Crowded house: the UAlberta Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and School of Mining delivered a five-day course on design and assessment of mine waste structures to professional engineers from around the world. (Photo: Gord McKenna)
(Edmonton) After dams at two Western Canadian mine burst in the last two years-at the Obed Mine near Hinton, Alberta in 2013 and at B.C.'s Mount Polley Mine in 2014-alarms went off for engineers across the country.
At the Alberta Chamber of Resources, an association that represents resource industries across the province, a group known as the dam integrity advisory committee paid particularly close attention. Members of the group spotted a potential gap in succession planning for dam engineering expertise and asked the Faculty of Engineering to provide some professional inservice for dam engineers.
They approached Ward Wilson, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and School of Mining and Petroleum Engineering, for help. The result was an intense, five-day course that attracted mid-career dam engineers from around the world.
"I was thinking they could put together a two-day workshop for 20 or 40 people," said Larry Staples, an advisor with the Alberta Chamber of Resources. But Wilson, along with professor emeritus Norbert Morgenstern and civil engineering professor Nicholas Beier delivered much more.
"I was blown away by the number of people that showed up and the fact that those people were from the exact demographic we need to reach-dam engineers who are in the mid-career stage who are going to step into positions of greater and greater responsibility."
About 75 people participated in the workshop-including engineers from Imperial Oil, Shell, and Syncrude as well as those from regulatory bodies in Alberta and B.C.
Wilson, who has decades of experience in the mining industry and now holds the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Oil Sands Tailings Geotechnique, says the geotechnical engineering curriculum in the Faculty of Engineering is recognized as one of the best. It's important the university and industry leaders share their knowledge and experience with students and young engineering professionals.
Attendees took part in courses delivered by a handful of Wilson's graduate students, who provided instruction on brand-new software and other topics including research into issues like acid rock drainage.
Industry experts were brought in to deliver presentations, including a panel discussion on dams and mining held at the end of the workshop.
Shrimpton, from the ACR, described members of the panel as "superstars."
"Those superstars came here came because of the reputation of organizers like Dr. Wilson and Dr. Morgenstern, that extend around the world, and because they believe in what Dr. Wilson and Dr. Morgenstern and now Dr. Beirer are trying to do to equip that next generation of engineers."
For graduate students themselves, the course meant not only presenting research findings but also learning at the hand of industry leaders and networking with professional engineers.
"It's really good hearing formpeople who have the experience of working in this area day in and day out," said Bereket Fisseha, a professional engineer from Ontario who chose to pursue his PhD in geoenvironmental engineering at the U of A. "We're getting into a very diverse set of topics and getting a complete picture of the mining industry from an academic point of view and the application side."
At a closing panel discussion that closed the event, participants sat in a packed 100-seat auditorium to hear experts talk about everything from a conversation on best available technologies to the ethics and social relationship between society and industry.
Industry professionals flew in from as far away as Australia for the sessions, which Shrimpton said were demanding.
"This went for five days, right through the weekend, and let me tell you it was intense," he said, adding that participants left feeling "inspired to do better work."