Associated Event

Fourth International Slope Stability in Mining Conference
27-29 October 2025 | Vancouver, Canada

Key Geotechnical Learnings from Open Pit Mining Workshop

30 October 2025 | Vancouver, Canada

About the Workshop

This half-day practical workshop will be held in the morning, and will feature case studies and lessons learnt in applying surface mining geomechanics and developing operational solutions.


Collaborating Organisation

Topics include:
  • Practical hazard management in open pits.
  • Geotechnical case studies from open pit operations
  • Risk management
  • Slope instability and mitigating controls
  • Improving geotechnical design processes.
  • Monitoring and response.
  • Slope design, reconciliation and modification.
  • Slope stability in challenging rock masses.
Register
Workshop objectives
  • Provide a holistic overview of open pit mining and operational management processes.
  • Provide examples of operational issues related to managing the risks associated with slope stability mining from a geotechnical perspective.
  • Review selected open pit mining case studies and discuss how the geotechnical community addresses risks and failures.
  • Share learnings and solutions to solving a variety of geotechnical problems faced in open pit mining in challenging environments.
Who should attend?

Early career engineering geologists, geotechnical engineers and mining engineers would benefit from the exchange of ideas and shared experiences on open pit geomechanics mining best practice. It would also be relevant to broader technical services personnel, mine owners, operators and suppliers.

Workshop Facilitator:

Ben Barsanti
Director & Geotechnical Specialist
Operational Geotechs, Canada

Ben has broad mining experience over his 20 year career with exposure to underground and open pit mining across Australia and Africa in gold and nickel commodities. During his career, Ben has gained a variety of geotechnical and backfill experience working for Gold Fields Australia, La Mancha Resources, and Newmont Corporation, before co-founding Operational Geotechs in 2016. Ben has worked in operations with challenging ground conditions, mining at depth and high-stress environments. Ben graduated from RMIT University in Melbourne with a Bachelor of Engineering (Geological).

Presenters include:

Peter Andrews
VP Geotechnical and Backfill
Gold Fields Australia, Australia

Peter has over 20 years’ experience in the mining industry in both operating and consulting capacities. He has a broad range of experience, with specific expertise in soil and rock mechanics in the geotechnical engineering field. Over this period, he has obtained international industry experience, having worked on a number of large open pit operations in Australia, New Guinea, Zambia, Ghana, and South America in material types ranging from weak sediments to hard rock environments. He specialises in geotechnical optimisation to extract additional value from operating pits.

Jorge Armstrong
Geotechnical Superintendent
Nevada Gold Mines, USA

Neil Bar
Principal Geotechnical Engineer
Gecko Geotechnics Pty Ltd

Emrich Hamman
VP Geotechnical Engineering
AngloGold Ashanti, Australia

Emrich has been working as a geotechnical engineer in the mining industry since graduating as a civil engineer from the University of Stellenbosch in 1996. He’s career spans designing and implementing excavations in materials ranging from weathered and saturated surficial to ultra-deep highs stress underground environments.
He started work as a seismologist in the South African Deep Level mines, while working in the Savuka rock engineering department, assisting with what is still the world’s deepest shaft pillar extraction. The new millennium provided a change of scenery, when in 2000, Emrich started working on open pit mines in Tanzania and Namibia, before doing expat work for a couple of years in Mali (West Africa). He transferred to Australia in 2004, working on the Sunrise Dam Gold Mine open pit and the then underground feasibility project.
Since he has slowly moved away from the coal face into a more corporate role – first as the regional geotechnical engineer for AGA Australia, and then as a principal engineer in a corporate governance role for AGA. Currently he leads a team of principal geotechnical engineers in providing service and support to the International Operations of the AGA group.

 

Liam Ireland
Senior Geotechnical Engineer
Operational Geotechs, Australia

The ACG is delighted to welcome both international and domestic attendees to this event. For attendees intending to travel to Canada for the event, please see canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/visit-canada/business/visitors-events-conferences for information on visa requirements. We encourage international attendees to secure visas early.

If you have any questions, please email info-acg@uwa.edu.au