RESPEC Project

Goldcorp’s Cerro Negro mining complex consists of three underground mines that use stoping techniques to recover gold ore.  RESPEC partnered with our Professional Associates Dr. Braden Lusk and Dr. Jhon Silva to conduct a 10-day evaluation of the drill-and-blast operations.  The RESPEC team worked with Cerro Negro personnel to improve their drill-and-blast process from design to execution and focused on the following Scope of Work:

• Review the current drill-and-blast design criteria/standards
• Review the current drill-and-blast operating procedures for development and production
• Present the findings and recommendations
• Develop an improvement process with the required resources
• Upgrade drill-and-blast design standards and operating procedures
• Develop quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) protocols and checklists.

We focused on providing an exhaustive review of current drill-and-blast standards and practices.  We also provided the instrumentation service to evaluate the proficiency of drilling, explosives loading, explosives performance, and blast results for the development and production rounds.  Our review included auditing the drilling design process, drilling practices, and drilling results.  On the blasting side, the audit included the blast design process, explosives loading practices, explosives selection and application, explosives performance during detonation, blast fragmentation, and dilution.  We will also reviewed in-house and third-party audits that had been completed previously.