LDI schedules annual general meeting 

Guest Speaker Kevin O’Kane

VANCOUVER, BC (JANUARY 30, 2024) — The Landform Design institute (LDI) will hold its fourth annual general meeting online Thursday, February 22, from 5 pm to 6:30 p.m. MST. 

With an accomplished guest speaker and offering an overview of Institute activities during the 2022-2023 fiscal year and a look ahead to future projects, the AGM will be chaired by LDI Chair Gord McKenna.
 
All corporate, individual, and student members of the Institute are welcome to attend the Zoom meeting. The timing was chosen to encourage members working abroad to participate. In Australia, for example, the AGM begins Friday, February 23, at 11 a.m. AEDT and 8 a.m. AWST. For anyone unable to attend the meeting, it will be recorded and posted on the members’ website. 

The featured speaker this year is Kevin O’Kane, a mining engineer with more than 40 years of experience in the natural resources industry and extensive leadership expertise in both North and South America. O’Kane sits on the boards of multiple mining firms, after having filled numerous senior management roles at mining firms in Canada and Chile, most recently serving as executive vice-president and chief operating officer of SSR Mining. Previously, he held senior roles with BHP Billiton.

O’Kane will share strategies for building landform design teams. His remarks will be timely, as the LDI will soon release a landmark guidance document for the landform design memorandum (DBM), which first requires establishing an effective and collaborative landform design team that includes representatives from a variety of disciplines.

The AGM will also include the nomination and election of directors and tabling of the 2023 financial report, discussion of the status of LDI memberships, an overview of the LDI strategic plan, and a presentation of the 2024 LDI business plan and budget.

In November 2023, the Board of Directors held its first in-person retreat since the LDI’s founding, with all members attending: McKenna, Christine Daly, Mike O’Kane, and Anne Naeth. LDI Administrator Jasmine Winter and Director of Communications David Wylynko also participated in the two-day meeting at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. 

The Board agreed at that session on several key initiatives that McKenna will share at the AGM, hoping to solicit members’ views on the Institute’s ambitious plans to achieve its mandate of making landform design routine at mines worldwide.