Associated Event
28th International Conference on Paste, Thickened and Filtered Tailings
14–16 April 2026 InterContinental Lisbon | Lisbon, Portugal
Guiding Success in Filtered Stacked Tailings Projects Workshop
13 April 2026 | InterContinental Lisbon | Lisbon, Portugal
With increased emphasis on safe tailings management within the mining industry, filtered tailings have emerged as a leading option for mine operators aiming to significantly reduce the water volume discharged and stored in surface tailings facilities. The successful implementation of a filtered stacked tailings project presents many challenges, including ensuring the physical and chemical stability of the tailings stacks, effectively transporting and placing the dewatered tailings, and selecting scalable dewatering processes – all while maintaining economic viability.
Workshop overview
In this workshop, industry experts will build on the publicly available BHP/Rio Tinto Filtered Stacked Tailings Guide for Study Managers, a link to which will be sent to registered individuals prior to the workshop. Opportunities and lessons learned will be highlighted, such as optimising mine waste, valorising tailings, integrating filtered tailings into early mine planning through geometallurgy, and utilising innovative processing and dewatering flowsheets.
Key learning outcomes
- How to build a successful business case
- Lessons learned in filtered tailings stack design
- Improvements in filtered tailings transportation and deposition knowledge
- Opportunities in process and dewatering designs
- Flowsheet options to be considered for evaluation
Who should attend
- Managers and decision-makers in mining and tailings areas
- Operational, environmental and tailings engineers
- Plant designers, and equipment and reagent suppliers
Presenters
Diego Cobos
Geotechnical Practice Lead
SRK Consulting, Colombia
Diego has over 20 years’ experience in geotechnical engineering, and seismic analysis and design for earthen embankments, foundations, geotechnical characterisation and simulation, mine-waste tailings and waste rock facilities. His recent experience has focused on mining projects in design, construction and operation phases of tailings deposits and processing facilities, and Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management application and compliance. Diego’s previous experience includes forensic engineering, slope stability, erosion control, geotechnical characterisation of complex soils, flooding hazards and foundation design.
Helen-Louise Colbourne
Consultant Mineral Processing and Tailings Governance
Central Asia Metals PLC, Australia
Helen-Louise is a mineral process engineer with over 35 years in industry, working across the globe. She recently led SASA Mine to 100% Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management conformance – the first in North Macedonia and the Balkans – through a 3-year transformation program. She has pioneered many practical, integrated, inclusive training and operational solutions that deliver safety, productivity, and operational excellence.
Filipe Costa
Corporate Technical Manager – Tailings Management
Vale, Brazil
Filipe is a civil and geotechnical engineer with over 15 years’ experience specialising in mine tailings and waste management. He served as a tailings engineer for one of Brazil’s largest tailings storage facilities. Filipe spent two years as a Deputy Engineer of Record for coal tailings storage facilities in British Columbia, Canada.
After the Brumadinho tailings dam failure, Filipe coordinated the development and implementation of the Tailings and Dams Management System (TDMS). He currently serves as corporate technical manager for geotechnical governance and compliance at Vale, leading technical standards, governance frameworks, and assurance processes for geotechnical risk management at the corporate level.
Rachel Jansen
Tailings Manager
Paterson & Cooke, USA
Rachel has been involved in mineral processing for over 20 years within various roles, including metallurgical engineering, consulting and laboratory management. She is tailings manager for Paterson & Cooke’s North American practice. For the last 13 years she has focused on tailings dewatering and alternative tailings technologies.
Dr Liam MacNamara
Principal Consultant (Mineral Processing)
SRK Consulting, UK
Liam has broad industry experience. He spent 24 years working for an international equipment supply company and was involved in numerous international mining related projects in laboratory and pilot scale testing. Liam has been involved in the development of projects from levels of feasibility, process design and detailed engineering of mineral process plants – from the production of basic engineering packages through to plant construction, commissioning and performance testing.
Murray McGregor
Senior Consultant
SRK Consulting, UK
Murray is a geotechnical engineer with 15 years’ experience. His main areas of expertise are in design and management of earthen structures including tailings dams, water dams, waste dumps, water management structures, and infrastructure foundations. Murray’s background is in geological engineering with experience in site selection, geotechnical investigation, foundation design, slope stability, surveillance, and monitoring of civil and mining infrastructure. He has scoped, executed, and managed several geotechnical investigations for both existing and greenfield sites. Murray has completed slope foundation design, stability assessments and provided operational support for tailings projects worldwide.
Phil Newman
Lead Tailings Innovation
Anglo American, UK
Phil is vice president tailings innovation at Anglo American and is working on the roll-out and commercialisation of hydraulic dewatered stacking, a new tailings management approach developed and patented by Anglo American. He has been involved in all aspects of innovation and technology development at Anglo American since 2015 and managed their open innovation program from 2015 to 2020. Phil has over 30 years’ experience in mining, starting with paste technology in the mid-1990’s, when he co-founded Golder PasteTec. Phil was also chair of Paste 2006 in Limerick, Ireland.
Raul Norambuena Mardones
Principal Consultant
SRK Consulting, Canada
Raul is a civil engineer with 15 years’ experience in geotechnical and civil engineering. His main area of expertise is in the design of mine waste management facilities (tailings and waste rock) and includes conceptual to detailed engineering design, construction supervision and operation. He has also been part of the review (DSR and DSI) of the design, construction and operation of various tailings storage facilities. He has experience developing risk assessments by evaluating hazard potential and consequence classification (dam breach analyses). Raul is also experienced in site investigation planning and coordination, instrumentation and monitoring design and set-up, and has some knowledge of seismicity and hydrotechnical disciplines such as hydrogeology and hydrology.
Ashley Rasmussen
Project Manager
Paterson & Cooke, USA
Ashley is a project manager with over a decade of experience in the mining industry, specialising in laboratory and project management. She draws on hands-on expertise to inform project design and execution. Ashley is passionate about exploring new technologies while seeing projects through conceptual to operation phases. This passion contributed to the successful design and operation of a filtered tailings pilot plant at a major mine in North America.
Joe Rola
Principal Consultant (Mine Waste)
SRK Consulting, Australia
Joe is a civil/geotechnical engineer with over 20 years’ experience working on mine and power generation wastes, and heap leach and land/infrastructure development projects across Australia, south east Asia and north America. Joe has extensive experience in design, analyses, reporting, construction support/quality assurance, field and laboratory investigations, project management, and geotechnical instrumentation design/installation. Joe specialises in tailings and mine waste related projects, providing review, project direction and/or lead engineering from concept stage through to detailed design, construction, operations and closure.
Jamie Spiers
Principal Consultant (Geotechnical/Tailings)
SRK Consulting, UK
Jamie has over 19 years’ experience in tailings, mine waste and geotechnical engineering. His main area of expertise is in tailings dam management and design, gained from experience working on large copper, uranium, gold, and iron ore mining engineering studies in Finland, Sweden, Ukraine, West Africa, Papa New Guinea, and Australia. Jamie has supervised a broad range of projects involving foundations investigation and design, tailings storage facility and waste rock dump design, and mine waste facility closure design. Jamie has sat on Independent Tailings Review Board for Extreme Consequence Facilities in the European Union and is currently engaged as an expert witness for a filtered stack project in the UK.
Todd Wisdom
Principal Consultant (Non-Conventional Taillings)
SRK Consulting, USA
Todd is a chemical engineer with more than 30 years’ experience in the mining and energy industries specialising in the selection, design, commissioning, and operation of tailings and mineral processing systems. Over the past 10 years, his work has centred on tailings processing, dewatering, transport, and deposition. He has led the development and implementation of several innovative tailings technologies, including EcoTails® and GeoStable™ co-mingling with waste rock, coarse particle flotation systems, and large-format filter press equipment.