The recent global downturn in the mineral industry bought about a re-structuring of the geotechnical services and resources within the Mincor Operations, with an emphasis on ensuring maximum utilisation of available resources.A back-to-basics approach led to the development of goals and an action plan, whereby instrumentation and geotechnical resources were optimised. The action plan included the following:• The installation of SMART cables to monitor deep-seated movements of structures in drives of strategic importance, to understand failure mechanisms and ground support reaction.• Review and validation of the structural and ground support data to ensure the minimum ground support requirements are met.• Review and validate the geotechnical data to delineate a new domain that was often the source of significant rehabilitation costs.