What do mining engineers do?

Over a span of nearly forty years consulting to the mining industry, I have worked with many mining engineers.  On the basis of long experience, I can say with confidence that mining engineers spend most of their time in meetings, listening to consultants and staff and making hard decisions about the mine they work for or manage.

When they are not in meetings, the mining engineers that I have known drive around the open pit, or descend the underground workings where they walk around to see if things are going as they should.  And if things are not going as they should, they talk (mostly) to the people who are supposed to be making things go properly and the mining engineers remind them of their duty and the consequences of failing to live up to their duty.

Sometimes the mining engineers leave the mine and go to the office building in some distant city where the head office is located.  There they meet with even more senior mining engineers, accountants, and lawyers to discuss the legal and financial operation of the mine they manage back home.   Then they go to a fine restaurant for supper and a night in an expensive hotel to fly back, first-class, to the mine the next day.

I do not wish to imply by this brief overview of the daily life of the average mining engineer that their work is easy.  For the variety and challenge lies in the diversity of topics and issues the mining engineer will face each day in those meetings and round-the-mine travels.  Today the mining engineer will be faced with a decision to purchase or not to purchase land next to the mine where there may or may not be additional ore to expand the mine.  The next day the mining engineer will be asked by the chief exploration geologist for an increase in budget to enable more drilling to be undertaken on the land that was purchased the day before.

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