SRK Canada is delighted to welcome four new principal consultants: hydrogeologists Todd Hamilton and Michael Royle to our Toronto and Vancouver offices, structural geologist Dr. Ron Uken to our Vancouver office, and geomechanics engineer Chris O’Connor to our Sudbury office. These professionals add 90 years of collective knowledge gain and experience to SRK.
Todd and Michael are returning to SRK after absences of 16 years and 2 years respectively. Todd has 28 years of consulting and industry experience as a hydrogeologist in Canada, Peru, Australia, and South Africa. He has considerable project management experience and capitalized on his Spanish fluency while co-developing a successful groundwater consulting company in Latin America. His most recent position was with BHP Billiton Iron Ore in Western Australia, where he established an in-house technical groundwater group. Todd has balanced field data collection and analytical skills--including numerical modelling—with a focus on mine water management, instrumentation, and hydraulic testing.
Michael has over 25 years of experience in geology, groundwater instrumentation, and mining hydrogeology, gained in Canada, the USA, Africa, Australia, Papua New Guinea, China, and Turkey. He has a master’s degree in hydrogeology and project experience encompassing rock mass characterization, slope stability investigations, open pit and underground mine dewatering, tailings dam seepage, groundwater resource evaluation, and contaminant hydrogeology. Michael has managed multidisciplinary projects up to PFS level that were often carried out under difficult operating and logistical conditions in Africa and the Canadian arctic. He specializes in the design and interpretation of coupled geotechnical and hydrogeological investigations and the design and installation of deep groundwater monitoring programs. His recent experience in the oil and gas industry has enhanced his deep hydrogeological experience and ability to apply new techniques to mining projects.
Ron has 20 years of academic and consulting experience. He obtained a PhD in geology and applied geology from the University of Natal in South Africa, where he worked as an economic geologist focusing on the structural controls on mineralization and magmatic systems such as the Bushveld Complex. As director of marine geosciences, he studied the southeast African continental shelf and marine resources. Ron also has extensive consulting experience from exploration and mining projects across the range of commodities. He specializes in structural mapping and the interpretation of complex structural terrains. Before joining us full time, Ron worked with SRK as an associate for a year, and was involved in gold and base metal projects in the Middle East and North Africa.
Chris has 17 years of experience in engineering and has spent the last 13 of these specializing in rock mechanics with a focus on deep and high stress environments. He has worked on over 200 mining consulting projects across Canada and around the world. This work has involved a wide range of rock mechanics issues from drift and fill analyses to large scale caving projects, and from open pits to the deepest deposits in North America. Chris specializes in the use of numerical modelling tools to solve engineering problems and is an expert in numerical analysis and interpretation.
“Todd, Michael, Ron, and Chris add a wealth of knowledge and experience to our Canadian mining practices,” said James Siddorn, president of SRK Canada. “Their specializations strengthen our geoenvironmental, groundwater, geology, and mining groups and will enhance the services that we offer our clients.”
