Geoprofessional Business Associations (GBA) Tailings Engineer-of-Record (EOR) Task Force published a Business Brief to inform and educate Member-Firms of the ever-increasing levels of risk associated with tailings dams.
Engineer of Record (EoR) is a simple and resolute concept that is applied throughout the western world for civil works construction. But how can the EoR concept be applied to a transient design one that implements the observational approach with a construction life that covers decades, often exceeding a design engineers career or lifetime, and one that is directly impacted by changes in the state of practice? Tailings storage facilities (TSFs) are the necessary result of successful mining, milling and/or power production. However, unlike conventional water storage dams that are viewed as an asset by their owners, TSFs and the dams that retain them are an ever-expanding and undesirable yet necessary and ongoing liability throughout the life of operations and into perpetuity. In the wake of the Mount Polley (Canada) tailings dam failure in August 2014 and the Samarco (Brazil) tailings dam failure in November 2015, the efficacy of the EoR for TSFs has been brought into question globally. GBAs Tailings EoR Task Force is leading this important initiative in the United States.