First U.S. Iron Mine in Nearly 50 Years: How to Schedule and Track the Work of Opening a Mine

Watch the Opening

This news video covers the opening event in Minnesota, including the blast and the patriotic unveiling. Watch it first, then read on to see how the work behind a milestone like this can be organized.

Video: the opening of the Mesabi Metallics mine in Nashwauk, Minnesota.

The Mesabi Metallics Project at a Glance

Mesabi Metallics is building a mine and pellet plant at Nashwauk, on Minnesota's Iron Range. The project is designed to turn raw ore into iron ore pellets that steelmakers can use in cleaner, lower-emission electric arc furnaces, including a steel mill project planned in Iowa.

"DR-grade" stands for direct reduction grade: a higher-purity pellet made for steelmaking methods that skip the traditional blast furnace. That is why a mine in northern Minnesota matters to a steel plant hundreds of miles away. For the people building and running it, though, the headline numbers all turn into the same practical questions: who is doing what, when does it have to be finished, and how many hours did it really take?

Every link in the chain is a job with its own crew, schedule, and labor hours.

This article is commentary on a public news event. Standard Time® is not affiliated with Mesabi Metallics, and the project details come from the news coverage and the figures above.

Scheduling the Mine: Projects, Subprojects, and Tasks

A mine opening is too big to manage as one long to-do list. The way to tame it is to break it down, and Standard Time® is built for exactly that. You create one project for the whole mine, then split it into subprojects, and split those into tasks. Each level can have its own owner, dates, and budget, and hours roll upward automatically.

One project, five subprojects, and a handful of tasks under each.

A sample breakdown

• Site Prep: clearing and roads, water management, permits and surveys. This is the quiet groundwork that has to be finished before anything else can start.
• Pit Development: overburden stripping (removing the soil and rock that cover the ore), the first blast, building the haul road, and setting up the stockpile.
• Processing Plant: crusher installation, the concentrators that separate iron-rich material from waste, the pellet furnace, and commissioning, which means testing everything before it goes into real service.
• Rail and Utilities: the rail spur that carries pellets out, power and the electrical substation, and the pipelines and water systems a plant this size depends on.
• Startup and Staffing: hiring and onboarding, operator training, safety certification, and the first shipment.

Tasks can be nested as deep as you need. A task like "Concentrators" can hold smaller tasks for each unit, so a supervisor can see the hours for a single machine or for the whole plant. See Editing Subprojects and Tasks in a Text Editor for a fast way to type in a long outline, and What Folders Can Do for You for keeping a big list of projects organized.

Putting Dates and Dependencies on the Plan

Once the tasks exist, give each one a duration and link it to the tasks it depends on. You cannot commission a concentrator before it is installed, and you cannot fire the first production blast before the haul road, the crusher, and the safety training are ready. Links make those relationships visible on a Gantt chart, and they keep the schedule honest when one task runs late.

Linked tasks: finish one and the next is ready, slip one and everything behind it moves.

• Critical path. Standard Time® highlights the chain of tasks that sets the finish date. On a mine, that is usually the long equipment chain, not the digging. Knowing it tells you where a one-week slip becomes a one-week delay for the whole project.
• Milestones. A zero-duration task makes a good milestone: first blast, first concentrate, first pellets, first rail shipment. They show up on the chart as clear markers.
• Baselines. Save the original plan, then compare it to reality as work progresses. The gap between "planned" and "actual" is the most useful thing a project manager can show an investor or a lender.
• Crew assignment. Assign tasks to people or workgroups, with a percentage for each, and the Resource Allocation chart shows who is overloaded and who has spare time. See Gantt Chart Project Tasks and Resource Allocation & Capacity Planning.

Because the same data holds the schedule, the assignments, and the logged hours, a planner can compare the plan against what crews are actually recording, in one place.

Idea: Plan the Mining Cycle as Repeating Tasks

Once a mine is running, much of the work repeats on a loop: drill, blast, load and haul, crush, and then do it again. Instead of building a new project each time, treat each step of the cycle as a standing task and let the daily time logs tell the story. After a few weeks you can answer questions that normally take a lot of digging through paperwork: how many labor hours go into each blast, how much of a crew's day is hauling versus waiting, and whether the night shift cycles faster than days.

The same idea works for maintenance. Give "Haul truck service," "Crusher liner change," and "Conveyor inspection" their own tasks, and unplanned breakdowns become visible in a way that is hard to see when everything is lumped into "maintenance."

Barcode Time Tracking for Crews and Supervisors

A schedule only helps if the real hours come back to it. That is where barcode time tracking earns its keep. Every employee gets a barcode badge. Every task gets a barcode label. To start work, a person scans their badge and the task. To switch jobs, they scan the new task, and the previous timer ends on its own. To finish the day, they scan STOP. Each scan creates a time log with the person, the task, and the start, stop, and duration.

Each crew scans the activity it is starting. The last timer ends automatically.

What crews do

• Scan in at the start of the shift, and scan the task they are working on. Gloves on, no keyboard, a few seconds.
• Scan again when the work changes. Moving from drilling to a blast-hole check, or from hauling to a truck inspection, is one scan.
• Scan indirect work too. Safety meetings, waiting on a blast clearance, weather delays, and fueling all get their own tasks, so they are measured instead of hidden. See Clock In/Out Plus Project Timers.
• Scan STOP at the end of the shift. Nothing is left running overnight.

What supervisors do

• See who is on what, right now. The Time Logs grid shows running timers, so a supervisor can check the pit, the plant, and the rail crew without radioing each one. See Managing Shop Floor Employee Accounts & Live Status Dashboards.
• Check a job's progress on the spot. A quick status scan shows hours logged and percent complete. See The JOBSTATUS Barcode Scan.
• Review and correct. If a crew forgets a scan, the supervisor can fix the time log from the Time Logs page.
• Handle overtime fairly. A mine runs long rotations and holidays. Overtime rules split regular, overtime, and double-time hours automatically. See Overtime Rules in Time Logs.

Printing the labels is simple too. Use a standard barcode font in a word processor, or the built-in barcode generator, then post the labels at the work area, on equipment, or on a job traveler. See Generate Barcodes and QR Codes and Shop Floor Barcode Scanning.

Idea: Equipment Labels That Do Double Duty

A mine is full of big, expensive equipment that needs both operators and mechanics. Put one barcode label on each haul truck, drill, loader, and conveyor section. The operator scans it to log "operating." The mechanic scans a different label on the same machine to log "repair." Over a season you learn the true labor cost of keeping each machine productive, and when a machine costs more to repair than it earns, you have the numbers to decide what to do about it.

Phones and Tablets in the Field

A mine is spread across miles of pit, haul road, plant, and rail yard. Walking back to a desk to log hours or check a plan is not practical. Standard Time® runs in a web browser, so any phone or tablet with a camera and a connection can do the job of a dedicated scanner and a clipboard.

Same data for everyone, a different job for each device.

For labor tracking

• Camera scanning on a phone. A crew member points the phone at a badge or a job label and the timer starts. No scanner to buy, charge, or lose.
• Voice scanning. For hands-busy work, scans can also be spoken. See the screenshot below.
• Shared tablets at a station. Mount a rugged tablet at the plant entrance, the pit shack, or the maintenance bay, and let each crew scan in as they arrive.

For management

• Review the schedule from the field. A project manager walking the plant can open the Gantt chart or the task list on a tablet and check what is next, what is late, and who is assigned.
• Update progress on the spot. Mark a task's percent complete where the work happened, while it is still fresh, instead of from memory on Friday afternoon.
• Watch live dashboards. Clocked-in rosters, running timers, and job status cards help a superintendent decide where to send a crew right now.
• Approve and correct time. A supervisor can fix a missed scan on a tablet at the end of a shift instead of waiting for the next morning.

One practical tip for any remote site: scanning needs a connection, so plan Wi-Fi or cellular coverage at the places where crews scan, such as the pit shack, the plant gate, and the maintenance bay. A station with good coverage beats a phone that has to hunt for a signal.

Idea: A Day in the Life of a Blast

Here is how one blast could look in the data, using nothing but scans and a schedule. A drill crew scans into "Drill pattern" at 6:00 a.m. At noon they scan "Load holes." A safety lead scans "Blast clearance" while the area is cleared. After the blast, a haul crew scans "Load and haul," and at 4:00 p.m. everyone scans STOP. Every step is a task under "Pit Development," so the supervisor can see the hours for each step, the total for the blast, and how it compares to the last one. That kind of record is what turns "we think we're getting faster" into "we're 12 percent faster than last month."

Beyond Hours: Materials, Training, and Reports

• Materials and consumables. Fuel, explosives supplies, drill bits, and spare parts can be recorded as expenses against the same project, so the job cost shows labor and materials together. See Inventory Barcode Scanning.
• Training as a tracked task. A mine hires hundreds of people who need certification before they touch heavy equipment. Training hours get their own task, so the cost is visible and not buried in overhead.
• Reports and exports. Run time reports for any period, or send data to payroll, QuickBooks, or Power BI dashboards. See How to Run Time Reports and Power BI & OData Dashboards.
• Lessons for the next site. The logged hours become real data for estimating the next expansion, the next pit, or the next shutdown, instead of a best guess.

Why This Matters for the Suppliers Around the Mine

A project like this lifts a whole region. Excavation contractors, electricians, welders, trucking companies, equipment dealers, and machine shops will all pick up work because of it. Many are small and mid-sized businesses that are suddenly quoting bigger jobs than they are used to. For them, knowing exactly what the last similar job cost in labor is what turns a large order into a profitable one. The same simple scan-and-schedule approach works for a five-person shop as well as a thousand-person site.

Getting Started

1. Add your employees and print their barcode badges. See Creating Users and Employee Barcodes.
2. Create the project, subprojects, and tasks, and print job barcodes. See Creating Projects and Job Barcodes.
3. Have crews scan in and out of tasks, then review the results. See Time Logs: Where to Find Barcode Scans.