From Dialogue to Delivery: Bridging the Execution Gap

As demand for critical minerals accelerates, the gap between ambition and delivery continues to widen. Projects remain slow to advance, often taking decades due to regulatory complexity, capital discipline, and operational constraints. The industry is being pushed to move beyond planning and into execution that delivers tangible outcomes.

The speakers in this podcast are:

• Darryn Quayle: Vice President, Mining for Worley
• Terry Briggs: Chief Development Officer for Anglo Gold Ashanti
• Christopher Vandome: Senior Research Fellow, Global Economy and Finance Programme and Africa Programme; Lead, Critical Minerals Initiative, Chatham House
• Assheton Stewart Carter: Executive Chair, TDi Sustainability (Host)

The speakers argue that the execution gap is systemic rather than technical, emphasising that feasibility studies must be designed to build mines rather than simply raise capital, that execution expertise and affected stakeholders should be involved at concept stage, and that projects must be aligned with corporate, national and local priorities. 

This episode is part of the TDi Sustainability special series of podcasts produced in advance of the Resourcing Tomorrow 2026 event that will take place in London between 1-3 December. Find out more about the event here.

Transcript

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00:11  Assheton Stewart Carter

Hello, and welcome to this special edition of Suits and Boots, the TDi Sustainability podcast series in conjunction with Resourcing Tomorrow. In this series, we are chatting to speakers, sponsors, and industry experts ahead of this year's Resourcing Tomorrow event to unpack some of the key themes that will be covered at this year's conference in December in London. I'm Assheton Stewart Carter, Executive Chair at TDi Sustainability and host of the Suits and Boots podcast. So today, we're looking at a challenge that sits at the center of the critical minerals agenda, how the sector moves from dialogue to delivery. And by this we mean from talking about the need to get operating mines commissioned to actually getting the job done. Demand signals are growing from energy transition technologies, defense, infrastructure, data centers, and the wider industrial strategy that many governments want to adopt. But the question is no longer simply whether we need more minerals. It's whether the projects, partnerships, permitting systems, capital models, and operating capabilities are in place to deliver supply responsibly and predictably. To explore that execution gap, we're joined by Darryn Quayle, Vice President of Worley's global mining business, Terry Briggs, Chief Development Officer at AngloGold Ashanti, and Christopher Vandome, who leads the Chatham House Critical Minerals Initiative. Together, they bring policy, operator, and capital project perspectives to the question of what needs to change if the industry is to turn ambition into outcomes. Let me introduce today's speakers. So Darryn Quayle, Darryn brings the capital delivery and project execution perspective. He works closely with major mining companies in large growth and development. His experience helps identify where projects lose momentum and what needs to change for the sector to deliver more predictably. Terry Briggs at AngloGold Ashanti, he brings the operating portfolio strategy perspective with deep experience across technical, operational, corporate development, and growth roles. His insight is valuable in understanding how many mining companies decide which projects deserve capital, management focus, and long-term commitment. And finally, Christopher Vandome, who brings a critical mineral geopolitics and natural resource governance perspective to this discussion. His works at Chatham House helps connect policy, partnerships, and responsible sourcing standards to a challenge of closing the gap between ambition and delivery. Really looking forward to the conversation today. So welcome, Darryn, Terry, and Chris. To start us off, I'd like to pose a question to all three of you. So as you know, and I've just said, the sector is really talking a lot about critical minerals, and I include in this the precious metals, silver, and gold. But the question now is whether that supply can actually be delivered in practice. So what I'd like to ask you is that when you hear the words from dialogue to delivery, what execution gap matters most to you? Darryn, if I could start with you first, and then we'll go on to Terry and Chris.

03:24  Darryn Quayle

For me, it's that gap between getting the green light and actually being able to execute it against it. We focused over the last six months on this exact question, and we called it the Capital Matters Program, which has gone from right across the world interviewing senior people, very senior people in the mining industry. And one of the outcomes or the outputs of it, it landed on a clear conclusion that trust, not capability, is that real constraint. And we found that the projects no longer move at the pace of technical readiness. They move at the pace of confidence, literally at the speed of trust. And that's between owners, delivery partners, regulators and communities. And when trust is missing, teams get defensive. That was a clear output, and they stop surfacing uncertainty quite early. And what happens is that that risk gets pushed downstream rather than getting resolved. So the gap I worry about most is whether we've built in enough trust and readiness to deliver what we've agreed on, on time.

04:37  Assheton Stewart Carter

Trust, yes, such an important factor. And as long as I've been working this space, overlooked. In the last few episodes of this podcast, however, trust has come up a lot. Terry, what are your thoughts on this?

04:51  Terry Briggs

Yeah, thanks for this. Just building on Darryn's comment there on trust that came through pretty strongly in these workshops over the last year. To me, the execution gap that matters most is doing what you say you're going to do. The industry, I believe, is separated by those who do and those who don't meet market guidance that extends from optimism about project schedules through to operational predictability. You know, there's plenty of optionality out there, but the real differentiator is how much of that potential actually translates. The projects that close this gap successfully are the ones we believe that shift focus away from chasing those sort of top of the cycle spot prices, hot commodities, and instead focus heavily on rigorous project definition, cost discipline, and flawless operational execution, which should deliver operations that translate into sort of good economic operations from solid projects. So the fundamentals had to be there, but that means nothing unless you execute. It's all about accurate definition and execution, execution, execution.

06:02  Assheton Stewart Carter

Thank you, Terry. And Chris, from your perspective?

06:06  Christopher Vandome

Yeah, thanks. I'm going to take it up just one step higher in that you're asking specifically about critical minerals and I think that what we've got in terms of that issue around trust and particularly trust between government and industry is that governments see the problem as being the under delivery of the market to meet their broader expectations beyond prices and especially around provenance. And the way that the sector views this is as a politicization of the market where we've got skewed incentives that are not necessarily leading to countering the problems of market volatility, particularly in those markets where the total amount produced globally is very, very small. So I think that in terms of getting from dialogue to delivery, we are some way down the line in having an agreement that we probably see the problem differently. That's sort of now leading to a different set of options for where we go next. And those options are producing strategies and the next step will be to put a structure around them. But we are sort of still in this feedback loop between what the strategy needs to be and what the options are and occasionally going all the way back to going back to the problem. So I think that the other guests are correct to talk about the financing and operational challenges that exist within the sector. But I think that within the critical minerals conversation, we still need a much clearer North Star from governments as to where they are going to want to see this and equal out some of that market intervention.

07:55  Assheton Stewart Carter

That's really interesting. We can't push all of this onto the mining houses. The government more than ever needs to set the frame and signal more clearly. That's Chris, that's an important reminder. I think what I'd like to do now, Darryn, is just come back to you and ask you to give our listeners a bit of an explainer on how these things play out on the ground from the development project reality, the project development reality, if you want. You all work with a lot of really large major mining companies on capital projects or billion dollar projects. Where and what in your experience have you noticed in terms of where these projects most often lose momentum, especially between concept and feasibility and final investment decision and right through to construction and commissioning.

08:41  Darryn Quayle

In my experience, it's right at the start. It's at the concept study and the data that we've acquired or collected backs that up. Now, our roundtable participants told us that roughly 80% of execution issues are locked in during early phase decisions. That's the concept selection, study intent, execution strategy long before construction begins. In fact, one participant in Riyadh at the Future Minerals Forum put it quite bluntly, the feasibility studies are at times optimized for raising capital and not for building mines. And that was quite a very interesting comment. And a big driver of that, particularly in the early phases, is that it's under-resourced. Those concept-level studies are not with the best people. So you're missing that quality talent and the decisions get made at that concept-level with limited insight into constructability and risk. And then what happens then is the feasibility studies that follow that try to polish an incomplete or ineffective concept study. And so what Capital Matters points to is you should put your best people on the concept study and not hold them back for feasibility. And also the other really interesting point of conclusion was that you should bring in a much wider range of stakeholders at the concept-level point. Insurers, water specialists, permitting experts, not just engineers. Too often, those stakeholders only get pulled in later to fix problems that a better upfront design and an inclusion would have avoided.

10:32  Assheton Stewart Carter

That's a really important point. To avoid disappointment downstream, you need to front-end expertise across multiple aspects and develop a study designed for a mine, not just for capital raise, but for the actual project delivery itself. Thank you, Darryn. Terry, from the operator view, does it look any different, this conversation around growth, portfolio choices, capital allocation and project executions?

10:58  Terry Briggs

Yeah, it's a great question. And whether you're mining copper, lithium or in AngloGold Ashanti's case, gold, the law of economics doesn't change. Growth conversations always have to clear the hurdles of capital allocation, project execution and portfolio optimization. So when you're managing a global portfolio, it becomes less about the theoretical demand for a commodity and more about balancing risk, managing the capital expenditure profile over time and evaluating your organizational capacity to execute. At AngloGold Ashanti, our approach to growth is governed by a pretty strict non-negotiable capital allocation framework. We ensure our existing assets are properly capitalized for safe cost-efficient production. We prioritize balance sheet strength to weather any commodity cycle. And we invest in our pipeline of high return organic growth projects. That's both brownfields projects where we intimately understand the orebody and the jurisdiction and our tier one green fields projects. So when you view growth through that lens, you become pretty disciplined. You realize pretty quickly that management focus is a premium and a finite resource. And as Darryn mentioned, specialists are needed earlier perhaps than in the past. And you got to realize you cannot chase every option. You have to actively optimize the portfolio so that every asset can genuinely compete for capital.

12:25  Assheton Stewart Carter

Absolutely, okay, thanks, Terry. I think, Chris, if you could talk us through now, how do we actually move beyond demand rhetoric in light of what you've just heard and what's just been said? We've heard a lot about demand, I guess from, you know, key areas like EVs, grids, defense, and data centers, and a huge one, which is AI, and the demand for gold isn't waning in these unpredictable times either. What is different now about the delivery challenge compared to, say, five years ago?

12:56  Christopher Vandome

The biggest thing that's really happened over the last two years, particularly in the critical mineral space, is large-scale US government intervention into the market underpinned by the requirement for materials for national defense. What this really did was close a sort of open loop that's been running for the last sort of 10-plus years where we started to identify that certain materials were really important for industry. And then we started to identify where actually beyond industry, certain materials are going to be really important to deliver on government pledges for a just energy transition. But these were really, particularly around energy, where we're looking at sort of future drivers of demand that were very disjointed from the way in which the market currently responds to demand drivers and futures, and particularly the sort of very direct linkages with existing economic output. So this was all sort of hypothetical, okay, if we're going to deliver on these pledges, then we must do this. What's happened in the last two years, as I say, is this sort of the implementation of policy that are underpinning a defense strategy have really shifted things and mean that we have, to some extent, gone beyond rhetoric and we are now in the implementation. There are certain markets that have really achieved their goal. If you look at the United States and what they're doing around rare earth elements, to some extent, they've managed to create non-China rare earth element supply chains for defense magnets. They would see that as a win. I think that the next step is, okay, how do we take what we've done in terms of market intervention on a smaller scale for defense utilization and how do we bring back the transition conversation into that? And how do we get back to a pace where we're looking at much longer term demand drivers? So it's a bit full circle on your question. Yes, we've already moved past rhetoric and into implementation in certain spaces, but perhaps it's time to bring back some of that rhetoric about long-term demand drivers and do we have what we need for the energy transition? And I'm sure that the copper industry will tell you that we don't, we've got structural shortfalls, not just in copper, but in various other metals too, that the implementation mechanisms that we're currently implementing aren't going to serve those longer ambitions.

15:41  Assheton Stewart Carter

Absolutely, so glad you brought that up. How refreshing would it be to have politicians developing long-term strategies? I mean, that's something we really need to consider collectively, but convey to policymakers how mining is a long-term business. This is a transition, not a transaction. So I think what we've done now in the past few conversations we've had is we've diagnosed a problem. Now let's try and separate those symptoms from the causes. If I could ask each of you, specifically in light of the observation or even the truism that projects take sometimes a decade or two decades at least, what are the underlying root and immediate causes? Where are the constraints? There's a lot of complexity. So to ground the question a little, I'll ask each of you in order to give the fact that comes most easily to mind that you feel stands out the most. Would you say, for example, this is mainly permitting? Is it capital availability or cost of capital? Is it engineering or geological complexity? How much does the policy uncertainty factor into this equation? Obviously there's community opposition and there's also just poor project definition or weak prioritization at the end of the day. Terry, if I could start with you from your AngloGold Ashanti perspective and from your own personal experience.

17:00  Terry Briggs

Yeah, this is a great question. And let's be honest, it's rarely just a single issue. I mean, if you look at the large scale long since discovered copper gold projects from the Northern Cordillera in North America, down through the Andes in South America, I mean, this includes Pebble, Donlin, KSM, Galore Creek, Resolution, La Colosa, Cascabel, La Granja, Michiquillay, Caspiche, Taca Taca, Agua Rica, Alumbrera, Norte Abierto, Pascua-Lama, and several others. And this is in times of record commodity prices and demand for metals. They remain undeveloped. Some of these are technically or economically challenged. Some are stalled due to internal capital prioritization. Others are subject to permitting delays and that could equally be environmentally or socially unacceptable. S&P and PwC have issued studies recently talking to how long it takes to get a project from discovery to production and that increasing timeline. And whilst it's easy for operators to point fingers at regulatory friction, a lot of the timeline drag happens because companies don't do the hard yards early enough in engineering and early stage risk mitigation, which gets to the earlier comments made on resetting how projects are executed. We think it's vital to put time into building positive community relations from the time that the exploration teams first get into an area. It's remarkable how many projects have struck serious challenges by not getting this right at the start.

18:41  Assheton Stewart Carter

Yes, absolutely. The license to operate, social licence to operate is something we at TDi know very well. It's one of our core service offerings to the mining industry. And I have to say, it seems to be a difficult lesson for the industry to learn. People can't be engineered into project flow chart. Darryn, from your perspective, what would your diagnosis be? What are you seeing?

19:05  Darryn Quayle

Terry's spot on. It isn't really one single technical failure. It's a systemic breakdown in how projects are defined and governed and set up for delivery. We grouped it in the Capital Matters program. We grouped it into two core challenges, which Terry speaks to. A weak front-end definition where scope and knowledge gaps get locked in early. And the second was that fragmented delivery system where studies are optimized to pass approval gates rather than build execution certainty. That's a huge issue. And underneath both of those is projects not having answers to the critical questions when they're needed. And arguably, some of those questions are hard, genuinely hard to predict, the unknown unknowns. But there's mechanisms around that. And one approach I really like is the Anglo-American approach at Quellaveco where they held a large contingency fund at the board's discretion. So when something unexpected came up, the team could quickly adjust and keep moving rather than stopping for a partial or even a full re-approval. And that was a game changer.

20:22  Assheton Stewart Carter

Building your resilience from the outset. I love that. Okay, and Chris, would you agree with the other two speakers or what is your perspective? Is it a systemic problem we're dealing with here? Is that what you're seeing or is this a bit of a policy failure?

20:37  Christopher Vandome

Yeah, from a policy perspective, I wanna take us a little bit further forward in looking at the institutional bottlenecks that we're seeing and where some of the frictions are there and where are some of the success stories. We're getting to a point now where I think governments have a stronger sense of national aggregate demand. The aggregation of all of the different industries and players within their country, what do they actually need from the demand side in terms of OEMs, whether it be for defense industries or energy technologies. Japan's a bit further down the line in their thinking around this and the way in which they've structured commercial incentives for companies to share data and knowledge around where their vulnerabilities are. But I think that Europeans and the UK are starting to catch up. I think in terms of that high-level policy direction, China, it's very clear what they want and increasingly the US is very clear what they want. So some of the policy bottlenecks are starting to shake themselves out of the system. I think one of the causes of friction, I mean, there are several and don't get me wrong, this is not completely resolved by any stretch. If anything, we're just at the start of the critical minerals conversation. We're not anywhere close to solving it. But one source of friction that we're seeing at the moment is this question of where do the majors play in this space? Lots of attention on them from governments. They are so dominant within the industry in terms of their voice with government. But they do tend to be the copper producers, they do tend to be all gold producers. And they're not necessarily that interested in the very small markets that governments are increasingly interested in for product, for those strategic industries. So where markets are too small for those top players to really engage in the market, what role do they still have in the conversation? I think that that's one of the pieces of friction that we're seeing at the moment and are thinking about, they have such an important role to play in terms of standards within the industry and in terms of an industry voice. But our government's really rewarding them with the types of policy and incentives that they require. So like I say, use some of these other smaller markets as a bit of a loss leader to unlock then government relations in other spaces.

23:40  Assheton Stewart Carter

Very interesting. Thanks, Chris. We've talked a lot on these podcasts about data sharing, about baselining needs and about standards. But what we really need here is alignment and for that we need government. Terry, from your point of view, from inside a major that has operations across exploration, brownfield growth, greenfield development, and based on what we've been saying, how do you decide what opportunities deserve management time and capital?

24:07  Terry Briggs

Yeah, it's a great question. And internally it comes down to a classic rule of thumb we often reference the old Jack Welch maxim. You have to clearly assess whether an asset is worth more inside or outside your portfolio. So when we're deciding where to allocate capital and management time, the bar for any project, it's its ability to compete effectively for capital against their absolute best tier one assets. Right now, we heavily prioritise low risk capital efficient brownfield expansions. Why? Because they let us leverage our existing infrastructure, existing workforces and all bodies we already know intimately. Across our portfolio in places like Egypt, Guinea, Brazil, and Tanzania, we have an emergent slate of brownfields projects that are adding meaningful production growth over the next few years. Combine this with our Beatty District greenfields projects in Nevada, including North Bullfrog and Arthur, where we're advancing them as they have tremendous economics and they'll build a multi-generational district that can compete with our brownfields opportunities with significant benefits for a large series of stakeholders. But basically, if an asset cannot compete and clear that competitive hurdle, we don't hold onto it out of sentimentality, even in a strong commodity price environment. We actively divested, as we did last year with assets like Gramalote and the Doropo projects in Colombia and Côte d’Ivoire, alongside the Serra Grande operation in Brazil. This lowered our average cost and it sharpens management focus on what truly moves the needle. And just sort of finally on the topic, when it comes to acquisitions, these equally have to compete against our internal opportunities and be value accretive. When we acquired the Sukari Gold Mine in Egypt, which we fully integrated into the portfolio last year, was a good example where we were able to bring in a high quality operation that was highly competitive within our portfolio from a cost and mine life perspective.

26:13  Assheton Stewart Carter

Interesting. So Terry, a follow-up question. What I'm understanding, it's not so much that we have a shortage of projects, it's more a shortage of investable, executable projects. Could I be right in saying that? And from your point of view, what are the practical signals that a project is there for moving from optionality to real deliverability?

26:34  Terry Briggs

Yeah, so when we look at our projects, and like I said, we have a suite of brownfields, growth projects, as well as greenfields projects, and how they're going to look in the portfolio after the investment is made, and are they going to improve? And when we look at projects like Doropo and Gramalote, which we sold our share to B2 Gold and the other to Resolute Mining, they're better in their portfolios. They're of a size and scale that may be more meaningful to them and not to us, whereas we continue to look to advance our Quebradona project and Beatty District projects in Colombia and Nevada respectively, because we see if they come online in the 2030s, they'll help lower our cost and extend our mine life. And in the case of Quebradona, they'll give us exposure to copper. So when we look at projects, we're looking at the capital required to get them through the stages to production. And once they're in production, are they additive to the portfolio and bring real value or not?

27:43  Assheton Stewart Carter

Chris, I'd like to then go to the question around government de-risking in terms of in your private capital. Anything you'd like to add?

27:52  Christopher Vandome

Maybe just to add a point. The de-risking conversation is one that obviously comes up a lot when we're looking at frontier jurisdictions. And here I'm really talking about Latin America, Africa, especially bits of Eurasia and bits of Asia. Now, it feels like we're stuck in a place where we feel like we've got a blueprint for de-risking and what that needs to look like. But really it's different and it's very different jurisdiction to jurisdiction. And I think that what the critical minerals conversation is doing and the desire for critical minerals, these supply chains that are incredibly politicized, we've got to think a little bit beyond just development partners supporting energy and infrastructure and de-risking through sort of financial allocations into those elements of a wider project that make it perhaps more interesting for an operator to come in. I think we've got to really look at where do different political actors fit within a broader mining ecosystem. And that's something that it's still around energy, it's still around infrastructure, it's still increasingly around the operations themselves and having state shareholders, not just national state shareholders, but international governments who will take an equity stake in those operations. That's the direction of de-risking that I think that we're going in. And it becomes increasingly difficult for operators to make decisions without having to look around and say, okay, who's coming in on board with this? Because we now, the project not only faces community risk and environmental risks and national political risks, we're now facing increasing geopolitical risks from those different partners. So we're going to have to see a lot more bringing in political partners from across geopolitical fault lines into the broader mining ecosystem. So you've got supply chains that pass through nodes of logistics, energy and so on that have different international partners financially invested within them so that you build those accountability mechanisms between them. And those projects that don't have that are the ones that are going to face real geopolitical risks further down the line and can easily be suddenly have the rug pulled out of there from under their feet by national regulators and jurisdictions.

30:39  Assheton Stewart Carter

Interesting, just building on that, Terry, I'd like to ask you a follow-up about what Chris has been saying or follow-up to what Chris has just been saying. So obviously we're seeing here that there are many MOUs, alliances, strategic partnerships but what in your opinion distinguishes a more symbolic partnership if we can call it that from one that actually moves a project to production while simultaneously creating value for resource rich countries?

31:04  Terry Briggs

Yeah, that's a great question and we feel that to move a project efficiently from development to production, you must ensure there's a deep structural alignment with corporate, national and community priorities. At Anglo Gold Ashanti, we've been a leader in embedding strong local participation into our value chain in Ghana, for example, by building up locally owned contractors in both our open pit and underground operations. In Australia, we have a 30-year partnership with a First Nations contracting company, Carey Mining, that encompasses both contracts at both our operations. So when a resource rich country sees tangible capability being built within its own borders, it shifts the relationship from transactional friction to a shared mission of project delivery.

31:57  Assheton Stewart Carter

Absolutely, all right. So obviously we've spoken about the government perspective, the owner perspective and down in terms of say, owner, EPC and government alignment. What do you see in terms of mining companies, engineering partners and governments in terms of where they most need to align?

32:12  Darryn Quayle

Yeah, you've answered the question. It's, well, from where I sit and where Worley's at. The alignment that matters most is early and it's about bringing that execution and constructability input into the option selection and not waiting until the FID. That's a key advance that we need to get going. Something that came through strongly in capital matters is the, and sort of Terry talks about this as well, is that the asset uncertainty, you can't contract that away. It stays with the owner no matter how the risk is structured on paper. So owners need to retain enough technical capability to govern the outcomes rather than relying on contracts to do it for them. That was one of the key themes. And to Chris's point, governments and engineering partners have to be part of the same conversation, aligning on scope, the sequencing, the risk allocation well before commitments are made. It's really difficult to unpick that later down the track. So to your point, early is better. And the other thing that I want to raise in terms of answering your question is the procurement has a role too. We need to shift away from lowest-cost transactional RFPs much more towards selecting for capability and delivery certainty. We had a range of OEMs in the roundtables and they were quite frustrated by the fact that our procurement processes sterilised some really good answers to the projects that we were developing. They were unable to bring them to the table simply because of its focus on lower-cost transactional mechanisms rather than the best outcome for the project. So, you know, you get that early alignment right and you can really compress timelines through better planning and not wishful thinking to be quite crass.

34:13  Assheton Stewart Carter

Yes, that makes total sense. Terry, is there anything you'd like to add?

34:18  Terry Briggs

Just briefly, I mean, once again, Darryn said it really eloquently, alignment needs to happen earlier around realistic risk sharing. And this extends to infrastructure integration. You know, too often mining companies and engineering partners rush into a final investment decision with immature engineering designs and other technical decisions which inevitably leads to the cost and schedule overruns our industries frequently criticized for. So, you know, when owners, engineering partners and governments align early on using established infrastructure, streamlined permitting frameworks, you can compress delivery timelines safely and predictably.

34:58  Assheton Stewart Carter

Alignment, yes, that's the key. I want to open this next question to everyone. If any of you feel like this is something that you've specifically liked to answer. So there's a lot of talk in conversations about execution and what digital tools and AI can do. The proposition often is that these new emerging tools can improve project controls, better geological processing and data and all those can materially shorten delivery timelines. Do you agree with that? Or in your opinion, is it really more about the way that they can improve risk visibility and decision making? I'll open this to everyone, but Darryn, perhaps you would like to start.

35:37  Darryn Quayle

Sure, so I think the honest answer is a bit of both, but probably weighted towards decision making rather than pure speed. And I think this is what Terry talked about in his previous answers. You know, we heard repeatedly in capital matters that digital tools fail without the data, the teams and the ownership. And they only create the value that's expected of those platforms when they're embedded in how a project runs, not just as one-off pilots. You have to, they have to remain a consistent thread right through the concept, right through to the execution and commissioning. That was one of the outcomes. One of the things that I'd like to include on this though is the standardization aspect is probably a bigger lever. We were in PDAC and we heard that, mining still treats standardization as a 30-year evolution rather than urgent, deliberate action, if you like. And when you compare that to other capital intensive industries like oil and gas, and their JIP33 standards, where they were able to reduce the cost of certain components considerably, 20 or 30%. You know, you get real gains in cost and schedule certainty when you adopt programs such as that across the industry. This is not just dependent on one mine, it's the industry working together. So establishing or, you know, standardized data foundations pre-FID means the digital tools you bring in actually translates into measurable schedule optimization performance and risk management rather than becoming that disconnected pilot.

37:25  Assheton Stewart Carter

Okay, thanks, that's great, thank you, Darryn. Does anyone else want to add on that? Okay, so then I think what I'll do is I'll, as we come close to the end, I'd just like to touch on the issue that we began with on trust, which is obviously really important. And TDi works with a series of standards and certifications, if I could phrase it this way, there's sort of temptation to frame voluntary standards as almost a drag on the speed to delivery. Is that the wrong framing? Is that a helpful framing? Can strong ESG responsible sourcing community engagement and social value actually improve delivery certainty, bring more confidence into the market? Terry, can I pose that one to you first?

38:10  Terry Briggs

Yeah, viewing high environmental, social and governance, you know, the ESG standards as a drag on speed is completely the wrong framing. In modern mining, strong standards are actually our fastest route to production, we believe. Now, if you treat community engagement, local value creation, responsible sourcing as administrative checkboxes that you're going to deal with later, you're inevitably going to be hit with a brick wall of local opposition or regulatory delay. And that's exactly how projects end up stalled for decades sometimes. So securing a robust social licence, building deep institutional trust early on, behaves like an insurance policy for your timeline. It actively de-risks the project, it avoids costly operational disruptions and ultimately we think it improves your long-term delivery certainty.

39:03  Assheton Stewart Carter

Okay, and Chris, what are you seeing from your perspective?

39:08  Christopher Vandome

Well, I fully agree with Terry. Standards make better companies and better companies deliver better value to their shareholders. The ideas that are knocking around at the moment that, oh, okay, perhaps we are, you know, Western companies are at a disadvantage because they have to uphold standards, whereas those from other countries don't, I think is a false narrative that's really crept into decision-making in the political space at the moment that we need to really move beyond. If you look at the way in which Chinese operators have been instructed to abide by standards, if you look at the way in which they're starting to join international industry bodies, if you look at the real recognition by operators on the ground that exactly as Terry says, you've got to have a robust social licence to operate right from the outset. These are all arguments in favor of those standards. What I would say is that, you know, standards don't replace all of the other things that you need to do to maintain trust between the company, the government and the community. So whether it's the digital and AI space, you know, there you still need to have a functioning trustworthy relationship between the actors. You can't replace that just with digital accountability mechanisms because those digital systems can be just as corrupted as other systems can be. And you also need to have, you know, you need to go beyond standards. You need to ensure that your operation is delivering the outcomes that you aspire to and that the national government aspires to. So where a lot of standards really sort of are quite introspective, it's, are we doing the right thing? Have we done our due diligence? Do we have competent people in signing off positions? You can do all that and still not necessarily lead to the outcomes you want. So standards are hugely important but I do think we need to sort of move beyond the conversation now and start talking about actually, you know, how do we convert standards to outcomes again to maintain that robust social licence to operate that's absolutely vital.

41:36  Assheton Stewart Carter

Outcomes, yes. And that's a great segue to what I wanted to ask next. What does delivery success actually look like? This is a crystal ball question. Imagine you can see in the future, let's say to 2030, maybe beyond, actually. Why not? The need for long-term thinking to find solutions to systemic issues has come up a lot across this podcast series. So why not 2050? What are the projects that will win? Is it that they're going to be projects that are faster market? Are they going to be those at a lower cost, best governance, strategically aligned or local value adding or even lowest carbon? I'm just going to ask each of you to give your top front of mind thoughts on that. Darryn, let's start with you again. What does your crystal ball, your crystal globe tell us about the future?

42:26  Darryn Quayle

I wish I had one. It all depends on what sort of capital you're looking at. Project capital is like a fruit salad. Some of the novice investors chase a quick return and they're often drawn to projects that look fast and cheap on paper. And they don't often have the experience in testing whether that's actually realistic. And we saw that a lot in the battery active materials market several years ago, where a lot of people brought a lot of money into the sector, but didn't have the experience of delivering a very complicated process. So that ended in tears in a number of projects. So the more experienced capital investors, those people that have been through a cycle or two, they tend to prioritize deliverability and I'll rely on Terry on this as well. They prioritize that deliverability, the strong governance, that credible cost and schedule track record of previous projects. Really importantly, the ability to have that genuine local value creation and strategic alignment is essential. So I think, God willing, as more sophisticated capital moves into critical minerals, I'd expect that second group, that more experienced capital group to set the tone. So if I've got 2030 is only what, two and a half, three years away, three and a half years away, I think deliverability increasingly becomes the filter. Because that's ultimately, when you think about it, that's ultimately what more experienced money will demand before it commits.

44:17  Assheton Stewart Carter

Brilliant, thanks. Chris, let me bring you in here. Obviously, best governance is one of the options I listed, but what is your crystal ball telling you?

44:27  Christopher Vandome

Oh, well, look, I'm not a market participant in the same way that the others are. I come from a think tank and so we do wishy-washy thinking. I think one of the things that we can all agree on sort of globally is that we want to have secure, low-carbon, digitally connected societies in the future. That's where we're heading, that's where we want to be. And if we're working backwards from that end point, I think what we want is a mining industry that at its best is helping to lift emerging markets into a more equitable position within the global economic system and that are delivering for that energy transition and for that digital transformation that the world is on the brink of going through. That's the long-term, that's got to be the long-term vision that we then work backward from. So, where do projects as we look at them now fit into that solution? I think that we have to start thinking about where do we have projects that are part of clustered ecosystems where the, both the project economics but also the environmental economics make sense, where are we able to link investors in finance, in digital finance, in the digital industries back into the mining industries that they are so reliant upon? And how do we do this in a way and how do we work with governments so that there isn't this, how do I get the best out of this for either my political party or my government? But we get genuine buy-in from those political actors accepting that we're never going to change human nature and we're never going to change some of the drivers of what puts people into the political office in the first place, but at least align institutional constraints to ensure that we're working towards that sort of utopian future. And that's going to require a big shift change over the next five to 10 years.

46:37  Assheton Stewart Carter

And Terry, finally, you've heard the other two answer. I'm going to give you the final word here on the crystal ball. What can you see?

46:44  Terry Briggs

Yeah, just building on what Chris and Darryn said, you know, the global conversation saturated with high-level dialogue about macro demand, driven by energy transition, the growth of AI, you know, but the market doesn't run on aspirations. It runs on delivered physical supply. The projects that will successfully attract capital post-2030 are those that managed to combine a compelling business case and building on Chris's comments with a clear strategic and national alignment. You know, capital will naturally flow to the lowest cost, most resilient assets because they guarantee margins across volatile price cycles. But low costs alone, you know, they won't suffice if a project is detached from the priorities of its host nation. You know, investors are increasingly discerning. They want to see assets that possess a clear, de-risked pathway to delivery, a strong governance framework as discussed and visible local value addition.

47:43  Assheton Stewart Carter

Great. Thanks so much, Terry. Now, sadly, we're going to have to close off so let me just put one final takeaway for the audience by giving you the opportunity for a closing thought. To move the dial from dialogue to delivery, what needs to be done? And I'm literally looking here for either a few words or a phrase, and I'll go around each of you quickly. As you know, what is the one thing that mining companies, governments, or investors could stop doing? And what is the one thing you think they should start doing? So this is a stop and a start question. Now, let me start with you. What is your one should, your one start, and what is your one shouldn't, your one stop?

48:28  Darryn Quayle

Stopping approving projects on optimistic estimates just to get through a gate. It just moves the pain downstream. Starting bringing execution capability into front-end decisions instead of calling it in later to fix problems.

48:47  Assheton Stewart Carter

Great, Terry, over to you, your start and your stop.

48:52  Terry Briggs

Oh, yeah, we need to stop evaluating and advancing projects based on top-of-cycle spot prices or purely aspirational macro demand curves. You know, it distorts the risk profiles and creates projects that simply cannot weather a cyclical downturn. We need to start doing is we need to start practising absolute uncompromised capital discipline and focus heavily on operational optimisation. You know, at AngloGold Ashanti, our focus is on site-led, site-owned, Full Asset Potential programme. It's allowed us to keep structural costs flat in real terms and outperforming our peer group. You know, this is that focus on what you can control, operational efficiency, conservative project scoping and consistent execution. That's how you turn dialogue into real tangible delivery.

49:39  Assheton Stewart Carter

Great. And Chris, you got the last word for the whole podcast. What is your one start and your one stop?

49:47  Christopher Vandome

I don't know if I'm well positioned enough to offer a stop. I think that my start would be to steal a phrase from South Africa. Local is lekker. And I think that the future has to be local, whether it be in terms of community engagement and local content and all of the debates that we're already having in the operational sense. I think that that's shifting into the political as well. And as we look sort of over the next five to 10 years, the global critical minerals conversation is increasingly going to be driven by local politics, local political actors, those who sit at the forefront of the cost of the industry, but also those who seek to benefit from it the most. And that's both across sort of emerging frontier markets as well as the more developed markets where it's going to be local political actors who really take the agenda forward. So that would be my start is don't look global, look national and especially look at the local.

50:53  Assheton Stewart Carter

Sadly, that brings us to the end of today's discussion on moving from dialogue to delivery. What comes to clearly is that the execution gap is not one single bottleneck that can be easily unstuck. It sits across permitting, policy certainty, capital discipline, project definition, infrastructure, industry capacity, institutional capability and trust with those communities. The projects that move forward will not simply be those with the strongest demand story, but those that can demonstrate credible delivery, responsible practice, cost control, partnership and strategic alignment. A big thank you to Chris Vandome, Terry Briggs and Darryn Quayle for joining us and for bringing such practical insights into what it will take to turn critical minerals ambition into real-world outcomes. For our listeners, please look out for the rest of this special Resourcing Tomorrow podcast series on the TDi Sustainability Suits and Boots podcast channel. I'm Assheton Stewart Carter, thank you for listening. And we look forward to continuing the conversation at Resourcing Tomorrow, in London, in December.