The Floor Has the Edge
The people closest to the problem hold the data nobody ever wrote down.
You Don't Have a Data Problem
Why capture — not analytics — is where plant intelligence actually starts.
The idea
Plants don't have a data problem. They have a capture problem.
The richest source of operational truth — what operators see, hear, and do on shift — is rarely captured in a form any system can use. It's spoken over radios, held in memory, scattered across spreadsheets. And lost.
I call it the capture layer: turning what the floor already knows into structured data, at the moment it happens — not larger models, better capture.
01
Capture at the moment
The watch-item, the half-finished job, the warning at handover — logged when it happens, not reconstructed after.02
The model never decides
Language captures and classifies; a deterministic engine stays the system of record. A design an operating plant can trust.03
Built on the floor
Designed from the shift, not from a spec sheet. It works because the person who built it has stood where you stand.The shift log — writing
What a Handover Has to Carry
The four things every shift change has to move — and what breaks when one slips.
Piper Alpha, 38 Years On
What the gap between two crews can cost, and the handover discipline that closes it.
The First Question
Before any fix: how long does it take to pull the full history of one machine?
Entries are currently published on LinkedIn. Full versions are coming to this page.
Speaking
8–9 JUNE 2027 · CAPE TOWN · MEI
AI in Mineral Processing '27
Presenting "The Capture Layer: Why AI in Mineral Processing Starts on the Plant Floor" at MEI's inaugural AI conference — by personal invitation from Barry Wills.
Alongside the writing, I'm teaching myself to build automations that take the manual busywork out of operations — reports, summaries, the paperwork around a shift — and sharing what I learn, in plain terms, for other operators.
About
I'm not a software vendor who read about plants — I've run them. Ten years on the floor: gold processing in the Philippines, then alumina refining — the Bayer process — at a Gulf refinery, as a licensed metallurgical engineer and shift supervisor who issues the permits and leads the crew.
I build the tools I wished I had at the 6 a.m. handover. Whatever I make works because the person who made it has stood where you stand.
Bayer ProcessHydrometallurgyGold CIL / CIPDCS OperationPermit to WorkProcess SafetyRoot Cause AnalysisLean Six SigmaPython
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