Denis Isupov, a graduate of St. Petersburg Mining University’s Department of Explosives Engineering (pictured far left) became one of three participants in Orica’s Young Professional Program. Representatives of the world’s largest manufacturer of explosives said that in two years they will turn the promising young man into a “real explosives engineer“. They explained their interest in adding recruits at the expense of recent students by the serious shortage of competent specialists in the industry.
On Wednesday, March 17, the management of the Russian division of the Australian corporation Orica summarized the results of the competitive selection among the graduates of the domestic mining universities. It has been held annually since 2015. The main idea of this project is to attract talented young people from all over the country to ensure the continuity of generations and improve the quality of human capital.
According to Denis Isupov, the production mini-cases that the applicants solved were not directly devoted to blasting. For example, he chose a task related to the elimination of a leak of oxidizer solution at an explosives manufacturing plant.
“We traditionally hold the competition for participation in the Young Specialist program at St. Petersburg Mining University,” said Sergey Moser, Operations Director of Orica CIS. “I am a graduate of this university and I know very well that the level of higher education here is extremely high. Nevertheless, a young man who receives a degree certificate even from such a high-profile institution of higher education is not yet an engineer in the full sense of the word. To become a real explosives engineer, the young specialist needs a long industrial internship. I call our program ‘post-graduate training from Orika’ because we bring young people to such a level when they can conduct the whole complex of drilling and blasting operations themselves. That is, come to the quarry, take a surveyor’s instrument, make a survey, design, drill holes, put explosives in them, and conduct the explosion itself, the results of which will prove to be optimal.”
Sergei Mozer said that initially the winners of the competition, who along with Denis Isupov were Nikita Dolmatov from MISiS and Yevgeny Ozerov from Siberian Federal University, will work in the Northwest, but then might go to the Far East, where Orika has launched three new big projects.
