Rob Osburn

With over two decades of experience as a geotechnical engineer, Rob has served in each of Barr’s major market sectors, with a particular focus on the power and mining industries in the United States and Canada.

For power clients, his work is related to renewable energy, storage, transmission, thermal generation, biomass, and hydroelectric facilities. Rob has served as engineer of record, project manager, or project principal on more than 600 utility-scale wind and solar energy projects, which individually have ranged in size from less than 50 megawatts (MW) to over 1 gigawatt (GW). His projects have involved a variety of subsurface conditions, including soft coastal sediments, glacial till, loess, swelling soil, alluvial fans, all types of rock, karst, organic soils, mine tailings, and lacustrine sediments.

Rob’s storage project work has involved a number of technologies, such as traditional lithium-ion batteries, pumped storage hydropower, graphite, compressed air, and gravitational energy. In transmission, his project experience ranges from short gen-tie (generation interconnect) lines of a few hundred feet to 345-kilovolt (kV) lines spanning hundreds of miles.

He has led subsidence assessments for renewable energy projects on brownfields, which has included underground mines, surface mines, and former landfills. Rob has also been involved in numerous karst remediation projects, serving as the engineer of record for the plans and specifications for karst grouting associated with wind turbines, substations, and transmission lines.

For mining clients, Rob’s work includes prefeasibility studies, pit and spoil-pile highwall stability assessments, haul road design, and strength assessment of ultra-soft tailings. He has also conducted multiple phases of research and development associated with unique tailings-disposal technologies for the Canadian oil-sands industry.