If you’ve ever kicked off a drilling campaign thinking the plan looked rock solid, you’ll know the feeling when reality hits a week later.

You lock in your Leapfrog or Micromine targets, metres get approved, and budgets are signed off. On paper, the program looks tight. Then a rig goes down, penetration rates slow, pad access takes longer than expected, and the schedule everyone trusted starts drifting almost immediately.

Your spreadsheet that looked so clean last week is already wrong, and half the team is still working off it.

The result is a familiar question: why can’t the schedule keep up with what’s actually happening in the field?

Static schedules fall behind fast

Most teams still build their drilling schedules in spreadsheets, on whiteboards, or inside standalone planning tools. For the first pass, that’s fine. It helps frame out the program and align expectations. But the moment drilling starts, those tools depend on someone manually updating them, and that update is always at least one step behind the drill bit.

Projected end dates are driven by assumptions instead of live metres drilled, which means the questions exploration managers dread start piling up. How long is this phase really going to run? Do we actually need another rig? When should logging and modelling be ready? Are we quietly tracking toward a budget overrun without realising it?

If you’re running multiple rigs, the uncertainty multiplies. A delay can leave rigs underutilised or idle, you’re paying more and getting fewer metres, downstream work gets pushed, and you spend more time explaining variance than managing the program.

A schedule that moves with the program

Now picture your rig schedule living inside the same system as the rest of your drilling workflows, not off to the side in a fragile spreadsheet. With CorePlan’s new Rig Scheduler inside the Mining Hub, you’re no longer building a plan in isolation. You import your planned holes and metres, then allocate real rigs to real programs from day one, using the same source of truth your field teams work from.

As daily Plods come in, the schedule updates itself. Actual metres drilled, real penetration rates, and recorded downtime all flow directly into projected completion dates. If productivity drops, you see the impact immediately. If a rig performs better than expected, timelines adjust automatically instead of waiting for someone to "fix the spreadsheet" on Friday afternoon.

When access changes, breakdowns occur, or holidays interrupt drilling, you block out the time, reshuffle rigs, and the schedule recalculates. The plan stays tied to what’s actually happening on site, instead of drifting further away each week.

Timing decisions with real data

Once projected end dates are driven by live performance rather than static estimates, the quality of your decisions changes.

You can choose when to mobilise another rig with more confidence, ramp up logging capacity at the right time, and prepare results for internal reporting or market announcements without guessing whether drilling will wrap when you hope it will.

Over time, you build a rich record of planned versus actual performance. You can see where penetration rate assumptions were too optimistic, spot downtime patterns that keep recurring, and compare how different rigs and contractors perform under similar conditions.

That evidence feeds straight into your next program, so each campaign gets tighter, grounded in what actually happened, not what you hoped would happen at the planning stage.

Part of a bigger system

Rig scheduling on its own only solves part of the problem. Inside the Mining Hub, scheduling is connected directly to pad preparation, drilling workflows, approvals, and cost tracking.

The holes designed after geological planning live in the same system contractors use in the field. The metres logged in Plods drive the schedule, and the time recorded on site is the same data you review when assessing performance and costs.

Crucially, there’s no separate “master spreadsheet” floating around that someone has to maintain in parallel. From geological plan to final invoice, your drilling program lives in a single, purpose-built environment. The rig schedule becomes part of how you actually run the program, with control starting the moment drilling moves from concept to execution – not weeks later when discrepancies finally surface.

Ready to see what a schedule that keeps up with your rigs looks like? Chat with our team about how Rig Scheduler 2.0 fits into your Mining Hub and how it can help your team move beyond static spreadsheets.

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