A single operating system in Zoho Projects for a 26-hole reverse circulation and diamond drilling campaign. Each hole carries its own drilling and geology workstreams through a six-stage forward-only lifecycle, the daily drilling log writes itself from a single depth entry, and two Zoho Analytics dashboards give the client and the PMO one calculated view from the field to the boardroom.
Drilling metrics covered live on the dashboard
Drilling holes automated
Field reporting time
Because progress is compiled by hand after the fact. Reporting sits days behind the drilling it describes, so the numbers are already old by the time anyone reads them, and decisions about a multi-rig programme are taken against a position the campaign has already moved past.
Two different pictures of the same programme can reach the client. When each side assembles its version from spreadsheets, emails and chat messages, the difference is not a disagreement about the drilling but about which compilation is current, and reconciling it consumes time in every reporting cycle.
Because no one can see where a hole actually stands in its lifecycle without asking someone. Drilling, logging, sampling and assay each hold part of the position, so the state of a hole exists only as the sum of several conversations rather than as a record.
Because nothing prevents a status from being changed after the fact, and nothing enforces the order in which stages occur. A register maintained by hand records whatever was last typed into it, which is not the same thing as recording what has actually happened at the rig.
Because plan and actual held in separate spreadsheets are two claims rather than one comparison. Variance can only be read confidently when both sides of it are measured against the same baseline, held in one place, rather than assembled from competing files.
Yes. Borders & Gates built a single operating system for the West Barlee programme in Zoho Projects, covering a 26-hole multi-rig campaign across both reverse circulation and diamond drilling, from hole planning through to laboratory assay.
Every hole is created once as a task carrying its type, planned depth, drilling sequence and location, and two workstreams, Drilling and Geology & Sampling, are generated beneath it automatically. The structure of the programme follows from creating the hole rather than being built by hand each time.
Through a six-stage lifecycle from Planning to Complete that advances on its own as field crews tick simple checkboxes. The stage can only move forward, so the register cannot drift backwards and the recorded position always reflects progress that has actually occurred.
Depth is entered once a day and writes the Daily Drilling Log without anyone typing a report. The daily reporting that used to be a separate task becomes a by-product of recording the depth.
Laboratory submissions are logged as their own records with sample allocations mapped back to each hole, so sample counts roll up per hole automatically. Assay status sits in the same system as drilling and geology rather than alongside it.
Two dashboards: an Executive view covering the whole programme and a Hole view for any individual hole. Both recalculate from the same data and are shared read-only with the client, so the client and the PMO read the same figures at different levels of detail.
Field reporting time is down by 40%. The daily log writes itself from the depth entry and the dashboards recalculate from the same records, so the compilation work that used to sit between the rig and the report no longer happens.
Immediately. The moment a crew saves a depth, the dashboards move. Everything the client and the PMO see is calculated rather than compiled, so reporting no longer lags the drilling it describes.
100% of drilling metrics are covered on the dashboard, with 26 drilling hole operations automated. The full campaign runs under one structure rather than across separate registers per rig or per workstream.
Plan versus actual sits on one baseline instead of competing spreadsheets. Variance is read from a single comparison, so the discussion in a review is about what the variance means rather than which version of the plan it was measured against.
Drilling, geology and laboratory status live in one view from the field to the boardroom. Site and the PMO work from the same records instead of assembling separate versions, so one picture of the programme reaches the client.
