It all depends what you want to do.

I currently manage a tourist mine. Whilst I have no formal mining qualifications I have satisfied HM Inspectorate of Mines that I am a fit and competent person to run a mine of the type and size that I do. Having worked in this sector since the mid 90s I was able to demonstrate to HMIM that I had gained enough experience and knowledge to carry out my duties in a safe and professional manner.

There is a New Mechanical Engineer starting in the Big Pit museum,
It started as a Placement from college,one in London i believe,now he has a start there,and underground training in Aberpergwm

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/cornwall/academic_departments/csm/ 
or possibly Royal School of Mines at Imperial college, London, though I could no longer find them online?

If you do that the 'system' will guide you through towards experience and jobs.

If you want to do the 'miner' route your biggest problem will be getting a first start for the practical experience to start getting jobs.

Yes, as Tamarmole says, you can be a mine manager with no formal experience but you need informal experience and that can be just as hard to get!

Best to forget coal mines altogether and go for all the rest.

So, do some research on Camborne and see if you can get in there?

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/cornwall/academic_departments/csm/ 

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So, do some research on Camborne and see if you can get in there?

Most interesting... even more interesting, SWMBO says I can do it if I can organise it, and moving... It own't happen this year, but we'll see about making it happen.

Thanks for the information, Much appreciated.

NewStuff

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If you want to do mining engineering, you will probably need to do your A Levels, there may be access to a HND with a National Diploma, however a word of warning, having graduated from Camborne myself: -

A mathematical ability is a must, the level of Maths encountered on the mining engineering degree is extreme to say the least, if you do need to do A levels, I would certainly recommend that you make maths one of them, without it after the first year you will find it a massive struggle.

Cheers for the heads up. Maths shouldn't be a problem, Show me a formulae, and it'll get solved.

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How are your Laplace transforms and Lagrange undetermined multipliers? Mine are crap.

Give me a week, and I'll tell you 😉
I learn *very* quickly.

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Good good, you'll need to, sort of things you'll come across: -

1. Surveying
2. Fluid Mechanics (pumping and ventilation mainly)
3. Thermodynamics
4. Electrical Engineering
5. Mine Haulage (Principally mechanics with regards to rope haulage, conveyors, rail bound haulage and trackless)
6. Lots of geotechnical engineering
7. Economics
8. Materials engineering

And lots more besides. Its a great degree as the syllabus is so broad, if the mining industry is in the doldrums (As it was majorly in 2000 when I graduated) you can easily branch out into other engineering fields.

I had a look a the syllabus, and that's pretty much what it was. Out of interest, how was it finding work afterwards? I keep threatening to go back to engineering, as I enjoy it, and this may be a way to combine that, with a host of other things, and hopefully, some decent pay as well.

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In 2000 it was difficult to say the least, the mining industry was at its lowest ebb in generations. A lot of the guys ended up working on tunneling projects, particularly Heathrow T5 and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. I ended up working as a construction site manager, now working as a civil engineer for the Power distribution company down here, I encountered an old friend last year who works for The water company as a civil engineer and another a couple of years ago working as a site engineer for a civil engineering firm. At the moment looking at it you could if you desired pretty much walk into a job in Aus or Canada, if you look on the infomine site the number of vacancies is phenomenal, theres also lots of consultancy work based in the UK.

Good to know that there are other avenues available, and that I'm not imagining there to be more than there actually is. That said, who knows what will be happening in a few years. I need to look at the logistics of actually getting to Cornwall etc, which I suspect will pose just as much of a challenge to me.

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getting to Cornwall is easy, straight down the A303.. I suspect you actually mean studying full-time while balancing domestic commitments, which is rather harder.

I spent some years in civils but I found it ultimately unproductive, I suspect because I started in drilling and ultimately found my way back into the oil industry. I found with civils that you really need to spend your whole career in it, or people will simply not acept you, which is a shame because the oil industry pays soooooo much more.

The civils attitude seems to be that 'so-and-so will leave in 5 years, he is not one-of-us'; there is a general attitude that there are permanent staff, 'agency riff-raff' and nothing in between. If you have spent time overseas you are not really welcome.

In the petrochemical sector it is a case of 'so-and-so is available, can we use what he has to offer' and a whole spectrum of shades from permanent staff to occasional agency fill-in. Mining tends to be more towards the latter format.

I re-started my career by moving across into on-shore pipeline when civils collapsed in the early 90s and became involved in various professional development which I would never have got as a civils freelancer; I had turned down a couple of 'staff' jobs in the mid-80s, compounded the felony by pointing out that my wife earned at least as much as a teacher, and my card was marked for life.

I still do occasional civils work but not to any great extent, the incentive isn't really there. I like to keep my hand in to some extent but have given up on making any professional progress in that direction. The British civils industry has very largely lost the ability to compete in the wider world and so is a closed shop of a limited number of people who generally have few prospects outside UK by the time they are past their early 30s; I noticed this with the TML people who went on to the Jubilee Line in the 90s, CTRL in the 2000s and are now at CrossRail. It's like coal mining, a bit incestuous.

As knocker says, mining engineers to tend to do well in a range of other fields whereas civils graduates rarely stray far from civils. One of the young CSM graduates from the Combe Down project went to Schlumberger, a seriously major name in the oil service sector, while another went to a consultant working on Crossrail.

my calculus was ropy forty years ago and it hasn't inmproved since....

tamarmole illustrates my earlier point about being a manager with no specific qualifications as such. That said it certainly doesn't help.

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Blue polyprop comes to mind!

Maths does seem to play a major part in mining qualifications.
Like Derrickman, I only dimly grasped calculus but luckily, since I qualified, I have never used it since!!
I believe that historically, mining engineers were broadly trained to cover all eventualities.
You landed on a foriegn shore, then built the harbour, then the road up the hill, then did some prospecting, then sunk your mine, etc,etc.
I would suggest that if you are resourceful enough to get yourself to Camborne then you will be resourceful enough to succeed in the industry.
Please keep us informed of progress!

tamarmole illustrates my earlier point about being a manager with no specific qualifications as such. That said it certainly doesn't help.

It took me twelve years of crap pay and job insecurity to become a mine manager and in the end I only got there via dead man's shoes. For me it was a labour of love, if you want any materialistic standard of living I really wouldn't recommend the "tamarmole route".

I got the 'labour of love' thing out of the way early on. My first mine manager appointment was at age 18 for a few years.
I am currently the next 'dead man' having been manager of my current mine for 15 years and only 8 more to go to retire........

I can see me needing to do a course in Maths / Calculus before I apply for any Degree level courses. While I could likely figure out stuff on my own, it's going to be far harder and longer than actually having someone who knows what they are on about teaching me. It can be done while I am sorting Logistics to get into Cambourne.

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Hi all

Just a quick note to say thanks for the advice & info. At the CIRCA meeting, as I suspected, there was nobody from the heritage or mine history exploration bodies ( I did point this out to the organisers).

The good news is that most of the people in the groups I was in, we were in little workshops, were of the opinion that any approach should be risk based and that leaving mine entries alone where they posed little risk could be an option. Some still wanted to fill them in where-ever they found them, but the majority thought that this was not a good idea for many & various reasons.

The focus of their guidance may be restricted back to the re-development, planning and construction issues around old mine sites, as many, even from industry, thought they were casting their net too widely.

The issue of training mine managers & engineers did come up in the workshops, as many thought that in order to do any significant work on a mine site, even on the surface, ought in many cases lead to the employment of a mine manager, but certainly if anything was going to be done underground. There was some concern about how people train and qualify as mine engineers and managers, which I think chimes with what has been said on this site.

The guidance is apparently due out mid to late 2011

That's about it

😉

Cheesy, I assume you will get a copy of said Guidance when it comes out?
I suspect several of us would be interested in what it says.
If you can remember please would you give us a heads-up when it comes out?