Tulloch professionals provided geomatics services to De Beers Canada at their Victor Mine Project site. The site is located approximately 100 kilometers west of Attawapiskat on the south shore of the Attawapiskat River. Barring the use of a winter road, the site is only accessible by aircraft and as such requires all personnel to stay and eat in the facilities they provide. Victor Mine is an open pit mine which is focused on the extraction of high quality diamonds from one of several local kimberlite pipes.

Initially, Tulloch was brought on site to provide support for the construction one of of their required waste containment facilities. The support included site and grading layout, as well as data collection for and compilation of as-built drawing. The containment facility is designed to hold the fine silt-like waste that is generated from processing the kimbelite ore, and is about 9 meters in height. The facility itself consists of a permeable dyke constructed of coarse processed kimberlite (slightly finer gradation than granular “A” crush), and is placed and compacted half meter lifts.

Since the containment dyke is constructed of waste material the overall construction of the facility is staged over the course of approximately six years, with this past year being only the second year of construction. Typically, half the perimeter of the dyke is raised by 3 meters in a given construction season. Additionally, a second containment facility is planned for construction after completion of the first.

While Tulloch was maintaining an on site presence, De Beers made additional use of our services and asked us to provide survey support for the completion of the last 500m of their airstrip. Additionally, De Beers used our services to complete a part of their annual environmental monitoring program. This required the measurement of elevations for approximately 50 piezometers spread out over an area of approximately 600 square kilometers. As a result of the survey being spread over such a large area it was necessary to make extensive use of static GPS units and De Beers’ on site helicopter.