Mining engineering talk with field memory.
Behind the Scenes with Bryan brings mining engineers and adjacent specialists into relaxed, technical conversations about mine waste management, site investigation, monitoring, and risk. The tone is informal, but the substance stays close to real projects, real constraints, and lessons learned in the field.
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Behind the Scenes with Bryan is a specialist conversation show built around engineering, mining, and mine waste management. Its center is technical, but its manner is relaxed. Episodes often open with location, weather, and a little professional catching up before moving into serious engineering ground. That rhythm matters. It lets guests arrive as working people first, then as sources of hard-won technical judgment. Recent episodes range across tailings governance, cone penetration testing, seismic CPT, geophysics, filtered stacks, underground openings, buttress design, geotextiles, satellite radar, instrumentation platforms, and contractor requirement systems. The show is particularly interested in the details that decide whether a design works in the field. A filter has to sit where it can actually perform. A CPT may be ideal in one soil profile and useless against shallow rock. A monitoring platform has to absorb point sensors, radar outputs, hydrological signals, and changing instruments without turning the work into a data maze. These are not broad industry trend pieces. They are conversations about judgment under constraint. Guests talk about project histories in different countries, but the geography usually serves the engineering rather than the other way around. The show also keeps returning to memory and consequence. A discussion of past mine-waste tragedy becomes a reminder that tailings work is not just compliance paperwork or clever design; it is public safety, environmental stewardship, and professional accountability. At the same time, the mood is not grim. The host leaves room for conference talk, career paths, poker invitations, weather jokes, and the ordinary friendliness of a small technical world. That balance is the appeal. Behind the Scenes with Bryan sounds like a long hallway conversation after a technical session, where the useful parts come from both the formal expertise and the offhand stories. It is most rewarding for listeners who want to hear mining and geotechnical professionals think out loud about tools, failures, assumptions, and the everyday practice behind safer mine-waste systems.
Made for: For geotechnical engineers, mining professionals, tailings specialists, instrumentation teams, and technically curious listeners who like detailed project talk. It especially suits people who want practical judgment alongside career stories and site-level context.
What sets it apart: The show stands apart by keeping technical mining-waste conversations personal and specific, with guests explaining the tradeoffs behind tools, designs, monitoring choices, and governance. It feels less like a lecture series than a professional catch-up where serious engineering lessons surface naturally.
This is generally an engineering podcast that often pertains to the world of mining, and especially mining waste management, or whatever else captures my imagination. The episodes, thankfully, will be fairly brief.
A geologic map comes first; Brian rewards your curiosity with the engineering underneath mine-site decisions.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded single-episode review on matching site-investigation tools to soil conditions, with practical career notes from Kelly Cabal.
Kelly Cabal's conversation works best as a practical look at how geotechnical teams choose the right investigation method for the ground in front of them.
A grounded discussion of filters, fines, drainage, and the cost of shortcuts in mine-waste design.
Mine-waste engineering comes through here as a study in how modest design shortcuts can turn into serious underground trouble. Brian Ulrich's conversation with Michael James stays close to the practical details: underground openings, barricades, buttresses, weak rock conditions,…
Peter Jenner connects African mining work to the practical decisions that shape an engineering career.
Peter Jenner's engineering story is most interesting when it stays close to the working conditions around him. His move to South Africa in 2011, his time managing a mining team, and his projects across Africa give the episode a practical shape, with engineering shown as a job of…
A practical look at bringing diverse mine-monitoring data into one web-based platform.
Will Conrad's conversation with Brian Ulrich gives mine monitoring a grounded, practical frame. Rather than treating instrument data as a technical sprawl, Conrad shows how time-series readings from point sensors, point-cloud outputs from InSAR and ground-based radar, and newer…
Manufacturing change, from tools to events.
STEM careers, told through human turning points.
Field notes from fluid power engineering.
Brian Ulrich interviews Johan Boshoff about his work in mining and mine waste management, catching up on personal and professional updates.
Kelly Cabal traces a route from engineering physics at the University of Alberta to CPT work at KoneTech after teaching English in southern China during the 2002-2003 SARS border closure.
Michael James describes a Mexican mine with poor rock, a vertical fault, historic underground workings, and a sinkhole that swallowed 20 to 25 meters of waste rock.
Behind the Scenes with Brian episode 199 features Peter Jenner, a geologist who traces a career from Norfolk to offshore CPT, Ghana, South Africa, and Laos.
Brian Ulrich interviews geotechnical engineer Andy Small about his 37-year career in tailings management.
Behind the Scenes with Brian talks with Will Conrad of Canary Systems about mine instrumentation, data integration, and remote monitoring.
["Brian Ulrich talks with Michael Hartley of Internology about a Command Center and an industrial Caddy built to help mining and energy teams make faster decisions.", "Hartley says he came to mining through decision science and human factors engineering in Nova Scotia, worked in UK manufacturing and at Shell in the North Sea and North Caspian Sea, then moved through Barrick Gold into an enterprise risk company that later merged into Internology.", "He argues that mining and tailings monitoring need a shift from reactive problem-solving to complex-systems thinking, because satellite images, vibrating wire piezometers, survey points, and other feeds can bury the signal.", "He backs that up with a late-2000s acquisition example that produced a bridging document with hundreds of thousands of line items and a contractor review with about 750 requirements for one risk and one function."]
Brian Ulrich interviews Todd Wisdom, a chemical engineer with nearly 30 years in mineral processing and mine waste management who recently joined the consultancy SRK.
Ed Sage, an InSAR scientist at Viridian (formerly CDG Satellite Mapping) since 2019, explains to host Brian Ulrich how satellite radar interferometry measures ground displacement at tailings facilities.
Behind the Scenes with Brian host Brian Ulrich interviews Katherine Dompierre, a civil engineer at Bentley/Seequent who worked on Syncrude's end pit lake research during her PhD before joining the team behind the GeoStudio geotechnical software suite (SlopeW, SeepW, SigmaW).
Brian Ulrich interviews Chad LePoudre about his background growing up on a farm in Manitoba and his work in mining and mine waste management.
Brian Ulrich interviews Kim Ferguson about her background in environmental science and her connection to nature.
Brian Ulrich interviews Marco Arrieta about his background and life in the Canadian Rockies.
Brian Ulrich interviews Benjamin Neville about his background and life in Perth, Australia.
Brian Ulrich interviews Catherine Lalut about her career, education, and books in the context of engineering and mining.