Geotechnical Support Services for Open Pit Mines

I've spent 20- years in and around open pits: designing slope monitoring, running ground control, and being the guy who gets the call when the radar lights up on night shift. Keefner Mining & Geotech is what I do now — senior geotechnical help, hired direct.

Most jobs start with monitoring, because that's usually where the real questions live. I'll design and stand up a program from scratch: instruments, placement, data flow, and the procedures that tell your people what the numbers actually mean. I don't sell hardware, so I've got no reason to steer you toward one vendor. Once it's running, I can take the data off your hands and turn a quarter of readings into something you can hand an auditor or a third-party reviewer without a week of scrambling first. And I'll build the alarm-to-action chain behind it — thresholds calibrated to your ground, escalation matrices, the decision flowchart taped up in the control room.

When you need a handle on the sensitivity or deterministic approach to slope stability work, that's where I come in: kinematics, limit equilibrium, Slide, empirical modeling, rockfall runout — sized to the question you're asking. I do a fair amount of independent review: a straight read on somebody else's consultant report, slope design, or heap leach study, plus help comparing proposals and scoping work before you sign off on it.

Then there's the day-to-day. Ground control management plans written for the people who use them, with TARPs, escalation steps, and a risk register that reflects the site as it is now instead of three revisions ago. Site-specific training for engineers, operators, and supervisors: slope stability fundamentals, how to read the monitoring, what to look for on a walk-down, and what to do when it goes sideways — built around real case studies and some honest talk about human factors. And custom tools when a workflow is eating your week — field inspection apps, equipment databases, reporting pipelines — built lean, yours to keep, no monthly license draining your budget.

None of this comes packaged. Some of it is a one-afternoon call and a memo. Some of it is standing up a whole program and staying on through the year. Tell me what's going on at your site and I'll give you a straight answer on whether I'm the right person for it.