Mine Studies

Ore Stockpiling – Why are we doing this again?

Date: April 28, 2016 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: 3 Replies
ore stockpile
In many of the past mining studies that I have worked, stockpiling strategies were discussed and usually implemented. However sometimes team members were surprised at the size of the stockpiles that were generated by the production plan. In some cases it was apparent that not all team members were clear on the purpose of  stockpiling or had preconceived ideas on the rationale behind it. To many stockpiling may seem like a good idea until they saw it in action.
Mine Stockpile
In this blog I won’t go into all the costs and environmental issues associated with stockpile operation.  The discussion focuses on the reasons for stockpiling and why stockpiles can get large in size or numerous in quantity.
In my experience there are four main reasons why ore stockpiling might be done. They are:
1. Campaigning: For metallurgical reasons if there are some ore types that can cause process difficulties if mixed  with other ores. The problematic ore might be stockpiled until sufficient inventory allows one to process that ore (i.e. campaign) through the mill. Such stockpiles will only grow as large as the operator allows them to grow. At any time the operator can process the material and deplete the stockpile. Be aware that mining operations might still be mining other ore types, then those ores may need to be stockpiled during the campaigning.  That means even more ore stockpiles at site.
2. Grade Optimization: This stockpiling approach is used in situations where the mine delivers more ore than is required by the plant, thereby allowing the best grades to be processed directly while lower grades are stockpiled for a future date. Possibly one or more grade stockpiles may be used, for example a low grade and a medium-low grade stockpile. Such stockpiles may not get processed for years, possibly until the mine is depleted or until the mined grades are lower than those in the stockpile. Such stockpiles can grow to enormous size if accumulated over many years.  Oxidation and processability may be a concern with long term stockpiles.
3. Surge Control: Surge piles may be used in cases where the mine may have a fluctuating ore delivery rate and on some days excess ore is produced while other days there is underproduction. The stockpile is simply used to make up the difference to the plant to provide a steady feed rate. These stockpiles are also available as short term emergency supply if for some reason the mine is shut down (e.g. extreme weather). In general such stockpiles may be relatively small in size since they are simply used for surge control.
4. Blending: Blending stockpiles may be used where a processing plant needs a certain quality of feed material with respect to head grade or contaminant ratios (silica, iron, etc.). Blending stockpiles enables the operator to ensure the plant feed quality to be within a consistent range. Such stockpiles may not be large individually; however there could be several of them depending on the nature of the orebody.
There may be other stockpiling strategies beyond the four listed above but those are the most common.

Test Stockpiling Strategies

Using today’s production scheduling software, one can test multiple stockpiling strategies by applying different cutoff grades or using multiple grade stockpiles. The scheduling software algorithms determine whether one should be adding to stockpile or reclaiming from it. The software will track grades in the stockpile and sometimes be able to model stockpile balances assuming reclaim by average grade, or first in-first out (FIFO), or last in-first out (LIFO).
ore stockpile
Stockpiling in most cases provides potential benefits to an operation and the project economics. Even if metallurgical blending or ore campaigning is not required, one should always test the project economics with a few grade stockpiling scenarios.
Unfortunately these are not simple to undertake when using a manual scheduling approach and so are a reason to move towards automated scheduling software.
Make sure everyone on the team understands the rationale for the stockpiling strategy and what the stockpiles might ultimately look like. They might be surprised.
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Pre-Concentration – Savior or Not?

Date: April 13, 2016 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: 2 Replies
pre-concentration
Can pre-concentration become a savior for the mining industry by lowering metal production costs?
Pre-concentration is a way of reducing the quantity of ore requiring higher cost downstream processing, i.e. grinding in particular.  One can attain significant cost savings in energy consumption and operating expenses by using a low cost method to pre-concentrate minerals into a smaller volume. A previous blog “Remote Sensing of Ore Grades” discussed one new pre-concentration method currently under development.

Pre-concentration isn’t new

Pre-concentration has been around for many years.  However the techniques available are generally limited.  Hence many ore types are not amenable to it..unfortunately.
The main methods available are:
Ore sorting, which can be done using automated optical, electrical, or magnetic susceptibility sensors to separate ore particles from waste. The different sensors can rely on colour recognition, near infrared radiation, x-ray fluorescence, x-ray transmission, radiometric, or electromagnetic properties. The sensors can determine if a particle contains valuable mineral or waste, thereby sending a signal to activate air jets to deflect material into ore and waste bins.
Density separation, or specific gravity differences are another property that some pre-concentration methods can use. Gravity based systems such as dense media separation (DMS), jigs, or centrifugal concentrators are currently in commercial production.
Scrubbing, another very simple pre-concentration method is scrubbing, whereby simply separating fines or coatings may remove deleterious materials prior to final processing.   Blue Sky Uranium is a recent project that I was involved in where a simple scrubbing step resulted in 4-5 times increase in grade and volume reduction.

 BenefitsJig Plant 1

Pre-concentration provides several benefits:
  • If done underground or at satellite mine site, the ore hoisting or ore transport costs can be reduced.
  • If the pre-concentration rejects can be used as mine backfill, this can reduce backfilling costs.
  • Processing of higher grade pre-concentrated mill feed can reduce energy costs and ultimately reduce the cash cost of metal produced.
  • Grinding costs can be reduced if waste particles are harder than the ore particles and they can be scalped.
  • Minimizing waste through the process plant will reduce the quantity of fine tailings that must be disposed of.
  • Lowering operating costs may potentially allow lowering of the cutoff grade and increasing mineral reserves.
  • Higher head grades would increase metal production without needing an increase in plant throughput.

Limited ore types are suited for pre-concentration

Not all ore types are amenable to pre-concentration and therefore a rigorous testing program is required. In most cases a pre-con method is relatively obvious to metallurgical engineers but testing is still required to measure performance.
Testing is required to determine the waste rejection achieved without incurring significant ore loss. Generally one can produce a higher quality product if one is willing to reject more ore with the waste.  It becomes a trade-off of metal recovery versus processing cost savings.
Fine particles generated in the crushing stage might need to bypass the pre-con circuit. If this bypassed material is sent to downstream processing circuits, one may need to examine crushers that minimize fines to avoid excessive material bypassing the pre-con circuit.

Reject waste or reject ore?

One must decide if the pre-con system should reject waste particles from the material stream or reject ore particles from the stream.  The overall metal recovery and product quality may be impacted depending on which approach is used.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that the mining industry is continually looking for ways to improve costs and pre-concentration may be a great way to do this.   Every process plant design should take a look at it to see if is feasible for their ore type.
While the existing pre-concentration methods have their limitations, future technologies may bring in more ways to pre-concentrate.  This is probably an area where research dollars would be well spent.
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Tailings Disposal Method Risk

Date: March 8, 2016 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: 4 Replies
mine tailings
After the Mt Polley and Samarco tailings failures, there have been ongoing discussions about the benefits of filtered (dry stack) tailings as the only way to eliminate the risk of catastrophic failure. Mining companies would all like to see risk reductions at their projects.

Filtered tailings stack

However what mining companies don’t like to see are the capital and operating costs associated with dry stacking.
The filtering cost and tailings transport cost are both higher than for conventional tailings disposal. Obviously this cost increase gets offset against improved environmental risk and simpler closure.

What should a mining company do?

In my experience, when designing a new mining project, all companies will complete a trade-off study for different tailings disposal methods and disposal sites. Contrary to some environmental narratives, mining companies really do want to know what are their tailings disposal options.  They would likely all adopt the dry stack approach if it was the most advantageous and least cost method.
The mining companies are fully aware of the benefits but the dilemma is the cost and being able to somehow justify the technology. Complicating their decision, companies also have other ways for reducing tailings risk.

The tailings decision gets complex.

In a tailings risk analysis, people will use a risk-weighting approach to assign an expected economic impact to their tailings plans. For example, if the cost of a failure is $200 million and the risk is 0.1%, then the Expected Cost is $200,000. The problem with this is its based on a theoretical calculation on an assumed likelihood of failure.
In reality either the dam will fail or it won’t.  So failure remediation money will be spent ($200M) or it won’t be spent ($ zero), it won’t be partially spent ($200k).
The accepted tailings risk therefore becomes a subjective factor.
While implementing a dry stack may reduce the risk of catastrophic failure to near zero, implementing a $100,000 per year monitoring program on a conventional tailings pond will reduce its risk to a degree.
Implementing a more expensive $500,000 per year monitoring program would reduce that risk even further.
Installing in a water treatment plant to enable periodic water releases may further lower the tailings risk.
The company can look at various mitigation options to keep lowering their risk, although none of the options would necessarily bring the risk down to zero. Ultimately the company could compare the various risk mitigation options against the dry stack costs in order to arrive at an optimal path forward.  At that point the costs for dry stack may be competative.

What level of risk is acceptable?

So the question ultimately becomes how low does one need to bring the tailings risk before it is acceptable to shareholders, regulators, and the public. I don’t think the answer is that one must lower the risk down to zero. There are not many things in today’s world that have zero risk. Driving a car, air travel, shipping oil by ocean tanker, having a gas furnace in your house.. none of these have zero risk yet we accept them as part of life.
Environmental groups continually discuss ways of forcing regulators and mining companies to take action against the risk of tailings failure. This is commendable.
However they generally fail to provide any guidance on what level of risk would be acceptable to them or to the public. It is difficult for these groups to actually define what an acceptable risk level is. They offer no solutions, other than its either zero risk or shut down all mining.

Conclusion

We know that mining is here to stay so we all should work together towards solutions.
The solutions need to be realistic in order to be taken seriously and to play a real role in redefining tailings disposal. Dry stack may not be the only solution and we should be looking for more ways to improve tailings disposal.
Since these other options don’t seem to be available yet, dry stack tends to offer the best solution in most circumstances.  I have written another blog on this topic where I suggest the industry just bite the bullett and go to dry stack in all new projects.  The trend appears to be going that way but no where near 100% acceptance.   You can read that post at this link  “Fluid Tailings – Time to Kick The Habit?”

 

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Higher Metal Prices – Should Miners Lower the Cut-Off Grade?

Date: February 23, 2016 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: 7 Replies
When metals prices are high, we are generally told that we should lower the cutoff grade. Our cutoff grade versus metal price formula tells us this is the correct thing do. Our grade-tonnage curve reaffirms this since we will now have more metal in the mineral reserve.

But is lowering the cutoff grade the right thing?

Books have been written on the subject of cutoff grades where readers can get all kinds of detailed logic and calculations using Greek symbols (F = δV* − dV*/dT). Here is one well known book by Ken Lane, available on Amazon HERE.
Recently we have seen a trend of higher cash costs at operating mines when commodity prices are high. Why is this?
It may be due to higher cost operating inputs due to increasing labour rates or supplies. It may also be partly due to the lowering of cutoff grades.  This lowers the head grade, which then requires more tonnes to be milled to produce the same quantity of metal.
A mining construction manager once said to me that he never understood us mining guys who lower the cutoff grade when gold prices increase. His concern was that since the plant throughput rate is fixed, when gold prices are high we suddenly decide to lower the head grade and produce fewer and higher cost ounces of gold.

Do the opposite

His point was that we should do the opposite.  When prices are high, we should produce more ounces of gold, not fewer. In essence, periods when supply is low (or demand is high) may not be the right time to further cut  supply by lowering head grades.
Now this is the point where the grade-tonnage curve comes into play.
Certainly one can lower the cutoff grade, lower the head grade and produce fewer ounces of gold.  The upside being an extension in the mine life.  A company can report more ounces in reserves and perhaps the overall image of the company looks better (if it is being valued on reserves).   To read more about the value of grade-tonnage curves, you check out this blog post “Grade-Tonnage Curves – Worthy of a Good Look“.

What if metal prices drop back?

The problem is that there is no guarantee that metal prices will remain where they are and the new lower cutoff grade will remain where it is. If the metal prices drop back down, the cutoff grade will be increased and the mineral reserve will revert back to where it was. All that was really done was accept a year of lower metal production for no real long term benefit.
This trade-off  contrasts a short term vision (i.e. maximizing annual production) against a long term vision (i.e. extending mineral reserves).

Conclusion

The bottom line is that there is no simple answer on what to do with the cutoff grades.  Hence there is a need to write books about it.
Different companies have different corporate objectives and each mining project will be unique with regards to the impacts of cutoff grade changes on the orebody.
I would like to caution that one should be mindful when plugging in new metal prices, and then running off to the mine operations department with the new cutoff grade. One should fully understand both the long term and short term impacts of that decision.
In another blog post on the cutoff grade issue, I discuss whether in poly-metallic deposits the cutoff should be based on metal equivalent or block NSR value.  Neither approach is perfect, but I prefer the NSR option.  You can read that post at “Metal Equivalent Grade versus NSR for Poly-Metallics“.

 

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Global Tax Regimes – How Do They Compare?

Date: February 9, 2016 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: 3 Replies
mining economics
Update: This blog was originally written in Feb 2016, but has been updated in Aug 2019.
As a reminder for all QP’s doing economic analysis for PEA’s, don’t forget that one needs to present the economic results on an after-tax basis.
Every once in a while I still see PEA technical reports issued with only pre-tax financials.  That report is likely to get red- flagged by the securities regulators.  The company will need to amend their press release and technical report  to provide the after tax results.    No harm done other than some red faces.

Taxes can be complicated

When doing a tax calculation in your model, where can you find international tax information?  PWC has a very useful tax-related website.  The weblink below was sent to me by one of my industry colleagues and I thought it would be good to share it.
The PWC micro-site provides a host of tax and royalty information for selected countries.  The page is located at https://www.ey.com/gl/en/services/tax/global-tax-guide-archive
On the site they have a searchable database for tax information for specific countries.
The PWC tax and financial information includes topics such as:
  • Corporate tax rates
  • Excess profits taxes
  • Mineral taxes for different commodities
  • Mineral royalties
  • Rates of permissible amortization
  • VAT and other regulated payments
  • Export taxes
  • Withholding taxes
  • Fiscal stability agreements
  • Social contribution requirements
PWC has a great web site and hopefully they will keep the information up to date since tax changes happen constantly.  The website also has a guide related to the rules for the treatment of capital expenditures.   Check it out.  https://www.ey.com/gl/en/services/tax/global-tax-guide-archive
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Resource Estimates – Are Independent Audits A Good Idea?

Date: February 2, 2016 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: 2 Replies
mining reserves
Question: How important is the integrity of a tailings dam to the successful operation of a mine?
Answer: Very important.
Tailings dam stability is so important that in some jurisdictions regulators may be requiring that mining companies have third party independent review boards or third party audits done on their tailings dams.  The feeling is that, although a reputable consultant may be doing the dam design, there is still a need for some outside oversight.
Differences in interpretation, experience, or errors of omission are a possibility regardless of who does the design.  Hence a second set of eyes can be beneficial.

Is the resource estimate important?

Next question is how important is the integrity of the resource and reserve estimate to the successful operation of a mine?
Answer: Very important.  The mine life, project economics, and shareholder value all rely on it.     So why aren’t a second set of eyes or third party audits very common?

NI 43-101 was the first step

In the years prior to 43-101, junior mining companies could produce their own resource estimates and disclose the results publicly.  With the advent of NI 43-101, a second set of eyes was introduced whereby an independent QP  could review the company’s internal resource and/or prepare their own estimate.  Now the QP ultimately takes legal responsible for the estimate.
Nowadays most small companies do not develop their own in-house resource estimates.  The task is generally awarded to an independent QP.

Resource estimation is a special skill

Possibly companies don’t prepare their own resource estimates due to the specialization needed in modelling and geostatistics. Maybe its due to the skills needed to operate block modeling software.   Maybe the companies feel that doing their own internal resource estimate is a waste of time since an independent QP will be doing the work anyway.

The QP is the final answer..or is it?

Currently it seems the project resource estimate is prepared solely by the QP or a team of QP’s.   In most cases this resource gets published without any other oversight. In other words no second set of eyes has taken a look at it.  We assume the QP is a qualified expert, their judgement is without question, and their work is error free.

Leapfrog Model

As we have seen, some resources estimates have been mishandled and disciplinary actions have been taken against QP’s.   The conclusion is that not all QP’s are perfect.
Just because someone meets the requirements to be a Competent Person or a Qualified Person does not automatically mean they are competent or qualified. Geological modeling is not an exact science and will be based on their personal experience.

What is good practice?

The question being asked is whether it would be good practice for companies to have a second set of eyes take a look at their resource estimates developed by independent QP’s?
Where I have been involved in due diligence for acquisitions or mergers, it is not uncommon for one side to rebuild the resource model with their own technical team.  They don’t have 100% confidence in the original resource handed over to them.   The first thing asked is for the drill hole database.
One downside to a third party review is the added cost to the owner.
Another downside is that when one consultant reviews another consultant’s work there is a tendency to have a list of concerns. Some of these may not be material, which then muddles the conclusion of the review.
On the positive side, a third party review may identify serious interpretation issues or judgement decisions that could be fatal to the resource.
If tailings dams are so important that they require a second set of eyes, why not the resource estimate?  After all, it is the foundation of it all.
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Measured vs. Indicated Resources – Do We Treat Them the Same?

Date: January 19, 2016 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: 6 Replies
measured and indicated
One of the first things we normally look at when examining a resource estimate is how much of the resource is classified as Measured or Indicated (“M+I”) compared to the Inferred tonnage.  It is important to understand the uncertainty in the estimate and how much the Inferred proportion contributes.   Having said that, I think we tend to focus less on the split between the Measured and Indicated tonnages.

Inferred resources have a role

We are all aware of the regulatory limitations imposed by Inferred resources in mining studies.  They are speculative in nature and hence cannot be used in the economic models for pre-feasibility and feasibility studies. However Inferred resource can be used for production planing in a Preliminary Economic Assessment (“PEA”).
Inferred resources are so speculative that one cannot legally add them to the Measure and Indicated tonnages in a resource statement (although that is what everyone does).   I don’t really understand the concern with a mineral resource statement if it includes a row that adds M+I tonnage with Inferred tonnes, as long as everything is transparent.
When a PEA mining schedule is developed, the three resource classifications can be combined into a single tonnage value.  However in the resource statement the M+I+I cannot be totaled.  A bit contradictory.

Are Measured resources important?

It appears to me that companies are more interested in what resource tonnage meets the M+I threshold but are not as concerned about the tonnage split between Measured and Indicated.  It seems that M+I are largely being viewed the same.  Since both Measured and Indicated resources can be used in a feasibility economic analysis, does it matter if the tonnage is 100% Measured (Proven) or 100% Indicated (Probable)?
The NI 43-101 and CIM guidelines provide definitions for Measured and Indicated resources but do not specify any different treatment like they do for the Inferred resources.
CIM Resources to Mineral Reserves

Relationship between Mineral Reserves and Mineral Resources (CIM Definition Standards).

Payback Period and Measured Resource

In my past experience with feasibility studies, some people applied a  rule-of-thumb that the majority of the tonnage mined during the payback period must consist of Measure resource (i.e. Proven reserve).
The goal was to reduce project risk by ensuring the production tonnage providing the capital recovery is based on the resource with the highest certainty.
Generally I do not see this requirement used often, although I am not aware of what everyone is doing in every study.   I realize there is a cost, and possibly a significant cost, to convert Indicated resource to Measured so there may be some hesitation in this approach. Hence it seems to be simpler for everyone to view the Measured and Indicated tonnages the same way.

Conclusion

NI 43-101 specifies how the Inferred resource can and cannot be utilized.  Is it a matter of time before the regulators start specifying how Measured and Indicated resources must be used?  There is some potential merit to this idea, however adding more regulation (and cost) to an already burdened industry would not be helpful.
Perhaps in the interest of transparency, feasibility studies should add two new rows to the bottom of the production schedule. These rows would show how the annual processing tonnages are split between Proven and Probable reserves. This enables one to can get a sense of the resource risk in the early years of the project.  Given the mining software available today, it isn’t hard to provide this additional detail.
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Constraints: Use Them to Your Advantage

Date: August 22, 2015 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: Leave a reply
mining study management
I recently read a business book called “A Beautiful Constraint: How to Transform Your Limitations into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business” by Adam Morgan and Mark Barden. It describes how to use constraints, like lack of time, or money, or resources and use them to help transform your company for the better.
Here’s an Amazon link to the book.  Beautiful Constraint Book Cover
The book discusses how to shift away from the typical “victim” role by understanding how our routines control things, ask the right questions, and focus on “how” and not “if”.

Focus on HOW and not IF

A good example: one of the recommendations in the book is in your team meetings no one on your team is allowed to utter the words “we can’t because…”.  They must replace those words with “we can if…”.   This forces the generation of ideas and promotes a positive attitude rather than a victim attitude.
The book describes how many innovative ideas are due to constraints and those innovations would never have come about without those constraints.
To force innovation in your organization you can create artificial constraints for your team.  This will foster innovative thinking and push for “outside the box” ideas.  The tougher the constraint, the greater the challenge for your team.  Possibly the greater the final outcome too.
The term Theory of Constraints may be common to some.  However that concept is different than what is being discussed in the book.  The TOC essentially relies on managing a constraint or eliminating it, and then addressing the next constraint in sequence.
The book authors instead propose to exploit the constraint or leverage it to create a new possibility.  Hence the title “beautiful constraint”.

Mining has no shortage of constraints

We all know the mining industry has more than enough constraints placed upon it today. It may be lack of funding, lack of skilled talent, environmental pressures, supply-demand issues, social issues, or security issues.  Each mining project may have additional constraints, so one probably doesn’t need to create artificial constraints for the team.
The mining industry has no option but to try to use these constraints in a constructive manner.  Miners must not let them pull the industry down nor simply wait until they go away.  When people say “Mining is cyclical and it will all turn around soon.”, that’s an example of waiting for the constraint to go away.

How long do you wait before taking your own action?

The bottom line is that the book is an eye opener and enlightening.  It may be telling some of us what we already know deep inside but don’t acknowledge openly.  Don’t wait any longer, start innovating, and don’t be afraid of grand innovations.
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New Mining Software and 43-101 Legal Issues

Date: July 6, 2015 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: 2 Replies
43-101 issues
NI 43-101 puts a fair amount of legal liability on the Qualified Person preparing a resource or reserve estimate or sign off on an advanced study.  The QP is to be responsible for the accuracy of their work and take legal responsibility.
Every so often some new mining software comes along and I often wonder what are the risks in using it? Some examples of new mining software that I have heard about (but not personally used) nor have seen mentioned in any 43-101 studies are SimSched, the ThreeDify’s software packages, NPV One, and Bentley.

Is the software doing everything correctly?

Given that as a QP I am legally responsible for my work, I am  bit apprehensive about how I can be assured the new software will provide reliable and accurate results for which I accept legal liability.  The last thing I would want to do is issue a public technical report which is found to be in error due to a software bug.
Irrespective of 43-101, if you are working at a mining operation the last thing you want to do is present management with an incorrect reserve, pit design, or production plan.
If you are a consultant, how agreeable will your client be when you tell him that his study was done using a novel software package and not one of the industry standard packages, and there was an error in it?
I recall working with a major mining company and there was a reluctance to adopt any new software that was unproven and not an industry standard.  Money was not the issue; the company’s concern  was with the risk in using unproven software.

What if you have a limited budget?

How do you view new software if you have a limited budget?   The new software may be cheaper, may appear to be be great, and may be a technological improvement and all at a lower cost.  However the software risk still remains.  There is no guarantee that all software output is correct simply because it comes from a computer.
As a QP, I suggest the onus is on the software developers to demonstrate that they can produce reliable and comparable results under all conditions.  They need to be able to convince the future users that their software is accurate.
Perhaps over time the new software will gain wider adoption and be generally accepted.  We may see more 43-101 reports that use it and hence it will get more overall acceptance.
Another question when developing a market for new software is whether it is better to focus on more consultant adoption or more mining company adoption?
Will mining companies use the software if their consultants are using it, or will consultants use it if more companies adopt it?  It’s an interesting discussion that new software vendors must deal with in trying to grow their market share.

 

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Independent Consultants Are Growing

Date: June 23, 2015 Author: Ken Kuchling Comments: 2 Replies
I have read quite a few articles indicating that the mining industry is seeing a shortage of experienced people, on both the technical and management side of the business.  Apparently the baby boomer generation is now nearing their retirement or early-retirement stage and there is a gap in the number of experienced people following behind.
Many of these retirees enter the “independent consultant” stage of their careers.
I also hear from recruiters that there is a shortage of engineers willing to take remote or international assignments.  This is particularly difficult when a senior level candidate has a growing family.

Can the independent engineers help out?

In a previous article (14. Miners – Why Have Your Own Independent Consultant?) I discussed why mining companies (or even consulting firms) should make use of the independent engineers as advisers or Board members.
I understand from colleagues in the mining industry that many of the people nearing retirement are willing to take on consulting assignments or board or directors roles or other management roles.  They are often willing to work part time and independently.  Or they may work as “associates” with engineering firms.
So there likely is a significant network of experienced people out there.  It’s just a matter of being able to tap into that network when someone needs specific expertise.
So how can one do this?
LinkedIn currently seems to be the only global network for technical people.  It is a great way to connect with engineers and geologists industry wide.
LinkedIn members work everywhere, at mine operations, consulting firms, financial houses,  as independents, or even retired. Almost every technical person I know is registered on LinkedIn.
The question is how to find these people when you are looking for a specific independent expertise for a short term or over the longer term.

Networking

Networking with people you already know is the most common approach.  However what if you need someone with particular knowledge?
LinkedIn is a great search mechanism for technical experts.  With a keyword search one can identify a lot of experts with very specific skill sets.  The problem is that many of the experts highlighted by the LinkedIn search may be fully employed at mining operations or with large consulting firms and may not be the person you are looking for.
To my knowledge, there is no searchable online registry solely intended for independent geologists and engineers.  It would be in the interests of the mining industry to have some type of easily searchable independent consultant directory to be able to tap into the expertise that is out there.  I understand that MineLife.org  is attempting to build such an online service but it still appears to be early in the development stage.
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