As International Mining prepares its April issue, including a look at the latest in block caving, Gemcom notes that Dr. Tony Diering, VP of Advanced Technologies with the company, will be speaking at the SME 2010 on Block Cave Scheduling using PCBC. Diering, who has been involved in the development of mining applications for more than 25 years, is a driving force behind the Gemcom PCBC software, which is used by the majority of the world’s mines employing this specialised mining method. He is also the author of numerous white papers on block caving.

He will be presenting on Tuesday, March 2, at 10:25 a.m.

PCBC is a software package which has been developed over the last 20 years for the planning and scheduling of block cave mines. This paper will present an update of the various research and development activities done to PCBC recently. It also providesan overview of the current capabilities of the software. This includes tools for both feasibility type studies as well as tools for operating mines. PCBC is used extensively by prospective and operating block cave mines and some of the recent appli-cations are described.