GISTM-Compliant Tailings Storage Facilities

Engineering before earthworks

A tailings storage facility will outlast the mine that builds it, and it is built once. Work begins with the design basis: the tailings the plant will actually produce, the water balance across a full wet season, the foundation conditions under the footprint, and the raise sequence over the life of the facility. Embankment type — downstream, centreline, or a staged combination — follows from that assessment rather than from whatever is cheapest to begin. We build to the Engineer of Record's design and keep that interface open throughout construction, because a facility whose build has quietly drifted from its design is a facility nobody can certify.

Construction control documented as it happens

Dam safety lives in the details that become invisible once they are covered. Foundation preparation, filter and drainage zone placement, material selection and layer compaction are each verified and recorded as the work proceeds — density testing, gradation checks and survey control against design levels — so the as-built record is assembled continuously instead of reconstructed at handover. Zones that control seepage are placed to specification or they are removed and replaced. Where the design calls for instrumentation, piezometers, survey monuments and seepage collection are installed and commissioned as part of the works, not retrofitted later.

Monitoring, compliance and closure

Once a facility is in service the questions become routine ones that must never go unanswered: what the phreatic surface is doing, whether freeboard is being maintained, whether the beach is developing as designed, and whether seepage is within expectation. We support ongoing monitoring, staged raise construction and remedial works to the same standard as the original build, aligned to the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management and to the conditions attached to your permits. Closure and rehabilitation are planned from the outset, because a facility designed only to be filled is far more expensive to close.