Seminar by: Barry W. Smee , Ph.D.
Full-scale quality control (QC) procedures to monitor the sampling and analysis of geological materials have only routinely been used in mineral exploration since 1997 or so, although this author has been publishing methods to be used in QC programs for over 30 years. A full QC program is now a mandatory component of “Best Practices” for mineral exploration in Canada, Australia and South Africa and is dictated in Canada by National Instrument 43-101.
With a bit of forethought, planning and money, a well-designed QC program can detect contamination, salting, sampling inconsistencies, sampling over-selection, laboratory biases, analytical procedural errors, sample misnumbering or misordering, degraded analytical detection limits and changes in mineralogy. Most importantly, a QC program can quantify both the accuracy and precision of the entire sampling and analytical process. Knowledge of these two quantities provides an estimate of the potential risk associated with calculating an average grade of a drilled mineral deposit, and will allow a complete validation of the database as required by NI 43-101, SAMREC and JORC.
This seminar will outline the QA/QC procedures required to make your exploration and exploitation programs bulletproof to an audit.