Who We Are
The EAGCG provides a forum for ground control practitioners in mining to exchange ideas and disseminate information on ground control in an informal environment. It also provides a technical support network for isolated members.
The original intention at the formation of the Group in 2002 was that its core membership would comprise predominantly hard rock, underground mining, rock mechanics engineers. It aimed to provide them with opportunities to get together, discuss practical issues and share ideas and experiences amongst themselves. Since then, the membership has expanded to include open-cut mining rock mechanics engineers, suppliers, consultants, coal and tunnelling geotechnical engineers and some members from academia and research.
The Group has a good reputation in the local rock engineering community, due primarily to its pragmatic focus on issues concerning practitioners, in contrast to a focus on academic or research issues.
The Group achieves its goals by holding two-day technical meetings once or twice a year at various mining centres or in nearby cities. Usually, a workshop involves 20 or more presentations over two days. We invite presenters who have expertise and practical experience with the topic of the workshop. A workshop will also usually include one or more keynote presentations by industry “experts”. When possible, we try to bring in at least one of these presenters from overseas to provide a global perspective of the topic. All overseas presenters have commented very favorably about the high standards of their workshops. The quality of all presentations is usually very high, generally as good as, and often better than, those given at conferences held locally and overseas. For this reason, each workshop usually attracts between 60 and 90 practitioners depending on the topic, location, and the mining economy at the time. The workshops tend to be talkative and less formal than conferences; plenty of pictures, videos and, as these are not “academic” presentations, an obvious lack of equations! We encourage presenters to keep their presentations practical to enable attendees to leave with information they can apply directly in their day-to-day activities. Each workshop attracts support from industry sponsors, generally at least a dozen at each event.
The Group is independent; it exists for the members and is run by the members.
There is no fee to belong to the Group.
Attendance at meetings provides Chartered Professional Development (CPD) points.
