Associated Event

Caving 2026
18–20 August 2026 | Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Principal Hazard Management in Caving Mines Workshop

17 August 2026 | Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

 

This workshop will be held immediately prior to Caving 2026. 

Workshop Topics

  • Air blast
  • Mudrush
  • Seismic and rockburst
  • Reserve recovery

 

Workshop Facilitators

Professor Andre van As
Professor Deep Mining Geoscience
The University of Queensland

Andre is an underground mine geotechnical engineer that has spent most of his 30-year career working on caving operations and caving projects. Andre has worked on, or had significant involvement in, more than 10 major caving operations and projects, sits on several cave mining geotechnical review boards, and has published widely on cave mining and caving geomechanics.

In 1997, he and Dr Rob Jeffrey introduced hydraulic fracturing into the cave mining industry as a means of cave induction and rock mass preconditioning at Northparkes Mines. As a result of their work, they were awarded a CSIRO medal. After 22 years working for Rio Tinto, Andre formed his own consultancy in 2018, focussed on providing technical expertise to the cave mining industry. Most recently, Andre joined the Bryan Research Centre at The University of Queensland as the group lead for deep mining geoscience research.

Dr Daniel Cumming-Potvin
Project Lead – mXrap
Australian Centre for Geomechanics

Daniel completed his Bachelor of Mining Engineering and PhD at The University of Western Australia in 2012 and 2018, respectively. He has worked at a number of underground metal mines in Australia, specialising in the areas of ground support, monitoring and mine seismicity. He is project lead for mXrap.

Professor Johan Wesseloo
Director
Australian Centre for Geomechanics

Since obtaining a BEng (civil) and MEng (geotechnical) from The University of Pretoria, Johan has been involved in geotechnical engineering in open pit and underground environments throughout 14 countries. He commenced his career in 1998 as a geotechnical engineer at SRK Consulting, Johannesburg where he was involved in open pit and underground projects in varying geotechnical conditions. In 2005 he was awarded a PhD (geotechnical) from The University of Pretoria. Johan joined the Australian Centre for Geomechanics (ACG) in 2007 as a research fellow. During his time at the ACG, Johan has been involved in research, the supervision of postgraduate students and geotechnical training. He also performs geotechnical and mining-induced seismicity reviews providing him with the valuable opportunity to visit numerous operations worldwide. Johan was instrumental in the development of the mXrap software and many of the software routines and apps available in that platform. In 2019, Johan was appointed director of the ACG.