Whilst geotechnical data is vital to operating pits and underground mines, simple rock mass quality data can provide a solid foundation for the development of an understanding of the rock mass response to mining at an early stage
in the mine study process. This data can be collected from resource drilling programmes for little extra time and cost. The spatial extent of resource drilling provides the opportunity for a high volume of data to be collected
across a deposit.
SRK’s experience in the Nordic region has highlighted that there is a good focus and intention for basic geotechnical data collection during geological logging campaigns. This is often limited to RQD and some structural logging
of the oriented core. However, the standard and quality of many data sets is variable and often require either much repair work or, in the worst case, is unusable for a project.
