How value management research is reshaping Australia's capital mining projects
Expert commentary by Lecturer in Project Management, Dr Ahmed Farouk Kineber
Australia’s mining sector has reached a defining moment. Capital costs are climbing, decarbonisation targets are tightening, and project portfolios are growing more complex. The way billion-dollar decisions are made needs to change. For CQUniversity researcher Dr Ahmed Farouk Kineber, the methodology that meets this moment exists – it’s just been under-applied.
That methodology is Value Management. Value Management is a structured methodology used to ensure that capital projects deliver the maximum possible value to their stakeholders. It combines three core disciplines: function analysis, which captures what a project needs to achieve; lifecycle costing, which captures what it will cost across its full life; and decision science, which selects between alternatives in a defensible, evidence-based way.
Dr Kineber has spent more than a decade working across industry and academia in several countries, developing the intelligent Value Management frameworks that increasingly shape how capital decisions are made on major projects.
“Mining is no longer a cost equation. It’s a value equation,” he said. The distinction matters. It increasingly separates the projects that capture their potential from those that quietly lose it.
Why Australian mining needs this now
Mining is one of the most capital-intensive industries in the world. A single project can represent billions of dollars over decades of operation. The decisions made early, at feasibility and design, lock in most of the value the project will ever capture. By the time construction begins, the window has narrowed sharply. By the time the asset is operating, it has all but closed.
Three forces, Dr Kineber argues, make this discipline particularly relevant to Australian mining today.
The first is rising capital costs. Building and operating Australian mining assets has become substantially more expensive over the last decade. Equipment prices, labour markets, regulatory complexity, and the realities of remote operating environments all add up. Every dollar invested must work harder than it did even five years ago.
The second is decarbonisation pressure. Net-zero commitments are reshaping capital decisions. Carbon, environmental, and community factors now sit alongside traditional financial metrics, not behind them.
“Value Management is the methodology that systematically weighs financial return alongside ESG impact and arrives at a defensible decision,” Dr Kineber said.
The third is portfolio complexity. Australian mining companies typically run portfolios that span multiple commodities, regions, and business units. A decision in one project does not stay in that project. It ripples across shared resources, shared risks, and cumulative exposures.
“Value Management gives leaders the tools to see those connections and capture the synergies.”
The hidden gap in Australian mining capital
Dr Kineber’s research is throwing light on what he describes as one of the most under-examined issues in Australian mining – the gaps between the value a project was designed to deliver and the value it actually captures across its lifecycle. He calls it Value Drift.
“Many mining projects today are run by exceptional engineering teams. But the question is rarely asked at the right moment: are we capturing the maximum value possible from this project? Value Drift is real, measurable, and largely invisible until it shows up in delayed returns or sub-optimal performance.”
CQUniversity is now building structured frameworks to measure Value Drift and function drift across the full project lifecycle, from feasibility and design through to execution and operation. The aim is practical – give Australian mining companies a defensible, data-driven way to capture the value that would otherwise be lost.
Applied Value Management research, mining project impact
The theory becomes vivid the moment it meets a real project. On a recent $5 billion mining development, Dr Kineber’s applied Value Management study integrated a multi-criteria decision-making strategy and identified more than 73 opportunities to increase value without adding cost. The potential savings exceeded $500 million, all while preserving the original function and performance of the asset. The work was carried out in collaboration with a major engineering partner, and it shows, in broad terms, how function-first thinking can reshape a capital decision.
The approach starts by mapping what a project must do. Each function is then tested against its cost.
“More than twenty of those functions, spanning the full processing chain from raw material handling to final product recovery, emerged as value improvement targets,” Dr Kineber said. “In each case, the same design intent could be delivered for less, without touching the performance the project depends on.”
The gains were not only financial. More than a hundred of the ideas put forward also strengthened the project’s sustainability profile, showing that the study served the project’s environmental and decarbonisation goals just as much as its budget.
Leading the next generation of Value Management
At CQUniversity, Value Management is being embedded into postgraduate curricula, delivered through industry workshops, and extended via training and consultancy that builds national capacity in the discipline. The University is positioning itself as a leading Australian centre for Value Management research, bridging academic rigour with real-world impact across the country’s capital-intensive industries.
That standing was reinforced in 2025, when SAVE International, the globally respected authority in value engineering and management, recognised the contribution of CQUniversity researcher Dr Kineber in the area of Value Management with its Thomas J. Snodgrass Distinguished Service Award for Education.
“This is the future of the field,” Dr Kineber said. “Workshops will always be central to Value Management, but the methodology needs to evolve. The next decade of VM will be defined by how rigorously we apply research and data science to value decisions. Australia is well positioned to lead that evolution.”
Dr Ahmed Farouk Kineber, PhD · CVS · PVM · MCIOB, is a Lecturer in Project Management at Central Queensland University. He is a Certified Value Specialist with SAVE International (USA), a Professional in Value Management certified by Value for Europe (V4E), and a Member of the Chartered Institute of Building (UK). He leads the Sustainable Project and Asset Management Research Group at CQUniversity, where he is advancing Value Management research for Australia’s capital-intensive industries.
