RSC provides geological consulting, exploration management and contract geological services to the global mining and exploration industry. For more information and specific detail on what we can do for you, please visit our services pages. Our team includes geologists, geophysicists, geochemists, resource professionals, project managers, data management and GIS professionals.
Featured on the RSC RU-vid channel is the Measured podcast. Measured is RSC’s podcast series, with RSC Managing Director and Principal Consultant René Sterk conversing with a range of industry personalities. Expect a range of talking points, many with a technical theme, but also some of our industry friends sharing anecdotes about their career in the mineral exploration and mining sector and thoughts on some of the issues the industry faces.
Nic is a Great geologist ,exploration geo,I’ve that amazing opportunity to work with and also trained by Australian geologists in Iran. Love Nick’s jobs,god bless you guys,thanks for this show 🙏🙏🙏👍👍👍
Thank you for this awesome interview. If I can take the liberty of speaking freely in regards of the declining enrollment and retention of talent in the economic geology field. I think there are many aspects but if we dont need to please anybody with the statement, the main one is simply the consequence of non competitive wages in terms of time and effort to other available career or ocupation options...starting with oil and gas...,technology or even less intellectual intense technical occupations that are paid near the same....(this is truth for the US and possibly Canada).
Hi Vincent, we've had some issues with the podcasts app which we are actively trying to troubleshoot. In the meantime, the podcast is available on all other audio-based podcast streaming platforms!
Good discussion. Lets not loose sight of the importance of what good field mapping skills bring; that capture the key structural elements, lithology, alteration mineralogy, veining etc presented in a manner that demonstrates a geological understanding and representation of an outcrop or region; this is the field geologists bread and butter. These essential skills are the fundamental requirements for all field mapping exploration geologists. They are skills that come from being well trained, increase with time and exposure to opportunities that allow exploration of the field relationships across various geological settings and deposit types. I love this work and it is often the geological story that can get overlooked or undervalued in favour of results driven, point data, share market releases. Keep passing on the knowledge and value of field mapping, and the importance of understanding rock and mineral identification, their relationships, and encourage those who are interested.
@53min, in an ideal world the sort of education Rene and Jun are talking about would take the form of best practice case studies with detailed descriptions of how the data was initially reviewed and interpreted with respect to geology, the practical tools used to model including geostats checks and finally validation using mining exposure / reconciliation. In my experience this is happening to varied extents within companies/individual mine sites but very little makes it into the public sphere because companies want to protect their data.
Rene ... there is a lot of literature in the materials handling industry about segregation in powders ... two main conclusions I've seen... if there is a wide range of sizes in the powder you need to guard against sifting segregation, but of the size of particles do not vary much then it is not such an issue. So if a pulp has a reasonable mixing and relatively "even" grain size ... don't panic. Certainly, the repeat samples on pulps seem to support the idea that this is not where you need to focus on improving precision?
I suspect most consultants do keep a copy of their work. I suspect most company employees do not keep a copy of their work and rely on company archive systems to store their work. Would be nice to have an explanatory note on this subject on the JORC site.
Pim. Rene. After watching this last night then at the end, watching it again I thought this morning, there’s only one thing to do; that’s right, watch it again and see if, in the light of day, your thoughts, values and ideas still aligned with exploratory data science work I have been undertaking to help solve many of the extractive minerals industry challenges you present here. Thank you Rene for facilitating this episode and thank you Pim for finally agreeing to Rene’s pestering 😊and for sharing your insights. Rene, I’ll be in touch. Wes.
Funny coincidence, but I also have a father that teaches Organic Chemistry... and I also have little to no interest in this specific part of Chemistry hahaha Really liked the podcast and that discussion about ground-up or top-down exploration really gives a very interesting perspective on any project, even the ones I have worked on and am currently working on in college. Here in Brazil, the mineral exploration history goes back half a millenia, so ground-up exploration not only is extremely viable, but also has been used time and time again to teach about Economic Geology.
Great podcast given I’ll be managing a drill program soon. What would also be helpful is a discussion around what the geologist can do to set up the drilling program for success.
Great stuff. Always admired Jon's work since WMC in the mid 90's Ernest Henry days, and this was a fascinating interview. Anyone familiar with WMC's systematic rock/core description system? Another example of what set that company culture apart. Keep up sharing the great questions and discussions Rene.
The thesis of Jacqueline Coombes - Practice based competency development: a study of resource geologists and the JORC code system, is an extraordinary work. Her suggestion of competency criteria is spot on - 10 years' of mining industry experience; at least 5 years' resource estimation; at least 15 estimation models; across at least two commodities and 5 reconciliation studies.
Thanks Fernando, agree, great piece of work, for us as an industry to use to our benefit. Conversation with Jacqui coming up in a few weeks, although we don't talk about JORC.
Quality-you know what it is, yet you don’t know what it is. But that’s self-contradictory. But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But when you try to say what the quality is, apart from the things that have it, it all goes poof! There’s nothing to talk about. But if you can’t say what Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn’t exist at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist. - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
