Shane Wilkes (Director)

Shane Wilkes is a Hydrogeologist/Geophysicist with over 12 years experience in groundwater monitoring and protection, water supply and dewatering, strategic water management, slope depressurisation, tailings seepage management, numerical simulations, and geophysical investigations targetting groundwater supplies. His experience has been gained in all regions of Western Australia as well as in Queensland, Indonesia and Africa.

Shane's technical expertise in groundwater simulations and stochastic water balance modelling is extensive. He has a detailed understanding of both finite difference and finite element methods and the operation of a number of different groundwater modelling packages. These packages include FeFlow, Visual Modflow, PMWin, Seep/W, C/Tran, Winflow, and Wintran. He has also completed several water balance models for various projects around the world using Excel and, more recently, using GoldSim, a stochastic-based water management simulator.

Shane has also managed large field projects, the largest being the groundwater and geotechnical investigations at the Batu Hijau project in Indonesia. This required the management of five drilling rigs (running 24 hours), two test pit crews, two chainsaw crews and a helicopter which required liaising with people of all skill levels and various nationalities (American, Indonesia, Malaysian and Australian).

Throughout Shane's career, he has worked on improving strategies for groundwater monitoring and protection based upon a broad understanding of hydrogeological concepts and experience in a variety of groundwater environments. This has been assisted by practical experience in bore design and construction, field sampling techniques, geophysics, and groundwater modelling.