Having built a strong reputation in the geotechnical engineering space for more than 50 years, SRK Consulting South Africa (SA) has established its own specialised in-house geotechnical laboratory at its Johannesburg practise– becoming one of only a few international consulting firms with such a facility.
The dedicated laboratory began operating in February 2025 to streamline and verify testing – especially in the demanding field of tailings management. There is also a strong applied research and skills development aspect to the new laboratory, according to John Stiff, partner, engineering geologist and department lead at SRK Consulting SA. Stiff noted that extensive laboratory work has been required to drive mining companies’ alignment to the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM), and this has put added pressure on the capacity of laboratories world-wide.
“Our in-house geotechnical testing facility, which is purely for our own internal purposes, brings many benefits for us and for our clients,” he explained. “For a start, it improves the services that we deliver, by allowing us to speed up testing where necessary and to add a layer of quality assurance to results that we request from commercial laboratories.”