Welcome to the first in a series of e-updates from the team at Operational Geotechs.
In this edition, we delve into our expansion into international markets with one of our co-founders and recap our recent trip to Canada where we took part in the Deep Mining 2024 event.
Behind the scenes with Ben Barsanti
Q Ben, you’re a co-founder and director of Operational Geotechs and have recently relocated your young family to Vancouver, Canada. What prompted that?
A Last year, an existing multinational client of ours requested one of our experienced team members be placed onsite at one of their Canadian mines. This six month placement was very successful and what we learnt from that, and from talking to many people in our broad network, is that there’s similar demand in Canada for what we do best in Australia – which is to place pragmatic geotechs onsite.
After exploring the market opportunity further with OG co-directors Trent Nester and Ash Page, we realised it made good business sense for us to expand into Canada. To do that properly, we really needed a director on the ground, and I was best placed to do that.
Q You’ve been there for nearly five months now. How’s it been?
A Terrific. Summer was great but it’s getting colder now! But my family don’t mind. In fact, a white Christmas is really appealing to us all and my son and daughter have developed a thirst for ice hockey which I’m looking forward to getting into.
All up, the five of us have settled in well and are making some great connections within our local community, which has been very welcoming.
Q From a business perspective, what’s taken up your focus so far?
A I have a natural affinity for the business administration side of things, which is just as well because doing business in Canada is quite different to Australia. I’ve learnt a lot already and invested time in setting up the right structures and entities to ensure we’re well placed for the work we’ll be doing.
We’ve also got our first runs on the board quickly, having connected with a new client in Ontario who’s seconded one of our Australian experts to work on their mine sites. Our team member has moved over here with his partner for the duration of the contract and beyond, so that’s pretty exciting.
Q Is that part of the OG plan, to be able to provide opportunities for people in Australia and abroad to be able to see different parts of the world as they work?
A Absolutely. We know this is appealing to our Australian team members and anticipate it’ll also be appealing for Canadian geotechs once they realise who we are and what we can provide.
We’re already seeing good demand for our services in Europe, Africa and North America – and having a mobile workforce keen to travel is a key part of meeting that demand.
Q How do you intend to grow the business there, given your relatively low brand profile?
A We’re confident we can grow in Canada in much the same way as we’ve done in Australia. In essence, that means working with good people, delivering good value and building our network of valued clients and contacts.
We know the Australian industry very well from working in it over the past 20 years and have built great connections with our clients – so it’s clearly a bit different starting in Canada. We know, though, that it just means there’s a bit of work to do in connecting with people and learning about the market.
The signs so far are really positive; I’m already getting good traction from the people I’ve reached out to, and they’re interested to find out more, especially given our focus is providing dedicated onsite geotechnical support, which so many mining operations need.
Q Operational Geotechs hosted a workshop in Canada recently. Can you tell us about that?
A Yes, in late September, before the Australian Centre for Geomechanics’ Deep Mining 2024 conference in Montreal, the OG team hosted a half-day workshop.
We were thrilled to have more than 100 participants, mostly geotechs, sign up. Called Key Learnings from Mining in Challenging Geotechnical Environments, the workshop garnered a lot of attention because it was highly practical and case study-based.
I facilitated the workshop, which had 6 speakers from Australia and Canada, and many thought provoking discussions. I think the attendance was strong because the deeper you go in mining, the harder the job gets and working as an onsite geotech can be quite isolating, which makes coming up with solutions to problems particularly challenging across the industry.
There are also less opportunities now for formal shared learning opportunities, so the motivation behind this workshop was to bring geotechs together to learn from real life situations. As there’s no textbook to help when we’re faced with operational problems, we knew it would be highly valuable to unpack the technical details and share practical solutions derived from actual geotechnical problems we’ve faced.
The participant feedback was excellent, so we’re keen to look at how and where we can host this type of workshop again to share our unique breadth and depth of experience.
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Thanks, Ben, for your time (you can find out more about Ben’s background here) and insights.
And thanks to all of you for keeping up with our news. Please feel free to reach out with any questions or feedback.
We hope you all manage to enjoy a break over the festive season and we’ll send another e-update soon.
The Operational Geotechs team
