It’s Tuesday morning.

The rigs are running, contractors are sending reports, invoices are landing. Out in the field, another shift is already on the go. Somewhere, a rig is drilling the next hole while yesterday’s data is still being pieced together.

Then, the ‘simple’ question comes from upstairs: “Where are we tracking against budget?”

You know the answer exists somewhere. But getting to it means opening spreadsheets, digging through reports and stitching together updates from different sites.

If answering that takes you more than five minutes of digging through spreadsheets and "reconciling" reports, your drilling program probably isn’t under control.

And the problem itself isn’t usually lack of data - it’s visibility.

Why most drilling programs fail the test

Modern exploration teams collect extraordinary amounts of information. Daily Drilling Reports (PLODs), geological logs, invoices, budgets, approvals - it all exists, somewhere. But the more data you have, the harder the picture is to assemble.

Instead of one operational view, information ends up scattered across systems, drives and inboxes. Everyone sees part of the picture, no one sees the whole.

So when it’s time to make a call - on spend, performance or prioritisation - the team is forced to reconstruct what happened last week instead of steering what happens next.

The data trap

When clarity drops, teams often double down. They build more dashboards, create more spreadsheets, request more reports. The effort feels productive but rarely fixes the core issue: data that can’t talk to itself.

Information grows while visibility shrinks. Delays and cost drifts stay hidden until too late. That’s the quiet failure point in most drilling programs - by the time issues surface, they’ve already done the damage.

Why programs drift into firefighting

Drilling programs tend to drift over time, not fail dramatically.

Small delays tend to stack quietly. First, an approval waiting in an inbox, a contractor change not reflected in the budget, a cost trend ignored because it feels minor. Then, one Tuesday morning, the noise becomes visible.

That’s how firefighting becomes routine. The coordination load sits on people instead of systems and energy turns to catching up instead of moving ahead.

What high performing teams do differently

Talk to exploration managers who consistently deliver predictable programs and a pattern emerges.

Their programs are predictable.

Not because nothing ever goes wrong (drilling rarely behaves that politely) but because signals appear early.

Cost trends show up before they become overruns, rig performance issues surface before they affect production targets, and approvals and logistics are visible before they slow the operation.

Victor Cha, a former geologist, puts it simply: “When a drilling program is truly under control, surprises become rare.”

And that control usually comes down to one thing: Visibility.

Passing the Tuesday morning test

Here’s a simple way to tell if your drilling program is under control. On any given Tuesday morning, an exploration manager should be able to answer these four questions in under five minutes

Which rigs are active and productive right now?
Are we trending above or below budget?
Which contractors are hitting their KPIs (and which aren’t)?
What approvals or bottlenecks could stop us by Friday?

If these answers live in multiple systems or require manual chasing, your systems are sitting on your people, rather than your people sitting on your systems.

When systems are working properly, Tuesday morning should be straightforward. You open one view and see the operational pulse of the program, not fragments scattered across reports, but the actual state of what’s happening.

Because when the program becomes visible, decision-making speeds up dramatically. You stop reconstructing what happened last week, and start steering what happens next.

Most exploration teams don’t lack data.

They lack a system that turns drilling activity into a clear operational picture.

Ready to move beyond reactive firefighting? See how the Mining and Exploration Hub helps exploration teams run drilling programs with real visibility and control.

Download the checklist here

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The Tuesday morning test: How to tell if your drilling program is under control

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