Construction Manager Blake Taylor on first impressions, early progress and what it takes to turn a plan into a mine.
Every construction project is, at its heart, a people project. Last month, we introduced the first visible signs of construction at Doropo. This month, we introduce one of the people making it happen.
When Blake Taylor arrived at Doropo in March, it wasn’t the scale of the project that struck him first – it was how closely the mine site was already woven into the life of the surrounding community.
Blake has worked on major construction projects before, sites where the mine and the nearby town exist in parallel, rarely touching. Doropo felt different from the start.
Here, the project and its community aren’t just neighbours. They’re growing together. “You can’t really explain it until you’re here,” Blake says. “The team is incredibly dynamic. Everyone pulls together and everyone makes you feel so welcome
Turning plans into places
One of the most disorienting moments in early construction is trying to see a mine that doesn’t yet exist. When Blake first walked the site, there were survey markers, vegetation, and a series of coordinates that corresponded, at least on paper, to a future processing plant, a camp, a network of roads.
“You’d be standing in the bush and someone would say, ‘This is the process plant,'” Blake recalls. “Then you’d drive somewhere else and they’d tell you, ‘This is the construction camp.’ But at that stage, everything only existed on drawings and Google Earth. Nothing was real.”
A few months on, those drawings have begun to take physical shape. Access roads are established, key construction areas have been cleared, topsoil removed, and work has begun across the future camp and processing plant footprints.
Ground has now been broken on the process plant itself – the project’s most significant milestone yet. What once lived on paper is now visible on the ground.
“You’d be standing in the bush looking at survey pegs. Now you can actually see the project taking shape in front of you.”
Blake Taylor, Alternate Construction Manager
Keeping everything, and everyone, moving
Ask Blake what a Construction Manager actually does, and he doesn’t reach for a job description.
“My job is to make sure everyone is working towards the same goal,” he says. “It’s about bringing the whole family together.”
No two days look alike. Some begin with site inspections, others with contractor briefings or coordination meetings before teams spread across multiple construction areas. Priorities shift as the day progresses.
At this stage, maintaining communication, making quick decisions and keeping teams aligned is as much the work as anything happening on the ground.
“We celebrate the small wins,” Blake says. “Because those small wins become big wins.”
The team behind the team
When asked who has made the biggest impression on him, since he arrived, Blake doesn’t hesitate. He talks about Mohammed, a team member who met him during his first days at Doropo.
Rather than simply showing him around, Mohammed introduced Blake to colleagues across the project, helped him settle into camp and made sure he immediately felt part of something. It’s the kind of welcome that’s hard to quantify but easy to feel.
For Blake, those moments matter as much as any engineering milestone. Construction projects run on technical expertise, but they’re held together by trust, communication, people looking out for one another.
Getting that culture right from day one, when there are still more survey pegs than structures, is, Blake believes, just as important as getting the earthworks right.
The moment it became real
Every major project has a moment when it stops being a plan and becomes something else entirely.
For Blake, that moment came when the local community gathered to mark the beginning of construction – standing alongside community leaders as the first machinery was unloaded and prepared to break ground.
“The community was there with us,” Blake says. “The machines were ready. Everyone was excited to get started. That’s when it felt real. The beginning has begun, if you understand what I’m saying.”
The feeling, he says, is hard to describe to someone who wasn’t there. “You get goosebumps. The joy, the team’s vibe, the camaraderie – everybody’s just so excited to get everything going. The feeling was amazing.”
And now that feeling has a physical shape to match it. The camp area, barely recognisable a month ago, has been cleared, topsoil removed, grading underway.
At the process plant, major clearing has opened up the critical areas around the crusher. The thing that existed only as a sketch on a desk is now visible in three dimensions. “That stuff you were looking at on a piece of paper is now in front of you in 3D,” Blake says. “You can actually see the progress, feel the progress.”
As for what comes next, Blake is already looking to the next milestone, the next small win. “We launch together,” he says with a smile. “We haven’t cried together yet. But you know one day that will happen, when we cry of joy.”
Stage by stage, that day is edging closer.