Early career advice: Tailings Engineer vs Geotechnical Engineer 1

[K-Feldspar]

Hi all,

I did a civil/geotech degree at university and just got my first post uni job as a graduate tailings engineer.
I would have preferred a more general geotech role. Tailings is only slopes, so I will never learn other basic parts of geotech engineering such as designing retaining walls, piles, land reclamations etc., all of which I find very interesting.

But my main concern is working in such a specialist field. Geotech is already pretty specialised, but tailings even more so. I am a bit worried if I ever lose my job it will be hard to find another one with such a specific skill set. I think this could be a real possibility as our work is completely reliant on the mining industry, which will inevitably have booms and busts.

The only perk I see about tailings is that it seems to be 80% city/office based, 20% site work. I am very keen to do site work at the moment, but I feel after 5 or 10 years when I have a family I would want to be mainly in the office. I do not know if this is a possibility with a normal geotech role as they seem to be more heavily involved in site investigations and always out of the office.

Do you have any advice, regarding the above points? Would it be better to move into a geotech role or stay in tailings, taking a long term view.
Please excuse and correct any misunderstanding I have of the geotech industry if you spot them in my post above. I am still quite new to this.

Thank you!

 

[BigH]

I guess I was very lucky when I left uni . . . moved to Canada and worked for two geotechnical firms (Golder and Geocon which was part of Lavalin). Have been with Lavalin/SNC-Lavalin every since (38 some odd years now). I was involved with a great variety of projects - tailings work, plant site investigations for steel mills, LIN-LOX tanks, oil storage tanks, excavations, piling, and the like - and oh, did I say, I spent 3 to 4 years or more on drill rigs - ranging from Junior 24 diamond rigs to CME 75 auger rigs - truck and bombadier mounted. Gained a lot of experience in so many types of projects - then in 1995, moved on to site construction for roads/highways in Asia - which of course had their geotechnical problems (loess in China, landslides in residual soils in Laos, very soft sediments holding up 11 m high retaining walls) - then onto hydro-electric projects - dealing with concrete, lab and construction overview of earth and concrete dams.

From the "tailings" point of view - you will learn quite a bit about slopes, slope stability, seepage through earth dykes, effluent treatment, installation of instrumentation. But most tailings facilities also have mine plants and roads - which you should be able to get involved with too. Also underground mining and open pit - from whence the tailings derive . . . Today, in Singapore and other SE Asia countries, they are into huge land reclamation projects using "mud" for fill - then the need to improve the "mud" for strength and compressibility issues - somewhat similar to tailings and tailing slimes, eh?

Utilize your opportunities within the assignment to learn and use your experience in other areas - and if you are thinking that you are being buttonholed, then go for something else.

 

[Silty]

I had some general geotechical experience and some dam engineering experience before moving to Canada. I found it really hard to convince recruiters/HRs to refer me to general geotech jobs when I moved to Canada. The reason was that there are limited number of dam engineers available and they were happy to find me! and then a long cycle of referring me to extremely remote arctic areas started. You should consider your place of living when you choose a career path. But in terms of knowledge, I believe you will learn a lot of things in any large size project, which could be used in other areas later.
Good luck

 

[geotechguy1]

Silty,

I've heard similar stories - I know one engineer who came to Canada and provided a reference for his old manager in England, and when they contacted his old manager for the reference they spent the entire call giving a sales pitch to get the manager to come over. I think they were successful. This was back in 2010 when things were going absolutely gangbusters in western canada.

 

[Silty]

Geotechguy1,
Thanks for sharing this interesting story, I think the same is happening these days with many infrastructure projects around. I found recruiters from UK looking for engineers to be employed in Canada. One reason is that they can transfer their chartered engineering license easily to Canada!