A Pilbara iron ore operation where knowing who can run a 200-tonne truck is safety-critical. Dashboards looked healthy, but the system measured course completion, not whether someone could actually do the job.
Situation
The operation runs heavy equipment and high-consequence work at scale. SuccessFactors and PowerBI reported compliance that looked fine until you asked whether the numbers reflected competence to work safely today.
Complication
Completion masked reality: two of three items for a role could show progress while the person was still zero percent competent to operate. Curricula built by role created 456 induction-style structures, heavy admin, inconsistent retraining, and no clean supervisor view of who could do which task today.
Intervention
PoweredBy ran a desktop review of assignments and reporting, anchored on the business question: who is competent to do what, right now? We redesigned toward task-based curricula (for example, a machine-specific pathway with theory, practical, and retraining rules) and five assignment levels from business unit to direct activity. Mandatory safety items were fixed, reporting was redesigned for competence signals, and the organisation received a phased implementation roadmap with effort estimates.
Outcome
Supervisors could see who was signed off for what; admin load fell as hundreds of role curriculums consolidated into task-based structures; leaders regained trust in the data.
“We'd been looking at training completion for years and assuming we were in good shape. When we saw what competence actually looked like (the real picture), it was a wake-up call. We couldn't unsee it.”
What stuck
Task-based structure and reporting stayed in place, owned entirely in-house. The organisation now runs on the distinction between people having done training and people being able to do the job.