He specializes in underground rock engineering investigation and design and has provided consultancy services for mining projects on six continents, with various orebody geometries and rock mass characteristics, exploited with a wide range of mining methods.
His expertise encompasses geotechnical investigations, numerical modelling, mining method selection, design of mining excavations, and geotechnical risk. William has a special interest in deep, high stress mining and seismic risk. He serves on geotechnical (rockburst) review boards for El Teniente, Codelco in Chile and LKAB in Sweden.
He has designed and supervised the construction of several high pressure (6 to 15 MPa) concrete water plugs to enable rewatering of closed mines. He has reviewed two major mud rush incidents and contributed to a SIMRAC (Safety in Mines Research Advisory Committee) research report on mud rushes.
William has published over 50 articles on rock engineering and is the recipient of an SAIMM (Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy) gold medal and the Alec Wilson Award from SANCOT (South Africa National Committee on Tunnelling) for outstanding papers.
William served as Director and Chair of the board at SRK Consulting (South Africa) and Director of SRK Consulting (Global).
He is a Past President of the SAIMM and the South African National Institute of Rock Engineering (SANIRE); and a Past Vice President for Africa of the International Society for Rock Mechanics (ISRM).
