South African Goldfields, qualifying as a Mines Engineer in 1996. In 1997, I was transferred to the company’s head office, where I embarked on an initial career in capital project development, involved in design, cost estimation, and construction management for a series of capital projects in nickel, copper, platinum, and chrome. In 2003, I was accepted into graduate school at the University of British Columbia, graduating with an MSc in mineral process engineering in 2005 and then a PhD in mining engineering in 2008. What are your areas of expertise and professional experience? My main area of expertise is in process- and process plant design, and the techno-economic evaluation of mining and mineral processing projects in both base and precious metals. As a technologist, I have major specialisations in process technology, including sensorbased sorting, high-pressure grinding, high-speed stirred milling as well as coarse- and fine-particle flotation. As a consultant, I have a wide range of experience designing as well as evaluating mining and mineral processing projects - both open pit and underground - across commodities including copper, nickel, chrome, iron ore, lead-zinc, tin, tungsten and more recently lithium, and across geographies including Chile, through the Americas, to sub-Saharan Africa, the UK, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Kazakhstan. When did you start providing expert witness opinion/reports and evidence and how did this come about? I originally got involved in Expert Witness work while still a PhD student at UBC, having been drafted in to support an opinion in a dispute between two competing process technology vendors. Subsequently, as CEO and CTO of a mining technology company, I was involved firstly in the drafting of, then in the defense of several key filings in a growing family of patents for that company. When I returned to the UK and to consulting in 2018, I was asked to assist the then MD of Bara Consulting in an investor-state arbitration concerning a junior gold project developer and a Central Asian state, acting for the State. Then, on the strength of that combined experience, I led as Expert Witness in an Investor-State patent dispute, then on two Investor-State expropriation matters (acting for the Investor), advised on an Investor-Investor M&A dispute, plus as Expert Witness for the State on an Investor-State operational dispute. What type of expert witness services do you provide, and to which type of client? As I mentioned above, I typically act as the Mining and Mineral Processing Expert in mostly Investor-State disputes; perhaps, unlike other companies or Experts, we do not specialize in or focus on representing Investor or State, are equally happy to act for either on a case-by-case basis. A minority of matters are Investor-Investor, while a small number of matters so far have been patent disputes in the field of either mining or mineral processing technology. What are some of the common challenges you face when working with instructing solicitors or third parties and how do you overcome these challenges? I would say the most common challenge we face in these matters is bridging the knowledge and practice gap between, for example, ourselves as non-legal technical experts and non-technical legal experts. We work and have worked with fantastic lawyers at the top of their game who really need to grasp the technical gist enough to deliver the legal case, whereas we, as Experts, really need to grasp, at the very least, the merits of the case enough to then deliver strongly on the technical or techno-economic Opinion. A secondary challenge, in my personal experience, has been - again, as a non-legal technical expert - getting to grips with and perhaps reaching across the table during the Instruction phase to make sure the Instructions are as clear as possible and that we as Experts can then deliver against those Instructions (as readers may well know, poorly instructed matters otherwise strong on merits and jurisdiction can fall down if the Instructions were poorly crafted or executed against. Apart from quality and depth of knowledge, what do you consider the essential elements of an expert witness report? I think objectivity and clarity of message are essential in the Expert’s report. In some cases evident bias towards, for 10 LAWYER MONTHLY AUGUST 2024 We believe, as Expert Witnesses, that our primary obligation is to speak truly and objectively to the Tribunal or the Court as the case may be.
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