The start of a new development project – opening a new mine or a new part of an existing mine – can be just as important as operating it. Hatch’s Operational Readiness Management System (ORMS) is helping projects get started the right way. The company says ORMS was designed to make the operational readiness process cheaper and more efficient. “The engineering company will provide you a race car, but if you don’t have the best pit crew and the best driver... you don’t win races,” said Vanessa Visman, Hatch’s operational readiness global director. “That’s kind of what we try and achieve through the design of OR.” ORMS uses a simple interface and Microsoft Azure cloud technology to facilitate collaboration between team members when readying a new project. Real-time, online dashboards are able to display data from the project to prevent making uninformed decisions. Visman said the company will continue to improve the platform, with a large update based on user feedback due early 2019.