Mining for talent: How to attract more people to geotechnical engineering

Dan Payne, Manager Geotechnical Services - Coal, BHP

The mining industry is used to digging deep for the right minerals and metals, but there’s another precious resource in high demand – geotechnical professionals.

Dan Payne has spent the past three decades working as a geotechnical engineer, spanning Canada and Australia, underground and open cut, research and industry, working on site and at head office.

Passionate about improvements and innovation in the industry, Dan shared with Friction his thoughts on the challenge of recruiting more young people into the industry and what can be done to resolve the skills shortage.

What are some of the biggest challenges facing the mining geotechnical field right now?
There is a shortage of suitably qualified geotechnical engineers. The lack of relevant tertiary education for geotechnical engineering in Australia makes it difficult to feed a pipeline of qualified engineers into the industry, while community perception of mining is also keeping young professionals from entering the industry.

Another major challenge is the balance between getting enough geotechnical data to enable appropriate confidence in the geotechnical model to meet the design acceptance criteria and the cost and time in doing so.

What is one thing you would like to change about the industry?
The public perception and awareness of what geotechnical engineers do and how the mining industry contributes. In the past, the mining industry hasn’t done the best job of being environmentally responsible and promoting itself. As a result, public perception of the industry is poor and young people are being taught that the mining industry is destroying the Earth. This makes attracting investment and employees to the mining industry tougher and tougher. 

Things have changed and mining companies need to continue on the path of excellent environmental responsibility and then publicise good practice and feed it into the education system.

We also need to continue to publicise the mining industry’s critical contribution to the transition to renewable energy and technological development. Some mining companies and minerals councils are starting to do this, but a lot more effort needs to be put into educating the public and young people about the environmental responsibility of mining companies and the path to sustainable energy and materials.

Have you noticed a change in attitude towards geotechnical professionals?
For the last 35 years, people have been saying there is a threat that mining is going deeper, minerals are getting fewer and deposits are getting smaller and in more difficult conditions. What has improved is the importance of safety and the understanding of the cost of getting the geotech wrong. That has resulted in an increase in the value and respect for geotechnical engineers and the number of resources put to the geotechnical departments.

What role do you think professional associations play in the industry?
There are two types of professional associations, the professional engineering bodies that provide governance over the competency and legal and ethical practices of professional engineers, and the societies that promote the sharing of technical learning and promotion of careers.

The professional engineering bodies should provide clear guidance on what qualifications and experience are required to achieve professional status, protect the public and engineers from unqualified persons carrying out engineering, set the code and ethics, and protect engineers from inappropriate legal action.

I wish there was an overarching engineering association that oversaw all states’ engineering boards, so assessment was consistent and the engineering acts were the same in all states. I also wish the boards were integrated with the universities and clear expectations, guidance and pathways to professional status were provided to engineering graduates from graduation day.

Technical societies should provide mechanisms to share learnings and new technologies, network with colleagues in the same field, solve or provide avenues to solve industry wide problems or agree on standard methods, promote the profession, and integrate with universities. We need more people in the industry that are willing to give back, volunteer their time to support these societies and develop future engineers in their chosen field.

How important do you think it is to associate with other professionals in the industry?
There is the quote, “I fear the man of a single book”, and it is relevant to this profession.

Geotechnical engineering is not like other engineering fields where the material properties and stresses are known. Geotechnical engineering builds slopes and creates openings in the earth out of materials placed by mother nature under massively variable conditions, so the properties are almost never isotropic or even consistent in any direction, changing within metres. So the opportunity to visit and observe methods and conditions in other mines, learn from presentations by other professionals, and routinely interact with colleagues in the same field, not only multiplies knowledge that would not be obtained while working at one site with one set of conditions, but also enables a shared approach to solving geotechnical problems that exist across multiple operations. Something that works well at one site may not work at all at another, and the engineering approach used at one site for years may not be the optimal approach but without interacting with other professionals, one may have no idea that there is better or easier ways, or end up reinventing a wheel that has already been invented.

What advice would you give to someone considering geotechnical engineering as a career?
Firstly, it’s a great career. Challenging, critical to the safety of mine workers, critical to productivity of the mine, highly respected and rewarding. I have had the opportunity to visit almost 100 mines in at least 10 countries and presented papers at conferences in almost as many.

Secondly, do your site time. The best geotechnical engineers have spent an appropriate amount of time in the mines, seeing the mining cycle from exploration, to design, to execution, to actual results, several times. The first cycle to experience and learn, the second to try some ideas to solve or improve issues, the third to really understand optimisation and integration with the mining operation proactively and effectively.

Thirdly, I personally wish I didn’t constrain myself to one commodity and mining method for so long. I spent 20 years in underground coal, mostly in longwall mining and geotechnical engineering. I wish I had tried other commodities and mining methods early in my career.

And finally, advice from my father, as a technical person stay away from management for as long as you can. It carries red tape, politics and frustration; but when you do become a manager, hold on to some technical projects that keep you grounded and connected, and maintains your passion for the actual science of geotechnical engineering.