Geotech sponsored the recent 2013 International Symposium on Slope Stability in Open Pit Mining and Civil Engineering, with the 3-day event held in Brisbane between 25-27 September.

Part of our sponsorship saw Director Darren Loidl and Project Manager Matt Sentry man a technical stand that highlighted Geotech’s capabilities in permanent ground anchoring and slope stabilisation, areas Geotech has been a leading contractor in since 1972. It also enabled them to showcase our permanent ground anchoring system, the Geotechnical Engineering Ground Anchor, or “GEGA”, System, as well as specialist and civil construction activities undertaken by the Geotech Group as a whole.

The symposium was attended by over 450 delegates from consulting, mining and academic sectors, including a significant number of international geotechnical engineers.

Geotech’s stand included a business card draw, where the prize of a Soniq 40” Full HD LED LCD TV was won by Ian Hulls from Mining One Consultants.

From Slope Stability 2013, edited by Phil M. Dight, Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Australia:

Preface

The 2013 International Symposium on Slope Stability in Open Pit Mining and Civil Engineering was held in Brisbane, Queensland in September 2013. The level of interest in this topic is undiminished as more operations come online and the maturing of mines continues. Slope instability remains the second highest risk to operations. A recent very large failure has focused attention on the use of radar monitoring and saw that personnel were evacuated well before the event, notwithstanding that the run out was much further than assessed beforehand, leading to equipment damage. This was a significant improvement in terms of safety compared to a very large and catastrophic slope failure in 2003 that resulted in loss of life. While this slope was monitored using displacement monitoring and piezometers, it preceded the now wide use of radar as a ‘whole of mine' surface monitoring system.

This symposium, and the adjoining workshops and site visits, gave delegates a clear appreciation of the developments in the geotechnical and hydrogeological field with respect to data collection and interpretation, risk-based analysis, numerical modeling, blasting and excavation control, monitoring and slope remediation. Developments showed how many of these individual aspects were being successfully combined into great examples of case studies.

There were delegates from over 22 countries and over 100 papers were either orally presented or presented as posters. Industry sponsorship was very high and showed a great diversity. In particular, the support of the Industry Co-Chair Rio Tinto made this a very worthwhile symposium.

These symposia require many people to give freely of their time in reviewing papers. Each paper was peer reviewed twice to ensure the paper as published was of the highest standard. The support from the reviewers is greatly appreciated.

The organisers are also very grateful for the support and encouragement of the Australian Organising Committee and the International Advisory Committee. The Australian Centre for Geomechanics records its thanks for their interest and guidance.