The open pit mine Geotechnical Engineer is responsible for creating slope designs that are expected by the owners, management, the workforce, the regulators, and the public domain to be stable for the life of the mine. Economic requirements are always implicit in the designs, but in today’s world producing slope angles that ensure the workers in the pit are protected against death or injury have become additional moral and legal requirements. These factors require that the Geotechnical Engineer has a skill set that at a minimum: encompasses regional and site-specific knowledge of the geological model; understands the spatial and temporal distribution of the structural defects that are likely to affect the stability of the pit slopes, together with the properties of the soil and rock materials in which the slope will be excavated. He also must have the ability to transform this knowledge into a soil and rock mechanics slope design framework that is understood clearly and can be implemented readily by the mine planners and pit operations professionals. In this public seminar, Dr John Read critically examines how well these requirements are being met and discusses the most effective approach to satisfy best practice beyond 2019.
