Fuelled by the commencement of the Asian century, Australia's resource sector has experienced a significant boom but with its natural resources often located in regional and remote locations, mining companies had to come up with attractive models for manning their operations.

It has been during this period that FIFO (Fly-In, Fly-Out, pronounced Fye-Foe) has become almost industry standard. FIFO involves all or part of a mine site's workforce flying in from a city to work and live on site for a week or two and then flying home for a week or two before starting the process again (this is often called a swing).