Brenton Crawford

Brenton Crawford is Chief Operating Officer for a mining technology company called Datarock.

Brenton’s job is to look after most of the day-to-day operational side of the business, like marketing, sales and project delivery.

Brenton’s background is in geoscience, and the people in his team are all geologists and geotechnical engineers. He also works with the rest of the management of the company (CEO, CTO and CFO) on strategy and product development to make sure that the company is carrying out their longer-term strategy effectively.

Why did you choose this career pathway?

Initially, the things that drew me to Earth Science were some very superficial things such as the field camps that were held in interesting locations like Broken Hill. As a first year uni student the chance to walk around in the bush mapping rocks and enjoying a beer with your friends around a campfire of an evening was very appealing.

Early in my degree I had thought mainly about studying soil science and agriculture and took some geology units mainly for those camping trips. But as time wore on I found myself enjoying the geological side of things more and more. I have always been fascinated by understanding how systems work, and once you know something about the Earth it becomes one of the most interesting systems to learn about in my opinion.

I love the outdoors and travel, and by late in the second year I started to feel like a career in geology might be my best chance to create a life that would allow me to see the world through my work, particularly parts of the world that were a little off the beaten track. This was ultimately a good decision as I have been able to travel the world while I worked and have some amazing adventures in places that I would have never otherwise had an opportunity to go.

I think one of the hardest parts of being a geologist, particularly in those earlier days working in mineral exploration, was the amount of time you spend away from home and loved ones. I certainly pivoted my career partly because I wanted to be around at home more.

What are the best parts about your job? What are the hardest parts?

The best part of my job is undoubtedly getting to work with some really smart people who are solving interesting problems. I am personally not the most technical person in terms of being able to write code and create and implement sophisticated analytical solutions, and even after all of these years I still find it fascinating to see those technical people produce great work.

One of the best things to see is when we come up with a new way to do something that hasn't been done before, creating something new - it's a great feeling.

The hardest part of the job is probably just keeping track of so many threads of work at the same time. It sometimes feels like you are juggling many balls in the air and you have to be very organised (which does not come naturally to me) and also make sure to manage your stress.

How did you get to your current role?

After leaving university I worked in lots of different geology positions from geophysics to exploration geology and structural geology. These were usually short term contracts and allowed me to see a lot of Australia and work on a few different commodities and build some experience, which was great.

My first serious job was with MMG Exploration in Melbourne where I worked as a geologist and geophysicist before finding my way into a specialist group that worked with new technology and innovation. In that role I got to research and review new products and technology and work on projects trying to trial and implement them. This role was probably the first position in my relatively short career where I really felt like this was for me and I would try to build a career in mining technology and innovation.

During my time at MMG Exploration, around 2013, myself and two colleagues were becoming interested in using machine learning and predictive analytics in a field completely away from geology as a hobby purely for fun. We were obsessed with sports statistics, particularly for Australian Rules Football (AFL). We were creating predictive models to predict the outcomes of AFL games, trying to predict the brownlow medal (an AFL award for the best player) along with a smattering of other sporting related analytics problems in NBA basketball. Eventually the things we learnt in the world of sports statistics made their way back into our jobs and we were applying machine learning to all sorts of geological problems.

We saw how these techniques could really improve how we mined and explored for minerals and thought it was the future, and as a group we decided we wanted to be part of that. So in 2015 we decided to start our own company - Solve Geosolutions - which is a data science consultancy created to specialise in the application of Machine Learning to geoscience problems in exploration and mining.

It began with 3 people working in my living room and through the years has grown to 15 people. Solve allowed me to learn a lot and work on all sorts of different problems within exploration and mining, and also showed us some gaps in the market where there was a need for some machine learning related products.

In 2018 my colleagues and I from Solve co-founded another company called Datarock, which is a technology company that builds computer vision products for mining companies. In other words, we are teaching computers how to see rocks the way geologists and geotechnical engineers see them.

I have held a few roles in this company over the last few years as is common in a start-up - from business development to sales along with technical work on building out the products, but I will hopefully now settle into the role of Chief Operation Officer for the next period of the company.

How well did your degree prepare you for your career path?

Outside of my career I think my Earth Science degree has equipped me with a lot of really valuable knowledge in how Earth’s environmental and climate systems work, as well as an understanding of where all those products we rely on come from. I think one of the most fundamental things it taught me was about the fragility of life over geological timescales. This certainly has impacted me as a person and my outlook on life. I think the non career related benefits of an Earth Science degree are not to be underestimated.

In my career, my Earth Science degree allowed me to get a good grounding in most of the fundamental scientific disciplines such as chemistry, physics and biology, but have them all applied to Earth systems. Having that breadth of knowledge I think has helped me the most in my later career.

I think there are so many different flavours of earth science careers it is probably difficult for a degree to really prepare you fully. But my degree taught me how to think like a scientist and gave me the tools to find the answers I didn't have. When you leave uni you have an enormous amount left to learn, and I think my Earth science degree really “taught me how to fish”, so to speak. So in that way I think my degree did prepare me quite well for a career as a geoscientist.

What were your career worries and expectations when you were at uni?

I think my biggest worries were about the boom/bust cycle of the mining industry - sometimes it was easy to get a job and sometimes difficult. I lost one of my first jobs in geology in 2008 due to the Global Financial Crisis so those fears were realised to a degree. I think that is still a factor in the mining industry today. I’m not sure this worry has really resolved itself but as you get a bit experienced you just stop caring about it as much.

When I was at uni I must say I wasn’t great at looking ahead too far, I wanted to find a job that paid me enough money to allow me to travel and have a fun life. I’m not sure it needs to be any more complicated than that. As one of my Earth Science lecturers used to say “If you don’t make a plan, then nothing can go wrong”

What would you like people to know about your job?

Rather than my job specifically I would probably make a comment about the mining technology space in general. I think it is an amazing field to work in and it is really growing strongly as the world grapples with how to move into this next stage of electrification and replacement of fossil fuels. A digital transformation is happening in mining right now and it's going to be really exciting to see all of the new technologies that will be invented to improve the way we extract raw materials more efficiently in a more ethical and environmentally friendly way.

In terms of a place to find a career with a really positive mission, I think that mining technology is a great space to build a career.

What advice would you give to students in your study area trying to decide on a career path?

I think if I could go back in time and do things differently I would have definitely tried to experience more in life before I went to university. I went straight from high school to uni and I was really still a naïve child, I hadn’t travelled or gotten much life experience. This left me poorly equipped to know what I liked and what I didn't like. I got lucky that I found something early that I enjoyed and that ended up giving me a fairly good career path, but it could have easily gone another way. So my advice would be, it's not a race, take some years off after school and just live, you will be much wiser for it.

If you are already at uni studying something, my advice would be to leave the door open a little bit to change your mind, and embrace the idea that you don’t need to know what your life's calling is when you are in your early 20’s. I remember really thinking that people just had these lightbulb moments where they just knew what they wanted to devote their life to, and it really stressed me out that I liked a lot of things a little bit, and no one thing a lot.

You can study something interesting even if you can’t see a career in it. You can finish your degree and still not have figured that out and that's okay too.

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