Mining Engineer with 15+ years of experience in the mining & metals industry. Skilled in Drill and Blast Engineering and Mine Planning.
Overview
15
15
years of professional experience
Work History
Senior Drill and Blast Engineer
Coronado Global Resources Inc.
Curragh Coal Mine - Queensland, Australia
01.2022 - Current
Currently, lead and manage a team of Drill and Blast Engineers under the Technical Services Department at Curragh Open Cut Mine Complex
The drill and blast engineering team consists of 5x drill and blast engineers and a graduate mining engineer
Provide direction to the mine planning process for drill and blast and ensure all drill and blast design work from concept stage, planning to execution are managed within the site SHMS requirements and QLD coal mine regulations
Work alongside with the drill and blast execution teams with managing drilling and blasting contractors to ensuring drill and blast activities are safely and effectively executed
Manage and review of all blast designs from conventional techniques for stand up and cast blasting, through-seam blasting and multi-deck blasting for vibration control to all mine sensitive receptors
Manage and review of all design work to maintain compliance to blast environmentals to sensitive infrastructures and the mining neighborhood and community
Sensitive infrastructures include Electrical power lines, Power poles, substations, levee banks, sewerage treatment plant, water pipelines, mining neighborhood and site’s mining camp
Involved with site SHMS documentation with compiling and updating Curragh Mine’s Standard Process documents for drill and blast
This includes newly developed work instructions to design process documents for drill and blast design and planning
Involved in risk management for drill and blast related activities from blast environmentals i.e
Blasting in close proximity to mine equipment or any sensitive mining infrastructure
Lead and assist with drill and blast incident investigations involving misfires or any non-compliance to blast environmentals and provide solutions and recommendations for improvements to blast design and operational execution processes
Manage the reporting and reconciliation of plan vs actual data for daily, weekly, monthly and yearly drill and blast performance against monthly and yearly budget plans
Lead continuous improvement projects for drill and blast and reconcile and report all project data to the Technical Services Management team.
Drill and Blast Specialist
Sojitz Blue Limited
Gregory Coal Mine - Central Queensland, Australia
08.2019 - 12.2021
Managed all drill and blast planning and design work for Gregory Mine
Set up all design standards and processes for drill and blast production on site
Continuous Risk Management on all drill and blast activities from conventional blasting techniques to Novel techniques applied on site
Generated plans incorporating high risk management processes around old underground workings and auger mining zones
Managed Drilling and Explosive contractor with all drill and blast planning
Provide advice to short term planning on design limitations and ensure drill and blast activities and interactions are communicated for mine planning and operational execution
Produce all reporting for drilling and blasting from daily, weekly and monthly data
Also generate reporting for costs for drilling and blasting activities
This includes cost reconciliation with contractors and blast product usage.
Medium Term Planning Engineer
Peabody Energy
Moorvale Coal Mine - Queensland, Australia
12.2018 - 08.2019
Generate Short Range Forecast Plans for Moorvale site providing monthly schedules that meet Budget requirements for the business
Forecast plans provide direction to short term planning to drive mine production to meeting budget targets set and agreed by the business
Generate Coal and Waste reserving for medium term scheduling
Reserving includes designing economic mining pit shells that meet geotechnical constraints and align with budget waste to coal stripping ratios
This reserving included incorporating optimized ramping systems and dump options to meet budget goals for waste and coal movement
Significant use of SPRY to generate SRF schedules and reports for the business
With Time Usage models incorporated in SPRY, ensure maintenance planning department is aligned with budget expectations and flag any threats to plan if major changes are made to the time usage model
Continuous generation of haulage planning to support short term planning and mine production for optimized waste movements based on historical data digger performance
Coordinate rehabilitation designs and planning around plan of operations set out for the financial year ensuring areas set out for rehabilitation are on track and that monthly schedules generated incorporates mine rehabilitation activities
Also mentored and provided advice to short term planning engineers where required with truck and shovel and drill and blast engineering.
Drill and Blast Engineer
Peabody Energy
Coppabella Coal Mine Queensland, Australia
05.2015 - 11.2018
Manage the daily drill and blast activities with producing drill design and blast loading plans
Ensure drill and blast activities are executed safely and efficiently
This includes generating signoffs and checklists for drill designs, loading designs and tie up initiation designs to ensure drill and blast implementation is within compliance of site procedure and safety standards
Work with production engineers to generate 2 to 4 weekly drill and blast plans and ensure short term plan aligns with Medium-Term Short-Range Forecasts
Manage explosive product selection to ground conditions as well as ensuring correct Blast design and powder factor is applied to appropriate rock strength and material type
Reconciliation of weekly to monthly drill and blast production data and ensure contractor invoice claims are reconciled with site data captured
Capture and produce analytical reports for continuous drill and blast improvement projects
Generate post blast summary reports and reconcile blast inventory along with blast actuals and explosive consumables for each blasting activity by comparing design vs
Actual
Manage IE/HE stock levels in the magazine are appropriate for monthly blasting requirements
Generate purchase Orders for IE/HE and Ammonium Nitrate and Emulsion bulk product for monthly blasting activities
Compile root-cause analysis and investigations for hard dig areas, fume events and geotechnical failure areas impacted by drill and blast activities.
Blasting Engineer
Orica Australia
Emerald - Central Queensland Coal Mines, Australia
03.2012 - 04.2015
Provide Technical Support to customer sites on blast design to on-bench field support
Extensive use of blast modelling software using Blast Design Assistant (BDA) to assist customer sites with Blast modelling for cast optimization and coal protection
Provide Technical solutions and ground support to Orica blast operations and customer blast crews with guidance on blast loading and initiation plans
Incident investigations and report compiling for misfire events, post blast fume events, flyrock events and blast vibration and air pressure measurements for Customer sites in the Central Queensland Region
Completed Stratablast work with Technical Services and Operations Team at Ensham open cut coal mine
Compiled audits on drill and blast operations, practices and procedures internally and externally for Orica Customers in Australia and Papua New Guinea
Competent IKON Classic / IKON II Electronic Blasting Systems user
Supported IKON training internally and externally with Orica customer sites.
Mining Engineer - Drill and Blast
Newcrest Mining Limited
Open Pit Operations - Hard Rock
03.2011 - 02.2012
Drill and Blast Planning and Designing
Risk Management of drill and blast activities in hot geothermal mine environment
Driving continuous improvement projects to optimize broken muck production and improve wall stability
Coordinate Drill and Blast Trials for Wall stability using pre-splitting techniques
Standardized selected pre-splitting trial design for wall stability
Generate blast-masters for drill blast planning to support transition of inclined bench mining to flat bench mining
Set-up and automated Drill and Blast End of Month Reporting Template
Mentored Graduate Mine Engineers in their rotation to Drill and blast engineering section.
Graduate Mining Engineer
Newcrest Mining Limited
Open Pit Operations - Hard Rock
12.2008 - 03.2011
Graduate rotation into respective mining engineering disciplines in Technical Services and Production departmental sections
Medium Term Planning, Short Term Planning, Drill and Blast Engineering