Biography

Brian Hall is a mining engineer with over 50 years’ experience in the mining industry. He holds degrees in both mining engineering and commerce from the University of Queensland, Australia. The first 21 years of his career were spent mostly in increasingly-senior mine planning positions at large underground base metals operations in Australia (Mount Lyell and Mount Isa) and South Africa (Black Mountain), interspersed with a number of operating management roles in both countries. Since 1994, he has been a mining consultant with what is now AMC Consultants in Australia, where he has worked on projects for a variety of commodities and mining and treatment methods around the world. Over the last 20+ years, Brian has developed a reputation as an expert in cut-off grade and mine strategy optimization, assisting clients to maximize value, however that might be defined, across the whole process stream, from resources in the ground to sale of product, and over the whole life cycle, from the gleam in the geologist’s eye, through multiple study phases, construction, development, and operations, to closure. He authored the 300-page text “Cut-off Grades and Optimising the Strategic Mine Plan”, published by The AusIMM in 2014. For 10 years concluding in 2023, he also presented a core unit on mining project evaluation several times a year in the Master of Mineral and Energy Economics program at Curtin University in Western Australia. Brian is now officially retired, but still engages in occasional “grey-haired arm-waving” advice and philosophizing and presents a two-day course on cut-off grades and mine strategy optimization a few times each year.