Diavik Diamond Mines has received the national award of achievement from the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers (CCPE) for the design and construction of the Diavik A154 dike.
Building the dike at Lac de Gras, 300 km northeast of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, was key to bringing the mine into production.
The award was presented at a ceremony in Calgary, Alta., to Diavik Diamond Mines, which manages the project, and the joint engineering firm of Nishi-Khon/SNC Lavalin.
Deputy Project Manager John Wonnacott and Nishi-Khon/SNC-Lavalin Chief Engineer Anthony Rattue accepted the award on behalf of their respective companies.
“This shows that our colleagues in the engineering profession recognize our accomplishments,” says Wonnacott. “We’ve done a number of things that represent advances on accepted technology and practices.”
It was the first such dike constructed in Canada, and it created a model that will likely be copied as other diamond mines come into production in the Canadian tundra. The A154 Dike serves to isolate a portion of the lakebed from the main body of the lake, allowing for open-pit mining of diamonds. The dike is 3.9 km long, up to 25 metres high and encloses an area of 1.5 sq. km. It comprises 2.2 million cubic metres of zoned rock fill and includes a plastic concrete diaphragm wall which extends through both the fill and the till foundation. The wall is married to the granite bedrock by a continuous barrier of jet-grouted columns.
The dike was designed from 1998 through to 2000 and constructed in 2001-2002. Dewatering of the enclosure was carried out from July to September of 2002. Close visual monitoring of the dike shows it is performing properly.
Nishi-Khon/SNC Lavalin is a joint venture between global engineering firm SNC Lavalin and Dogrib-owned Nishi Khon Engineering and Environmental Services, a First Nations company based in Yellowknife, N.W.T.
CCPE is the national organization that regulates engineering in Canada and licenses the country’s more than 160,000 professional engineers.
The Diavik diamond mine is owned 60-40 by Rio Tinto-subsidiary Diavik Diamond Mines and Aber Diamond Mines. Both companies are based in Yellowknife.
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