TIM SULLIVAN

Tim Sullivan is the founding partner of PSM, a company he formed in 1993. With more than 40 years experience in geotechnical engineering, Tim’s major area of practice has been the mining industry, but he has also worked extensively on a wide range of civil projects.

Although Tim is very much a practitioner, continuing education has been a career long interest. Initially, this was through his post graduate studies at Imperial College, University of London. Continuing education is a feature of PSM, who maintains close associations with the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australian Centre for Geomechanics, University of Canterbury and University of Newcastle.

Tim has undertaken engineering studies for over 400 mining and civil projects located throughout Australia, the Pacific, India, Papua New Guinea, South America, Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Hong Kong. Many of these studies focussed on land stability and at all scales ranging from 1000 m³ to greater than 200 million m³.  These projects necessitated integrated studies of geology, geotechnical engineering and hydrogeology with careful consideration of development impacts.

Tim’s  background has led him to specialise in engineering failures and disaster studies for government and  the private industry,  including Thredbo landslide, principal investigator for the NSW Coroner on the Thredbo Inquiry, Mining Warden for the Yallourn Mine Collapse Inquiry and Chairman of the Victorian Technical Review Board.

Tim has spent time as Visiting Professor at UNSW. In early 2000’s he assisted the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering with reformulating their MSc program and subsequently was appointed an Adjunct Professor.  For more than 25 years Tim was responsible for and lectured on Mine Slope Stability in the UNSW School of Mining Engineering MSc Course.  He has given 8 keynote addresses at national and international conferences.

Fields of special competence include large integrated studies, such as:

• Engineering Failures and Disasters
• Slope Stability and Landslides
• Mine Site Wide Stability, Risk and Review Studies
• Mine Dewatering and Drainage
• Open Pit Rock Mechanics, Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology
• Embankment Dam Engineering