Golder Associates is an employee-owned group providing comprehensive services in the geotechnical and environmental fields. Founded in 1960, Golders have 80 offices in 22 countries throughout the Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, South America and the United States. Their world-wide staff exceeds 3000 people, including more than 800 mining, geotechnical engineers, geologists, and hydro-geologists.
Golders have been working in Africa since the late 1960's. Their first assignments included mine and infrastructure related projects, and progressively expanded during the 1970's to include pit slope stability and underground rock mechanics analysis for input into mine feasibility and design studies. These are still important aspects of their work today, especially in Africa where the process of democratisation has promoted an upswing in investment and the development of more mining projects than in the recent past.
In the developed world, fluctuations in the economic stability of the mining industry and environmental legislation introduced during the 1980's changed some of the methods traditionally used by the industry and, in many cases, resulted in the development of new operating techniques.
Examples include the increasing use of bulk mining methods, cemented rock fill, heap leach pads and the requirement for environmentally sound waste containment. Golder Associates has played a leading role in many of these changes and is able to pass on the benefits of their experience to the African mining industry, where these technological advances and environmental controls have more recently been implemented, or are currently being introduced.
