Evidence is showing extremely high rates of extractive project failure, where stakeholders’ conflicts, regulatory and policy-related challenges, and unfavourable external environments are cited as root causes, often stemming from environmental performance concerns and legacy issues of past practices. The work of each engineering discipline plays a significant role in enabling risk avoidance and improvement integration, as well as addressing external stakeholder concerns and requirements. Bringing siloed stakeholders together to identify and understand risks, and to discover innovative solutions, provides a much greater chance of proactively resolving and eliminating long-term, systematic challenges that impact approvals and external stakeholder support. Key planning and engagement strategies, innovative shifts in tailings management, and other considerations will be discussed, that, if successfully implemented, result in three main benefits: - An ease of obtaining environmental approvals, - A reduced risk of project cost and schedule overruns, and - An integrated contribution to achieving lower cost, lower risk, and minimal impact operations and closure.
