North America

Our North American offices are located in Denver in the USA, and Sudbury and Calgary in Canada.

The Denver office, established in 2008, provides the full range of engineering services from conceptual to detailed engineering of tailings, mine backfill and long distance pipelines, as well as dry stack filtered tailings systems. The office has extensive process engineering experience, as well as specific filtration and thickening expertise. A comprehensive laboratory supports their engineering work.

The Sudbury office, founded in 2010, focusses primarily on mine backfill systems and has broad experience in mining and mine backfill. They have executed numerous detailed engineering designs of mine backfill preparation plants and underground distribution systems and have extensive operational and commissioning expertise. The comprehensive backfill laboratory offers the full suite of backfill characterisation tests.

The Calgary office works on a diverse range of slurry handling and process projects, including working closely with numerous clients in the oil sands industry.

Leadership Team

Calgary, Canada
Stewart Bodtker

P. Eng., PE, BSc Eng. (Civil)

Stewart Bodtker has 18 years of engineering consulting experience and is currently the principal of Paterson & Cooke’s Western Canadian operations. Stewart has been involved in water/wastewater treatment and conveyance system design and construction. He has worked on a diverse range of mine tailings dewatering and slurry pipeline transport projects, including working closely with numerous clients in the Alberta oil sands industry.

Stewart Bodtker

Sudbury, Canada
Robert Brown

P.Eng. BSc Eng (Mining)

Rob Brown is the Principal of Paterson & Cooke’s Sudbury, Ontario practice, a Director of P&C (UK) Ltd. and is President of Paterson & Cooke Canada Inc.

Rob leads P&C’s global backfill group and has worked on backfill and surface paste tailings applications since 1997. He specialises in paste fill and has extensive international experience with plant/reticulation design and construction, commissioning, training and underground backfill placement. Much of his career has been spent in the field starting up new backfill operations, troubleshooting existing systems or running contracted backfill projects.

Rob is a Professional Mining Engineer and frequently participates in system audits and peer reviews as a Subject Matter Expert. He has authored several technical papers and operating manuals covering the safe design and operation of paste backfill systems.

Robert Brown

Maureen McGuinness

P.Eng. BSc Eng (Metallurgical), MASc Eng (Mining & Materials)

Maureen is a Director in Paterson & Cooke’s Sudbury, Ontario practice. She has worked in mining and milling for over 25 years and specifically in paste backfill design and operations for over 20 years. Her expertise includes backfill management planning, hydraulic modeling of distribution systems and start-up/commissioning of backfill operations. She leads P&C’s Backfill Operations Group.  Maureen is bilingual (English/French), a licensed Professional Engineer in Ontario and Quebec, and has authored several papers involving paste plant operation, troubleshooting and pipe wear during the transport of paste tailings. She has completed her Masters in paste system wear.

Denver, USA
Matt Bachman

PE, BSc Eng (Civil)

Matt is the Managing Director in Paterson & Cooke’s North American practice having  joined the company in 2011. Since 2000 he has gained extensive experience in engineering and construction projects for mining, civil, and geotechnical projects. His engineering base is very broad including experience in slurry pumping and pipeline systems, underground paste backfill systems, slurry thickening and filtration plants, pit dewatering pumping systems, leach circuit pumping systems, pumping system audits, open channel flow modelling, water balance models, and dam breach analysis. He has widespread experience in preparation of feasibility studies, detailed engineering, construction plans and specifications, cost estimating, construction, commissioning and project management.

Matt Bachman

 

Robert Cooke

Pr.Eng, PhD, FSAIMM, MSME, MCIM, MMSA-QP

Dr Robert Cooke is a Director of Paterson & Cooke’s Denver practice. He founded Paterson & Cooke with Dr Angus Paterson in 1991. Robert has extensive international experience with mine tailings, long distance slurry pipelines, hydraulic hoisting, and marine mining applications. He serves on technical tailings and investment assurance review panels for several major mining companies and provides expert technology development guidance for clients.

Robert Cooke

Alistair Baty

P.Eng, Pr Eng, BSc Eng (Mech)

Alistair is a Director in Paterson & Cooke’s Denver, Colorado practice. He joined the company in 2010 and has been involved in engineering consulting in the mining industry since 1995. This includes eight years as a Senior Mechanical Engineer within one of the world’s major diversified mining groups bearing the responsibility of providing specialized engineering consulting in the field of fluids handling (primarily piping and pumping systems) on a global scale. His career started as an engineer on gold, coal, and limestone mining operations. He is the Vice-chairman of the ASME B31.4 Code Committee, Work Group Chair for Chapter XI on Slurry Pipelines, and on the ASME B31.4/B31.8 Joint Executive Committee.

Alistair Baty

 

Todd Wisdom

BSc Eng (Chem Eng), MSc Eng (Chem Eng)

Todd is a Director in Paterson & Cooke’s Denver, Colorado practice. He has over thirty years’ of experience in designing, commissioning, and troubleshooting process equipment including large thickeners, filters and flotation cells. He has a good understanding of tailings, their properties and what impacts their dewatering, transportation, and placement. Prior to joining Paterson & Cooke in 2021, Todd lead FLS in the large tonnage tailings solutions market which includes the dewatering, conveying, and placement of all types of tailings. Organizational skills, innovation, and outside the box thinking are core strengths of Todd’s. He led the FLSmidth EcoTails® joint development project with Goldcorp and also spearheaded the development of the ColossalTM Automatic Filter Press designed specifically for large scale tailings dewatering. In addition, Todd is a recognized expert in the new and developing large scale filtered tailings market.

Alistair Baty