This is a half-day, practitioner-focused workshop that builds on shared understanding and supports practical discussion around the application of Safe Closure. Building on the 2025 Banff dialogue, this 2026 session emphasizes long-term performance, risk management, and defensible decision-making for both active and legacy facilities. Participants will explore evolving interpretations of Safe Closure under GISTM, confront persistent misconceptions, and examine what Safe Closure is and is not through facilitated discussions, interactive Q&A, and cross-industry case studies.

The objective is to provide the target audience with a status of the GTMI work completed to date, including progress on the auditing process, certification, and feedback received on the Protocols.

Waste is a function of perspective, not composition. Unlock the potential of mining waste with this dynamic, interactive course, designed for mining professionals seeking practical solutions and innovative strategies. Discover global trends, proven technologies, and case studies on remining, reprocessing, and repurposing mine waste for operational, environmental, and economic gains. Through engaging presentations and interactive discussion, participants will learn how to turn tailings into valuable resources, reduce costs, ease approvals, and create value-added products without disrupting core operations. Join us to transform your approach and deliver benefits today.

Tailings often exhibit complex consolidation and drainage behavior, making the interpretation of in situ tests challenging. This full-day course focuses on understanding undrained shear strength evaluation and the implications of partial drainage during cone penetration and vane shear testing. Attendees will explore how adjusting penetration or rotation rates can improve characterization accuracy for tailings. Practical guidance will be provided on identifying conditions in which variable-rate testing enhances the interpretation of tailings. Field case studies and recent research programs will be presented to illustrate these variable-rate effects.

This full-day workshop introduces Trigger Action Response Plans (TARPs) as essential tools for managing TSF performance using Risk-Informed Decision Making and Performance-Based Design principles. The precautionary design approach includes design factors of safety, monitoring, and the observational method where instrument threshold levels are set based on minimum factors of safety. The Performance-Based Design approach also includes monitoring and the observational method, but the key updates are the incorporation of real-time response modelling to match observations in field instrumentation and the evaluation of reserve resistance(s) versus factors of safety. TSFs are built over many years and change constantly over their operational life; Performance-Based Design attempts to predict performance over the full life of the facility and identify thresholds for implementing actions and responses prior to more substantial performance issues developing.

Mine closure designs frequently overestimate the erosional performance of proposed landforms and cover systems, creating long-term liability and costly ongoing post-closure maintenance due to rill and gully erosion. This half-day workshop introduces Rillgen2D, a newly developed predictive erosion model purpose-built for mine closure engineering applications. Through a combination of theory, live demonstration, and guided hands-on exercises, this workshop will give participants practical experience across the full modeling workflow: preparing topographic data, selecting site-specific parameters, running simulations, interpreting results, and applying findings to refine landform and cover designs. Designed for mine closure planners, civil and environmental engineers, and consulting professionals, the workshop presents real-world case studies from legacy mine sites to demonstrate how Rillgen2D can be integrated into landform and cover design workflows.

The Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM) is widely seen as the benchmark for responsible tailings management with many global miners already committed to and actively pursuing its implementation. However, reaching conformance has taken longer than anticipated with the main reason cited as social aspects. Despite people being the centre of GISTM, the social aspects remain the most challenging aspect to implement as they require time to build relationships and collaboration from multiple parties to inform decision making. This full-day course provides a comprehensive exploration of the social aspects of the GISTM, covering meaningful stakeholder engagement, embedding human rights and effective grievance mechanisms. The aim is to demystify the interconnected nature of GISTM and demonstrate how multiple disciplines are required to iteratively input throughout the GISTM journey. Attendees will gain practical tools and applied examples to strengthen alignment with GISTM across diverse operating contexts.

The Canadian Dam Association (CDA) published a technical bulletin on Tailings Dam Breach Analysis (TDBA) in 2021. The bulletin provides a process, outlined key steps as well as the hydrotechnical, geotechnical, rheological and modelling aspects that are relevant for these analyses. Subsequent to the publication of this bulletin CDA developed a short course to promote the science of TDBA and build awareness on the risk of tailings dam failure. This course provides training to tailings management professionals to undertake TDBA for their tailings facilities. The course also allows the instructors and participants to share their experiences on the rapidly evolving practice of TDBA.

An aspirational, interactive symposium tailored for developing professionals, including students and those up to 15 years into their careers working in mine waste from across the industry. The first symposium was held at the 2024 T&MW conference in Denver and was attended by over 40 participants with positive reception.

This short course addresses the business case for tailings management alternatives in increasingly water-constrained environments. Participants will explore non-conventional disposal alternatives, including filtered, paste, and co-disposal approaches as well as hybrid configurations. The course examines how water scarcity drives dewatering requirements, depositional stacking plan design, and ultimately shapes both the technical and economic feasibility of a project. Central to the course are technical challenges of meeting continually advancing standards of practice at large scales (50,000 tpd and above). Topics include dewatering efficiencies, critical state soil mechanics, driving gradients and seepage, and the question of practical height limits for stacked facilities.