Customised mining apps in an era of technology change
October 2025
In a new era of major AI-led operational and information technology change in mining the industry’s software buy-versus-build debate is probably no closer to resolution. However, the ground below (and space around) the contest is definitely shifting, says DXC Technology’s Tim West, which is reframing discussions about the value of custom applications in the sector.
West, DXC’s global portfolio development leader, consulting & engineering, is part of a growing team involved in mining custom app development and deployment at the technology firm.
He says mining’s evolving needs as a technology user, seismic underlying technological advances and changes in the tech supply landscape itself are factors impacting software development trends and certainly the way custom apps are being conceived, delivered and maintained.
The industry is seeing broad moves towards autonomy, remote operations and unification of on-and-off site data platforms as it leverages technology to a far greater extent to drive improved mining productivity, safety and environmental outcomes.
“I think in mining we’re seeing quite a paradigm shift in what is occurring to orchestrate and optimise everything at the site level,” says West.
“Yes, it’s largely AI-driven.
“But where applications were previously built and supported on an individual mine site – they sat on servers at the site – we’re seeing them move more into integrated ecosystems that exist at the corporate level.
“In autonomy, for example, where the industry is progressing towards fully autonomous mine sites, the decision-making autonomous driving models evolving at site-level are producing telemetry data that’s being streamed off these trucks and is being used centrally to further train the models that are then pushed back down to the edge.
“A good analogy here is the iPhone where you have updated device intelligence in smaller models on the iPhone – understanding voice and turning it into text, for example – but you also then improve the models through every interaction. That’s done back at the centre.”
Some miners have pivoted publicly towards inhouse development of mobile fleet management systems and other core operating technologies, questioning the robustness and even the cost of legacy products. While flipping between off-the-shelf and bespoke IT and OT systems has been a pattern in mining over decades, DXC Global Mining Innovation Centre leader David Gollan agrees with West that there are now different underlying forces at work.
“Mining companies love to build their own apps and their own solutions. Everybody has heard about organisations doing [tailored] global enterprise software rollouts costing up to a billion dollars,” says Gollan, who spent nearly five years as chief information officer at Newmont and BHP Nickel West and more than a decade at Oracle.
“But certainly, no two pits are the same and no two underground mines are the same. There’s so much diversity in mining and there aren't off-the-shelf solutions for some of the things these mining companies do. There is no pit-to-port integrated solution on the market in the world today, so every mining company goes and develops their own tracking solution and reporting solution to do that.
“There’s always been a need for custom applications and I’m certainly seeing a big drive at the moment for organisations to go down that path.
“We saw at MINExpo in Las Vegas last year one of the very large iron ore miners say they were going to build their own autonomous fleet management system.
“They haven't declared what that investment is but I'm sure it is significant. That’s probably one of the bigger public examples in the past 12 months of mining organisations committing to custom apps development.
“The issue that we’ve seen in mining with some of these major investments is the mine sites are very cyclical and very demanding. Companies will spend a lot of money to develop a custom app which is put into a production environment, it is supported, but then gradually the IP is lost.
“The people who developed the custom app – normally people in house and some external contractors – move on and you lose that IP. When things go wrong with the product the mine sites stop using it because they can't support it.
“Twelve months later someone has an idea for a custom application development to help improve the business that's effectively the same as the one that they just decommissioned because they couldn't support it.”
DXC was recognised last month by US-based Everest Group as a leader in its 2025 Custom Application Development Services PEAK Matrix Assessment for its “differentiated, scalable and secure custom” software engineering but also more broadly for its enterprise-level modernisation and resiliency work with clients. Paul Canterbury, head of digital evolution with the DXC Global Mining Innovation Centre, is keen to extend this capability deeper into the mining arena.
“We don’t tend to advocate for doing everything in a bespoke way. Our philosophy is always buy before build,” he says.
“But there are lots of areas where miners are trying to do the things that are bespoke to their environment, to improve their productivity and efficiency. They’re trying to do things that are novel in the environments that they're in to help them achieve some kind of advantage, whether that is cost reduction, efficiency, a better experience for their employees, or better outcomes generally for their business.
“Therefore they tend to develop these custom apps at the coal face, for want of a better expression, where they can have the biggest impact. And we are working with mining clients on applications for training that might relate to a particular environment; on apps for mobility to help digitise paper processes that still exist in mining; and predictive analytics and scenario-based analysis with digital twins, for example.
“We implement technologies, we integrate and we operate those technologies, and we do business transformation. Our experience-led transformation team deals with organisational change management and we have found the best way to effectively integrate that with client teams is through drop-in centres on site, where people can consult openly on a project. It’s been very successful.
“Our business outcome service delivery model ensures that we maintain that connection to the business. How are your business needs changing? What are the things that you need immediately to prioritise the activity that goes into the development of these applications?
“It’s no longer separate teams doing the work. We’re all part of one group pushing forward to try to get to the outcome that the business needs.
“And then that big gap that we fill in mining is the institutional knowledge gap.
“Documenting and maintaining the IP for your applications ensures you don’t lose that IP and have to spend all of the money reinventing the wheel a second time.”
