The EIG 2017 1 Day Conference
The third one day technical meeting of the EIG was held on 21 June 2017 in Warwickshire. The central theme was Exploration and Investigations covering practice, recent developments and techniques all concerned with mineral reserves.
The meeting had eight invited speakers and was split into four sections:
• Health and Safety and planning regulations for exploration and
investigations
• Mineral quality and resource and
reserve reporting
• New and developing methods of
identifying and measuring
resources
• Practice and problems
Meeting Summary
The speakers were Cath Pickett from the HSE who spoke on Health & Safety and had to depart immediately
after her presentation to attend an inquiry into the sixth fatal quarry accident of the year – a timely reminder for those who are calling for a bonfire of regulations. She was followed by Alan Thompson who
spoke on planning controls and permitted development with interesting examples of good practice in terms of both proposed operations and their outcome. During the subsequent discussion David Cage, from a drilling and site investigation contractor, gave a short presentation on safety culture. Ian Sims spoke on sampling and testing of aggregates with some examples dealing with reporting in the context of geological variability; he was followed by Ruth Allington who gave an overview of the interpretation of the 2017 PERC Standard and its role in assisting with
openness and clarity in defining, quantifying and valuing mineral reserves and resources.
Sebastian Uhlemann presented some geophysical research on two gravel working sites and the use of electrical resistivity tomography to define the morphology of soil and mineral deposits. He was followed by a joint presentation by John Forkes and Richard Siddle on the use of various geostatistical techniques to simulate the elevations and thickness of mineral deposits and compared results using Ordinary Kriging indicator and multiple indicator methods. The last two presentations were on practice; the first being by Andrew Bellamy who spoke on dredging in the Celtic Sea, the North Sea and the English Channel concentrating on working glacial and interglacial fluvial deposits.
