Director and founder of Red Earth Engineering, a Geosyntec company. He is an acknowledged leader and expert in the geotechnical aspects of tailings management and serves on several Independent Technical Review Boards (ITRBs). Symon is a past chair of the Queensland Chapter of Australian Geomechanics Society (AGS), immediate past chair of the Queensland Tailings Group (QTG) and the current chair of the ANCOLD Tailings Advisory Group.

An experienced geotechnical engineer; Founder of the in situ testing company Insitu Geotech Services (IGS); Fellow of Engineers Australia (1990); Registered Professional Engineer (1977); Committee Member of the Australian Geomechanics Society; and Committee Member of and Technical Adviser to the Queensland Tailings Group.

Tierney is Australian General Manager of the international in situ testing company Conetec. She has >12 years experience hands-on and in management in in situ testing and direct-push sampling; 8 years of this time was spent in the “geotechnically challenging” Canadian oil sands industry.

David is a Principal Tailings Engineering with 20 years' experience. His areas of focus are the in situ and laboratory characterisation of tailings, stability and liquefaction analyses and numerical modelling of TSFs .His career has included periods as a consultant and as a researcher at The University of Western Australia working on two industry-focussed projects to better characterise the static liquefaction susceptibility of tailings and improve education of tailings practitioners. He has recently led the opening of Red Earth Engineering’s tailings-focussed laboratory in Perth (REELab).

BSc from Melbourne University, MEngSc (Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology) from UNSW. Director of Black Geotechnical and Black Insitu Testing. Co-founded Black Insitu Testing in 2008 from a desire to improve the availability of high-quality in-situ testing in Victoria. Billy has particular expertise in use of geophysics as they relate to geotechnical characterisation mine tailings.