Success Story
From Office Models to Field Execution: Predictable Mine Rehabilitation
Snapshot
Client:
Brett Rhodes, mine rehabilitation and drainage design engineer, Southwestern Australia
Challenge:
Design compliant, constructible remediation for a sensitive mined landscape under strict regulatory limits
Outcome:
100% planned ore removal; >$300 million in recovered material; $1.7M+ saved in rehabilitation costs
Project overview
Mine rehabilitation projects demand more than restoring land after extraction. Engineers must balance environmental compliance, drainage performance, constructability, worker safety, and project economics under strict regulatory oversight. Success depends on validating rehabilitation plans before construction begins and ensuring field teams work from accurate, up-to-date spatial data.
This success story explores how mine rehabilitation engineer Brett Rhodes used Global Mapper to create a connected AEC GIS workflow that unified drone surveys, lidar, and historical survey data into a single terrain model. By validating rehabilitation plans before earthmoving began, the team reduced construction uncertainty, improved coordination between office and field teams, and verified project outcomes with post-construction survey data.
The challenge
The project site fell within an environmentally sensitive forested area. Regulators demanded forest-to-forest rehabilitation, strict limits on slope and runoff, and clear evidence that remediation would meet those standards. The team needed to prove constructability up front. Unexpected slopes, misaligned controls, or poor water management could force costly rework, threaten permits, and delay production. The engineer had to produce a design that met safety and regulatory limits and could be built by field teams under variable weather.
The approach
To reduce regulatory risk and avoid costly field corrections, the team adopted an office-first workflow in Global Mapper. Rehabilitation plans were evaluated against terrain, drainage, safety, and constructability requirements before construction began, then prepared for field deployment using validated design data.
Office-to-field workflow
Using Global Mapper, Brett Rhodes unified terrain modeling, rehabilitation design, and field execution into a single GIS workflow that reduced construction risk, improved regulatory confidence, and helped unlock more than $300 million in recoverable ore.
Create the Terrain Model
Drone surveys, lidar, and historical survey records were combined into a single terrain model, creating a reliable foundation for planning, analysis, and rehabilitation design.
Validate Rehabilitation Designs
Multiple rehabilitation scenarios were evaluated against terrain, drainage, safety, constructability, and project economics to identify risks and refine the final design.
Prepare Field-Ready Deliverables
Approved rehabilitation surfaces and machine guidance data were prepared for construction deployment, with quality checks ensuring alignment between design models and on-site survey control.
Execute the Design
Field teams worked from the same validated design data used during planning, improving consistency between office and field operations while reducing interpretation errors during construction.
Verify Project Outcomes
Post-construction survey data was compared against design objectives to verify performance, identify deviations, and provide documentation for stakeholders and regulatory agencies.
Results
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