Progressing process plant projects from studies to constructionConstruction and operationsOperation requires process designProcess design work, preliminary engineeringEngineering and metallurgical studies to prove up an economic flowsheet and plant layout. This work has a reliance on basic samplingSampling, ore characterisationOre characterisation, and metallurgical testing to a standard that supports sound decision making. Often overlooked and underappreciated is the role of collaboration and multidiscipline approach employing best practicesBest practice and attention to detail play to maximise the economic extractionExtraction of metalMetal. This paper will present examples of samplingSampling practises often observed for copperCopper development projects and compare these against samplingSampling practises considered the best, with supporting evidence. Some of the benefits and pitfalls of domainingDomaining practises and tests used for comminution and flotationFlotation characterisation will be discussed for a selection of copperCopper case studies. CopperCopper projects developed by Sedgman using these best practisesBest Practise have demonstrated a substantial uplift in NPV by domainingDomaining of ores by different comminution and flotationFlotation characteristics. The details of one such project will be presented that yielded a 27% increase in the size of the resource and 29% increase in project scale. The domainingDomaining also resulted in significant changes to the comminution and flotationFlotation circuit designDesign, maximising the economic extractionExtraction of metalMetal. A second case study details the importance of comminution and flotationFlotation samplingSampling in combination with geospatial considerations. These considerations enabled a new operating schedule to be proposed which resulted in a 34% uplift in copper productionCopper production over the first 4 years of the project, significantly increasing the overall project value. The case studies presented demonstrate the importance of best practiseBest Practise with respect to samplingSampling, ore characterisationOre characterisation, domainingDomaining and metallurgical testing to support the designDesign basis, and technical and economic viability of copperCopper development projects.