Rio Tinto: A Copilot Workshop Built Around Real Safety Data, Not Generic Demos

Brief

Rio Tinto’s Health & Safety Advisor team at Dampier Ports were spending significant time on manual admin – building safety slide packs from Power BI data, analysing inspection comments by hand, and managing rosters in spreadsheets – so we built the entire workshop around three use cases the team flagged to us beforehand: an agent for general communication, an agent for analysing Power BI safety comments, and Copilot in Excel for scheduling, delivered in person.

I recently engaged Sam and his team from AI Advancements to deliver a Copilot workshop at our Rio Tinto H&S Advisor Forum. From the outset, Sam and his team worked closely with me to tailor the session to the type of work we do, which really showed the level of care and effort they put in. They were incredibly easy and pleasant to work with, and very patient throughout. The session was highly practical and relevant, and everyone left feeling like they had already learnt a lot and were excited to start applying it in their roles.
I would strongly recommend AI Advancement to anyone looking to build their understanding of AI!

Anna AntoineAdvisor Health & Safety, Rio Tinto

Problem

Health and safety work runs on data – inspection comments, verification notes, compliance ratios – and turning that raw data into something a team can act on takes real time every single week. At Dampier Ports, Rio Tinto’s Advisor team was doing all of that manually: pulling numbers into Power BI, reading through comments to spot themes, building slide decks by hand, and managing schedules in Excel without much support beyond basic formulas. None of it was broken, but all of it was slow – and every hour spent formatting a slide pack or manually scanning comments for patterns was an hour not spent on the safety oversight and advisory work that actually needed the team’s expertise.

Solution

Ahead of the workshop, we asked Rio Tinto’s team to flag their real pain points, which came back as safety reporting, data analysis, spreadsheet admin, and general communication. We built the entire session around those three real use cases rather than a generic AI-literacy overview, delivering it in person at Wembley Golf Course.

• Scoped from the client’s own pain points – we worked with Anna’s team to understand exactly what was eating their time, and we built the workshop around those specific problems.
• Three tailored, working examples – an agent for general communication, an agent for analysing Power BI safety comments, and Copilot in Excel for scheduling, all directly relevant to the team’s actual week.
• Delivered where the team already was – an in-person session at a familiar off-site venue, not a remote call.

Result

Rio Tinto’s Health & Safety Advisor team walked away with three working examples directly tied to their daily admin load, plus the broader Copilot skills to keep building on them. Throughout the workshop over 50 agents were built, all made specifically for everyone’s own roles and were supported and improved by onsite support of 3 AI experts. Anna confirmed the team has been continuing to use Copilot after the session and finding more and more value from it.

Under the Hood