VOL. 09 | ISSUE 1 | Spring 2026
Tomorrow
Starts Today
New IROC Being Built to Drive Fast,
Fully Informed Decisions
A 100-foot video wall. Real-time fleet health monitoring. Centralized mine planning.
On the east side of Phoenix, the future of Freeport operations is coming into sight as construction continues on the Integrated Remote Operations Center’s permanent home.
Freeport’s IROC is being built to bring together the right people with the right information so they can make the right decisions quickly—fundamentally changing how the company operates and setting a new standard for how mining is done across the industry.
Thomas Vaughn, Senior Supervisor, Mine Operations-Morenci, is one of those making the critical decisions. He will be one of four integrated shift coordinators at IROC when the permanent facility opens in July.
In this role, his focus will be to understand the mine plan, set daily priorities and make critical decisions to help ensure production targets are met. He will have instant access to real-time information, and work alongside experts in various operational functions to keep things running smoothly. When things do not go as planned, he will determine how to respond to minimize disruption and solve the problem, always making sure safety is never compromised.
It is a big job. Vaughn, who has been with the company since 1993, said it builds on the one he does now, so he’s ready for the challenge.
“I already feel the responsibility for getting safe production,” Vaughn said. “I own that. It’s my crew. It’s my people. It boils down to having people in the room to make better decisions and turning that into improving on our efficiencies and achieving our mine plan to where we are getting the most value out of it, and we are producing the right amount of copper.”
Functions brought under one roof
IROC is a centralized operating center that will consolidate certain functions common across North America sites that can be performed virtually. This new approach to managing operations and equipment will help improve efficiency, provide better coordination and bring together specialties from various areas of production so they can solve problems in real time.
“IROC is much more than a new facility,” said Fio Giana, General Manager-IROC. “It’s a new way of working. When experts from across disciplines are working side by side with shared, real-time information, better decisions happen—and they happen faster.
“This is an exciting time to be part of the Freeport team.” IROC is an important component of Freeport’s initiative to Reinvent Mining by embracing best practices and new technologies to improve production efficiencies, cut costs and help ensure long-term competitiveness.
For now, IROC is being housed in temporary space at the company’s east Phoenix headquarters where it has operated since coming online in late 2025. The permanent facility is under construction in the same complex in a building named the Core. Additional teams now based in Morenci will be moving to the IROC once the new facility opens.
Leading up to the move, the focus has been on reinventing the operating model for Morenci based on what’s being called Plan-Load-Haul-IOS, Giana said. The entire mining process from daily planning through drilling, blasting, haulage and delivery to run of mine or intermediate ore stockpiles will be coordinated from IROC. This creates an end-to-end value chain from the mine plan to the time the material is delivered to the mill or crushed leach stockpile.
Moving faster, smarter
“What we’re building with IROC is a shift from fragmented, off-sync processes to a synchronized operation,” Giana said. “When monitoring, planning and execution run from the same real-time picture of the mine, everything moves faster and, in a way, smarter. Decisions sharpen, plans stay relevant, and the hidden delays that drain value start to disappear.
“Centralizing these functions under one roof gives us the alignment and responsiveness to run a more predictable, efficient and ultimately more value-driven operation. It’s the kind of step change that moves the whole business forward.”
About 65 people work at IROC as of the end of March Most are Remote Access Monitoring Process (RAMP) technicians who track data on the machine health of haul trucks, shovels and processing plants. All truck and shovel RAMP operations for North America copperproducing sites are based at IROC, along with partial monitoring of that equipment for Climax.
Others currently working at the facility include geomechanical engineers who monitor slope stability, and fragmentation engineers who plan blast patterns. Currently, personnel in those specialties are only supporting Morenci. Later this spring, the geomechanical team will support all North America slope monitoring.
The newest addition is the Morenci ore control team composed of five engineers. They analyze data from on-site geologists to determine the best processing destinations based on operational and economic parameters for broken material at the mine sites. By the end of 2026, it is expected that about 105 people will be based at IROC, Giana said.
