Graduate Mining Engineer

On the first day of induction, the Pilbara is forty four degrees in the shade. The new graduate mining engineer is in steel cap boots, a hi vis shirt and a hard hat, looking at a fleet of two hundred and fifty tonne haul trucks that will run twenty four hours a day for the next two years on a mine plan she has helped design. Becoming a mining engineer takes a four year Bachelor of Engineering Honours from the University of New South Wales, Curtin in Kalgoorlie, or the University of Queensland. The first two years are common engineering science. Years three and four specialise in mine planning, drill and blast design, ventilation, geotechnics, mineral processing and mine economics. Sixty to ninety days of industry placement is mandatory. The day on site is split between the office and the bench. Designing tomorrow drill pattern in mine planning software, laying out one hundred and sixty five millimetre diameter blast holes on a seven by eight metre pattern.