We have over forty years’ of experience in the assessment of a variety of construction materials, including aggregates (concrete aggregate, shotcrete aggregate, asphalt aggregate, structural fill, bulk fill, railroad ballast, drainage stone, filter sand and others), armourstone / rip rap, frac sand, and other specialty products.

Our experience in litigation and mediation support began in the 1980s and has continued to the present day, with claims involving the quality of concrete aggregate, quality of concrete, the stability of structural fill, pyritic heave, ground settlement in structures, provision of poor- or marginal-quality aggregates for concrete, dumping of contaminated fill as reclamation material in an aggregate site, and disputes over the value of aggregate resources.

Due diligence field visit of a quarry site.

My experience ranges from preliminary review of sites that are under consideration for aggregate resource or rock resource development, including for industrial minerals; estimation of remaining or historic (extracted) resources; determination of value of aggregate resources on a site, for negotiation, tax valuation, donation or exchange purposes; through to extensive, in-depth resource assessment by means of site surveys, driving – walkover reconnaissance, geophysics surveys, drilling and test pit exploration programs, sampling and arrangement for testing of raw material samples obtained on site.

I have extensive experience in aggregate reactions in bound media (i.e., concrete, asphalt), with a larger focus on reactions in concrete.  For most concrete aggregates, this means “alkali-aggregate reaction” (AAR) in its various forms.  But over the last 15 or so years, new forms of chemical reactions that involve sulphide (sulfide) minerals in aggregates have come into play.  Development of standards and protocols to deal with sulfide reaction prediction and assessment are “in progress” and are being developed and tweaked and refined, and are not well understood by industry as a consequence.

The valuation of geologic resources is well understood in the metals, petroleum and diamonds and other sparkly things world. In the realm of commodities of an industrial nature, such as construction aggregates, rock quarries (for both aggregates and other engineering applications), valuations are far less standardized. Use of protocols such as the NI43-101 and its international equivalents, such as JORC, SME, are sometimes used in assessing the resource quantity, quality and value.
These approaches may not have direct application to the world of bulk, low-cost commodities such as aggregate, and this a “real estate-type” valuation may be a more useful approach.
We have undertaken numerous valuations of aggregate/rock resources, and for a variety of purposes:
– transactional
– due diligence
– property value
– tax write-off/donation value
– exchange value
– treaty negotiation (First Nations, e.g.)
Each case is unique but all have common elements that require good knowledge of these types of earth resources.