Computer aided mine design is a different sort of class from anything you have taken before as part of your undergraduate education. Unlike the usual lecture-read-turn in homework-take test format, in Mining 460 you will apply knowledge from all your classes to perform a single large design project. As in the real world, you will may elect to work in teams, or you may pursue your project on your own. You will be required to report your activities and results both orally and in writing. The course is intended to simulate the multi-faceted project design and engineering work that you will do as part of your engineering career. The final product of your work will be a technical report and economic feasibility study of your project. As with all real world projects, your results are not guaranteed to be positive.
This course is built of several units. Unlike many classes, some of these units run concurrently.
Unit #1 is an Introduction to the Project
Each year the class will have a different design project. The class begins with an introduction to this years project and goals. Class members are organized into teams as appropriate. Because the project is done by student teams, your teams will begin immediately to identify issues and suggest solutions and plans to examine. With the assistance of the instructor your teams will make assignments and set deadlines and time tables to be followed in completing the work and arriving at a final project design and feasibility assessment. The tasks of developing the project through making assignments, evaluating results, and making choices will continue throughout the semester. An increasing amount of class time will be spent through the semester on such student driven discussion and decision making.
Unit #2 - Cost Estimation
The feasibility of any project really hinges around the ability to engineer a solution or plan that will perform the intended function while ensuring that that plan is safe to workers, safe to the environment, doable within the bounds of law, and economically viable. Following the introduction, half of the class time each of the early weeks of the semester will be devoted to explaining how the costs of different alternatives and designs can be estimated. It is intended that economic viability be a choice guiding principle throughout the semester as your groups meet and make decisions.
Unit #3 - Report Organization
Following the unit on cost estimation, lectures taking 1/2 of the time each week will begin on techniques for organizing a professional quality report. Since the work of the semester culminates in oral and written reports on the viability of the project your engineering teams designed, this material is intended to help you structure assignments, records, and calculations throughout the class with the end product in mind.
Unit #4 - Economic Analysis
As your projects come together with their estimated costs at some point projecting potential earnings will be needed. This unit is a review of discounted cash flow analysis techniques taught in Engr. 361 and here augmented with some work on tax considerations. Again the material will consume about 1/2 of the course time during the earlier part of the semester. The rest of the time is being used by the continuing design exercise on Unit #1.
Unit #5 - Student Oral Reports
These lectures will be presented by students on their design and feasibility. The work will be presented near the end of the semester when most of the design work is completed.
