Manuel brings more than 20 years of extensive experience in tailings facility management, tailings dam safety, earthquake engineering and risk assessments. He has worked at mine sites in Canada, the United States, Africa, Mexico, Serbia, Peru, Chile, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, leading complex multidisciplinary studies of tailing storage facilities (TSFs) in both stable and active tectonic environments.
Manuel uses his practical experience to strengthens Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM) compliance audits and dam safety inspections and reviews. He has managed technical reviews of extreme-consequence TSFs in Peru and Congo and has led the geotechnical design of filtered tailings deposits and conventional tailings dams. Manuel has also overseen seismic upgrades and conversions of tailings dams, applying both precautionary and performance-based approaches.
To manage geotechnical risks in tailings dams and heap leach facilities, Manuel promotes the use of variability in data to underpin decision-making. By integrating professional experience with in-situ and laboratory testing and advanced computer modelling, he addresses uncertainties in facility design and construction. His large-scale laboratory and consulting work has led to published contributions on reducing soil loads on buried pipelines, developing spectral accelerations and seismic hazard maps for Peru, and improving methods to quantify and mitigate seismic risk for upstream tailings facilities at closure.
Manuel holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Arequipa in Peru, a master’s degree in civil engineering from Pontificia Universidad Católica Peru, and a Ph.D. in geotechnical engineering from the University of British Columbia in Canada. He is an active member on the risk-informed design subcommittee of the Canadian Dam Association’s mining dams committee.
Country experience:
- Argentina
- Bolivia
- Brazil
- Canada
- Chile
- Colombia
- Congo
- Dominican Republic
- Finland
- Mexico
- Peru
- Serbia
- South Africa
- Spain
- United States of America