How a Global Mining Brought its Biggest Budgets Under Control

The Challenge

The organisation relied on a Sage based finance system to manage its capital projects. While this supported core financial processes, the scale and complexity of its investment projects required a more structured approach to capital control. Project budgets needed to be planned across different disciplines, purchasing activity had to align with approved spend and leadership teams required a clear view of how projects were progressing against plan.

The challenge extended beyond individual projects. Long term investment decisions relied on accurate budgeting, changing commodity prices and life of mine planning, making it essential to connect operational delivery with strategic financial planning.

The Solution and Our Approach

Birchman worked with Randgold to design a capital control framework, built around phased budgeting and purchase order control enforced at the point of commitment. The framework covered:

• Phased budgets: each project’s total budget split by work stream and phased on a monthly basis to mirror the build sequence, civils consuming its allocation early and electricals following on once civils work was substantially complete
• Purchase order control: every request checked against the budget remaining for that work stream and month at the point it was raised, with shortfalls routed through reapproval rather than left unrecorded until the invoice arrived
• A formal variation process: legitimate scope changes documented with a reason and pushed through clean reapproval, rather than handled informally
• Life of mine integration: the long range view of probable ounces in the ground, by certainty level, often projected twenty to forty years out, connected to the annual capital budget so each year’s figures were grounded in the mine plan itself

Impacts

By bringing together budgeting, purchasing and project governance, the organisation established a more structured approach to managing capital investment.

Project teams gained greater visibility of planned expenditure, supplier commitments and approved budgets, making it easier to understand the financial position of major projects as they progressed. Finance teams could support decision making with more consistent information, while leadership benefited from a broader view of capital investment across the mining portfolio.

The new approach reduced reliance on manual budgeting processes and introduced a practical framework for managing budget changes and supplier commitments throughout the project lifecycle. Project stakeholders reported that the financial benefits delivered during the first year were comparable with the investment made in the wider SAP project.

ROI within 6 months

the organisation saw a return on investment within six months of go live. By the end of year one, the financial benefit was comparable to the cost of the wider SAP project itself.

Conclusion

Capital control is about more than monitoring expenditure. It provides the structure needed to plan major investments, manage change and support informed decision making from project planning through to delivery.

By combining SAP expertise with practical business advisory, Birchman helped the organisation establish a capital control framework that aligned financial planning with operational delivery and long term investment strategy. The result was a more consistent approach to managing complex capital programmes and a stronger foundation for future growth.