Tailings Dam Engineer of Record (EoR): There’s Nothing Conventional About It

Engineer of Record (EoR) is a simple and resolute concept that’s applied throughout the western world for civil works construction. It’s a term that fits in a nice neat box; it represents a single person who is solely responsible for engineering design. But how can the EoR concept be applied to a transient design—one that implements the observational approach with a construction life that covers decades, often exceeding a design engineer’s career or lifetime, and one that is directly impacted by changes in the state of practice? This is where the EoR definition becomes foggy. The roles and responsibilities of the EoR are interpreted differently by owners, regulatory agencies, and design professionals, based, in part, on experience or legal interpretation. This disparity is no more prominent than in the mining industry.