its error prone.

* Materials Handling (Conveyor design etc.)

* Pumping (Dewatering, supply lines etc.)

Other areas which need serious shakeup are drawing and document control. There are junior miners starting every other week and if you can sell your software to them from the beginning to manage there document/drawing control you are set for at least 5-10 years of service/subscripton revenue as well.