President – Gerhard Schmidt, CPEng, PMP
Gerhard Schmidt is a professional engineer and project manager with over fifteen years experience mechanical gas and water system design and certification. He has managed capital project portfolios with an annual spend >$100m for his clients, while improving overall portfolio performance. His engineering experience includes balance of plant design for automotive fuel cell applications, 700bar gas delivery systems, gas extraction plant system design for underground coal mines, and dewatering and mine service systems for the underground mining industry. He has worked on integrated owners teams for projects up to $1B in size.
Principle – Les Sawatsky, P.Eng., M.Sc.
Les Sawatsky is a professional engineer with over 35 years of experience in water resources developments in Canada and internationally. He has broad experience in water resource engineering including hydraulic structures, river basin planning, industrial water management, river engineering, applied hydrology, sediment control and drainage. His experience includes domestic and international projects. His experience in the mining industry includes mine water management, tailings management, water supply, drainage and mine closure. His experience in river engineering includes flood frequency studies, floodplain mapping, sediment transport analysis and modelling, erosion control systems, hydraulic analysis and modelling, river control systems, regime analysis, river diversions, design of pipeline and bridge crossings, and design of channels to replicate natural systems. Mr. Sawatsky is widely recognized as a specialist in erosion control, the geomorphic approach to design of sustainable drainage systems and mine closure landform configuration for long term sustainability. He has broad experience in water management modelling of river basins, irrigation developments and large-scale drainage systems.
Mr. Sawatsky has experience with major water resources developments such as dams, off-stream reservoirs, flood control works, river diversions, mine water management plans, hydropower projects, drainage planning, drainage design for mine site reclamation, water supply, river intakes, river control works, erosion control, and environmental impact assessments.
Les is a well published author and frequent presenter at technical workshops that concern water resources management and mine closure. He is recognized for his technical and leadership accomplishments at Golder Associates. He is a well-recognized champion of sustainable mine closure design and served as chair of Mine Closure 2011 an international conference that was held in Lake Louise, Alberta. He is also Chair of the upcoming international mine closure conference in Vancouver to be held in 2015.
Senior Hydrologist – Dr. Anil Beersing, P.Eng., PhD
Dr. Anil Beersing has over thirty years of professional experience in the practice of engineering hydrology, water resources engineering, watershed management, fluvial geomorphology, and statistical and stochastic hydrology. Dr. Beersing was the hydrology component lead and/or hydrology advisor/senior reviewer for a wide range of hydrologic studies including: environmental impact assessments (EIAs) of pipeline projects in northern Canada; estimation of Probable Maximum Precipitation (PMP) and Probable Maximum Flood (PMF) in the Bow River and North Saskatchewan River basins, and several small basins in northern and southern Alberta; hydrologic modelling of the effects of climate change scenarios on flows in the Athabasca River, North Saskatchewan River and South Saskatchewan River basins; EIAs of hydropower and mining projects in northern Canada; EIAs of oil sands mining projects in northern Alberta; water supply and flooding projects in Alberta; documentation and analysis of flood severity in major watersheds (Oldman River, Red Deer River, Bow River, Highwood River, Sheep River, Cascade Creek, etc.) affected by the June 2013 flood in southern Alberta. He has been involved in the design of landforms and drainage systems for reclamation and closure of mine sites in Canada (Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario), United States of America and Brazil.
As Manager of the Hydrology Branch of Newfoundland’s Department of Environment from 1989 to 2000, he was involved in technical support of water-related regulatory operations, development of environmental guidelines for wetlands and shore zones protection, optimization of the provincial hydrometric network using sophisticated statistical approaches, flood forecasting for watersheds with hydropower dams using hydrological models coupled with GIS software, and implementation of hydrological models on projects.
Dr. Beersing has appeared as an expert in hydrology matters on hearings for a number of projects, including the MacKenzie Gas Project, Imperial Oil’s Kearl Oil Sands Project, Canadian Natural’s Horizon Oil Sands Project and Shell’s Muskeg River Mine Oil Sands Project.
Dr. Beersing has extensive experience with dam safety reviews (DSR), having managed and/or been the hydrotechnical lead in over forty DSR projects for several clients including Alberta Environment, TransAlta Utilities, St. Mary River Irrigation District, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Canadian Natural, and Grande Cache Coal. He carried out PMP and PMF assessments, loss of life and economic damage estimates, and consequence classification of several dams as part of the dam safety reviews. He is experienced in Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) projects, having managed and/or been the hydrotechnical lead on four FMEA projects for Alberta Environment on four major dams (Oldman Dam, Dickson Dam, Twin Valley Dam and St. Mary Dam). He has prepared Emergency Preparedness Plans and Emergency Response Plans for several dams including seven extreme consequence tailings dams in Chile, South America. Dr. Beersing was the senior hydrologist on over twenty dam breach analysis and flood inundation mapping projects where consequence classification of the dams was a major component.
Johann Havenga, CPEng, MBA
Contract Senior Mechanical Engineer
As a Mechanical Engineer with over seventeen years experience in engineering and project management, he has worked in the areas of mechanical design, manufacturing, automation, compliance, subcontractor management, project and portfolio management.
Eric Hooimeyer, CPEng
Contract Senior Mechanical Engineer
As a Structural Engineer with twenty seven years experience in the engineering industry, with a focus in mining and heavy industrial projects. He has worked on projects through out Australia, Asia, Africa and the Americas and managed an engineering design team consisting of 7 engineers and 40 draftspersons in multiple locations. He has worked as a design engineer on major projects, several in excess of $100M and is an author of technical papers on Paste Thickener Technology. He possesses analytical skills using FEA modelling packages and has undertaken the design of steel structures, stainless steel design, large tankage, pressure vessels, product development, and design standardisation for minerals processing equipment.