The department will replace its PoW-E form with the more efficient PoW-S system
| Date: | Thursday, 07 March 2019 |
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The Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DMIRS) will decommission the Programme of Work Exploration (PoW-E) online application form from its website at the end of March 2019.
The exploration form, used to seek approval for mineral exploration activities, will be replaced by the department’s online spatial lodgment system, Programme of Work Spatial (PoW-S).
DMIRS Acting Executive Director Resource and Environmental Compliance (REC) Karen Caple said PoW-S enables prospectors and explorers to make changes to their application before the final submission, improving the quality of content submitted and therefore reducing the time it takes the department to make its decision.
“PoW-S reduces average assessment timeframes by seven days in comparison to PoW-E submissions, and 13 days in comparison to the Programme of Work – Prospecting (PoW-P) form. The system also provides tailored feedback on proposed activities that have been uploaded or drawn directly within the application,” Ms Caple said.
Ms Caple explained more than 85 per cent of all PoW applications are now submitted spatially and recent figures show that the PoW-E form has become redundant amongst users.
“The PoW-E form will be decommissioned on Thursday 28 March 2019 to allow the department ample time to fully complete and test all the system changes and to communicate clearly to industry about the removal of the form and the benefits of PoW-S,” Ms Caple said.
Any PoW-E applications that have been started but not yet submitted can still be submitted for up to three months from the application start date.
Prospectors can continue to manually submit their applications in hard copy using the PoW-P PDF application form or alternatively submit their applications using PoW-S.
For more information about the decommissioning of the PoW-E form or to learn more about PoW-S, email EARSManager@dmirs.wa.gov.au or call +61 8 9222 3535.
