He is a professional mining engineer and a highly experienced and knowledgable shotfirer/blaster with over 39 years of experience in the drill and blast industry. After gaining first hand experience with explosives and blasting in an underground mine in Western Australia’s gold region in the early 1980’s,  he then graduated from Ballarat School of Mines in Australia with a bachelor degree in Mining Engineering in the mid 1980’s. He then spent 3 years as a handheld miner gaining valuable practical experience in all aspects of drill and blast underground.

Following this, he went to work for ICI Explosives based in Victoria, Australia. Over the next 10 years , he worked in a variety of roles for ICI Explosives including drill and blast engineer for quarries and open cuts, undeground specialist developing new products for the underground market and Business Manager for South Australia and Tasmania.

During that time, he also carried out consultative work for ICI Explosives, most notably providing expertise in converting key ICI customers from nitroglycerine based explosives to emulsion based explosives in the Australian and North American/Canadian markets and introducing packaged emulsions and bulk emulsions into the Asian tunneling and mining markets.

In 1998, he left ICI Explosives and set up MJS Mining Services to provide a quality and professional consulting and training service to the mining, civil construction and extractive drill and blast industries both domestically and internationally. More Highlights include onsite involvement in the Beaconsfield mine rescue, solving diverse blasting issues both underground and on the surface both domestically in Australia and throughout the world.

He has been involved in over 4000 blast on the surface and underground over the past 39 years.