When the rock gets harder, the engineering has to get smarter

A mine can have the resource, the capital and the equipment, but if you can’t manage the ground around an excavation, very little else matters.

That’s what makes rock mechanics and geotechnical engineering so fundamental to modern mining, particularly as operations contend with deeper mines, higher-stress environments and increasingly complex geotechnical conditions. In April 2027, many of the specialists working on those problems will meet in Perth for AusRock 2027.

Held from 7 to 9 April 2027 at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre, AusRock 2027 is the Australasian Ground Control Conference and an International Society for Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering Regional Symposium.

With more than 20 years behind it, the conference has become an important forum for discussing advances in rock mechanics, geotechnical engineering and ground control.

For a highly specialised profession, that focus matters.

Ground control doesn’t allow much room for theory without application

Rock mechanics can sound highly academic from the outside. Underground, it’s anything but.

The discipline deals with questions that directly affect how mines are designed and operated: how rock masses respond to excavation, where instability may occur, how ground should be supported and how changing stresses can be understood and managed.

That technical brief can include:

• Geological structures
• Ground conditions
• Rock stress
• Rock strength
• Groundwater
• Blast damage
• Excavation design
• Ground support

It’s a broad field with real operational consequences. It’s also why the people working in it need opportunities to get out of organisational silos and compare approaches.

AusRock 2027 is designed to do exactly that, bringing mining professionals, researchers and technical specialists together to examine new research, practical solutions and technical developments in ground control.

The interesting work now crosses traditional boundaries

One of the more telling things about AusRock 2027 is the breadth of expertise being invited into the technical conversation.

The conference extends beyond conventional mining and geotechnical disciplines to areas such as:

• Physics
• Mathematics
• Civil engineering
• Environmental engineering
• Robotics
• Computer science
• Data analytics

That’s important.

The next advances in rock mechanics won’t necessarily come from one discipline working alone. Better monitoring, modelling, automation and data analysis are creating new ways to understand ground behaviour, but those technologies still need to solve real mining problems.

For a society of mining professionals, that’s exactly where a technical conference earns its value: bringing different specialist perspectives into the same room without losing sight of operational reality.

International exchange matters more in a specialist field

AusRock 2027 carries another distinction. As an International Society for Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering Regional Symposium, it provides an international forum for the exchange of technical knowledge between rock mechanics practitioners.

The conference is co-chaired by internationally recognised geomechanics and ground control specialists Professor Ismet Canbulat and Professor Serkan Saydam. It is delivered by AusIMM in partnership with UNSW.

That’s more than an international label.

Ground conditions may be site-specific, but the engineering questions cross borders. Bringing researchers and practitioners from different mining regions together creates an opportunity to compare methods, challenge assumptions and see how others are approaching similar problems.

For specialists, that’s often where the useful conversations start.

If ground control is your profession, this is your room

The case for attending AusRock 2027 isn’t that it covers everything happening in mining.

It’s almost the opposite.

It’s valuable because it concentrates on a technically demanding part of the industry and puts the people working closest to those problems together. As an international speciality event, it offers a focused environment for technical exchange without separating research from the realities of operating mines.

Workshops, field trips and networking activities will also form part of the broader conference experience, creating more opportunities to examine ideas in context and speak directly with other practitioners.

If your work touches rock mechanics, geotechnical engineering, ground control, mine design or geotechnical risk, put 7 to 9 April 2027 in Perth in the calendar.