Job Post: What Is Coal Mining Engineering?

Have you heard of the famous adventure movie – King Solomon’s Mines? It was an iconic film about a brother exploring unexplored regions of Africa in search of his brother. While that of course was fiction, in the real world, miners have come a long way from simply digging into the earth for coal and diamonds.

As the society reformed and revolutionised, the search for valuable minerals found in the earth’s crust and core became a full fledged career option. Mining, or extracting materials or minerals from the earth is not an easy process. From exploring locations for mining, discovering mineral deposits, making mining plans and projects and further drilling the earth to extract valuable materials – it requires careful, precision led planning.

There is no doubt that the world is looking forward to renewable energy and preserving earth’s natural resources but at the same time, the fact that many of the mined resources are immensely used in chemical industry, electrical industry, electronics industry, and many others, can’t be denied. A lot of mined materials are required to construct roads & buildings, manufacture automobiles, computers and satellites apart from producing many other goods that we use in our daily life.

So do you want to know what exactly is a mining engineer’s job; and how minerals are extracted? Recently, Careers360 spoke to Harsh Kumar, a mining engineer with Mahanadi Coalfields (a subsidiary of the Coal India Limited) at its Talcher Coalfield in the Angul district of Odisha. This is what he had to share about the nuances of his job.

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Education and Job

Academically, Kumar is an engineer - BE in Mining Engineering in particular. After completing graduation from Anna University, Chennai, he applied for a vacancy with Mahanadi Coalfields. “They were hiring the same year I graduated, so as soon as I got my degree, I also scored a job,” says Kumar who has been working with Mahanadi Coalfields for five years now.

Job Profile

A mining engineer has a variety of tasks such as finding mining sites, making plans and models for these mining sites, managing construction projects, ensuring the safety of the workers in the mines, designing ventilation systems, checking machinery and equipment used for extracting coal, making project plans, coordinating with other teams and many more.

The above tasks are not performed by a single mining engineer, there are different teams of mining engineers looking at different tasks and coordinating with the other teams. “I am in the team which looks after the safety of the workers who go inside the mine. We ensure that the mines have proper ventilation and workers are equipped with proper safety gears when they go inside,” said Kumar. He added that the mining engineers also check the machinery and drills used in the extraction of coal. “Not only do we have to check but we have to submit the report after the work shift,” he added.

Shift Time

The mining operations start from 8 in the morning and continue till evening. In general, the working hours start from 9 am and continue till 6 pm. “However, this timing changes from season to season: in winters, we do not work till late evening or in extreme summer, we do not work when the sun is above our heads in the afternoon, ” informed Kumar.

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Living In The City

About living in Angul, Kumar says, ‘It is a small town, there aren’t any big malls or retail shops of big brands”. Living with two other engineers, Kumar lives a simple life. “We cook for ourselves. Eating out is also cheap here compared to other cities. Being a core mining and industrial city, Angul is highly polluted. However, people living in Angul are very friendly and helpful, believes Kumar.

Is Mining Engineering Lucrative?

A good job, a good salary and better career prospects is all that an individual wants. Does mining engineering offer good career opportunities? Kumar says, “As a new joinee, my annual salary was INR 5.5 lakhs excluding deductions like PF, insurance etc. after five years it is around INR 8 lakhs per annum.” He further adds that the salary of a mining engineer may vary in the range of Rs 3.5 lakhs per annum to Rs 14 lakhs per annum depending upon one’s experience and expertise.

In recent years, a career in mining engineering is being considered one of the lucrative career options in engineering as it offers very good remuneration (both from public and private companies), the likelihood to work on foreign locations and not to forget, it offers a lot to the lovers of geological sciences. “Moreover, with experience in one segment of mining, one can venture into other segments of the mining as well, segments like petroleum, metallic minerals and non-metallic mineral extraction are highly rewarding professions,” concludes Kumar.

– As told to Rahul Shrivastava