Within the frame of the CIM Tailings Workshop Series pre-workshop comments participants were asked three questions aiming at “feeding” the discussions. Below are the three questions and our “short” replies. What is a tailings system? From a physical point of view, not in order of importance: start at the pumps in the mill, pipelines, spigots, dam(s), all water management ancillary facilities (including diversions, decants, spillways), roadway at the crown, seepage collection facilities, decant raft and pipes, monitoring, investigations and testing…
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Big data or Thick data: two faces of a coin which can be defined as follows. Big data (BIDA) is a term for large or complex data sets that traditional software has difficulties to process. Process generally means for example capture, storage, analysis, curation, searching, sharing, transferring, visualizing, querying, updating, etc. However, the term also often refers to the use of predictive analytics, user behavior analytics or certain other advanced data analytics methods. Analysis of data sets can find new…
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In our last blogpost we discussed the “Daddy what’s that?” attitude. We adopt it during our site visits and interviews to disrupt workers’ (or stakeholders) complacency. That attitude introduces that randomness that psychological tests have shown to be so important. Over the years the “Daddy what’s that?” attitude has brought incredible benefits to our clients and great professional satisfaction to us. Our goal is not to perform an audit, it is not a policing act. All we want to achieve…
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We recently saw Tim Harford’s TED talk entitled “How Frustration can Make us more Creative”. During the talk he reports psychological tests have shown that students who received handouts written with “difficult-to-read fonts” did better than students with “easy fonts” handouts! Those tests show that “a little difficulty” leads to better results because it slows down the students and forces them to think more. He then cites complex problem solving, which general consensus conside to require a step by step…
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HAZOP – hazard methodology In our day to day practice we frequently see risk/hazard methodologies being stretched to «fit the clients’ case», or, in other words, tools being selected to deliver results they were not designed for. This is a brief summary for HAZOP, a common process hazard identification methodology. In the coming weeks we will review several of these methodologies and will end the review with a comparison. HAZOP is a structured and systematic examination of a planned or existing…
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