40under40 Winner - Mike Westerman

Managing three mines in Western Australia’s Pilbara region with a combined operating budget of $90 million has earned Michael Westerman a 40under40 award.

Mr Westerman is mine manager of Rio Tinto’s Pilbara Iron operations at Paraburdoo, Eastern Range and Channar.

In that role his responsibilities include: the health and welfare of 450 employees including contractors; the scheduling and production activity at the three mines; the pit operations for their 13 operating pits; delivering five different products into the Pilbara Iron system; and coaching and developing the operational superintendents at those three operations.

Mr Westerman was also mine manager at Australia’s largest underground mine at Mt Isa.

He cites the Mt Isa time as providing his biggest business lesson, because the decisions made were about cutting costs and hurt workforce morale.

“We were asking guys to do things that they were not comfortable with,” Mr Westerman says.

“You’d listen to the guys that we had to let go and they all had stories to tell – it was almost like shutting down an Ansett.”

The lessons he drew from that included: cutting costs at all costs will eventually trip you up; there’s only so much trimming that can be done before another way to deliver savings has to be found; and retaining focus on the people aspects of an operation is a must because it is the people that deliver the product.