Use case 03
From notice of intent to closure
A mine site lives for several decades and goes through phases led by different teams and firms. What was promised in the impact assessment becomes a condition of the Order in Council, then a measure during operations, then a restoration obligation. Enviro carries that thread, so that each phase starts from what the previous one produced.
Today
Since Bill 63 was passed in 2024, every new mine in Québec goes through the environmental assessment and the BAPE, whatever its size. From December 2026, the procedure starts with a much more detailed notice of intent, which requires a list of impacts, alternatives and a consultation plan from the outset. Each phase then produces substantial documents: impact assessment, answers to the ministry's questions, hearings, Order in Council, authorizations, annual reports, reclamation plan. Taken one by one, each is of good quality. Laid end to end, they do not form a memory.
Commitments are made early
Every sentence of a notice of intent or an impact assessment can become a condition of the Order in Council, which generally requires the announced measures to be carried out. These commitments end up scattered across the study, its addenda, the answers to questions and the hearing report.
A memory that keeps restarting
At every phase transition, the team in place reconstructs what was said before it. Between a written promise and the moment it must be kept, ten years and several team changes can go by.
A closure prepared from the opening
The reclamation plan is revised at least every five years and serves as the basis for a financial guarantee covering the full cost of restoration. A site that has not kept the history of its monitoring and its works pays to reconstruct it at every revision.
The thread
A promise made in 2014 stays attached to the measurement taken in 2031
A commitment does not change in nature when it changes phase; it changes form:
- a mitigation measure announced in an impact assessment;
- confirmed at a public hearing;
- turned into an authorization condition;
- translated into a monitoring program;
- then into a success criterion for reclamation.
Enviro keeps the link between these successive forms. You can start from a recent result and trace it back to the original statement without reconstructing anything. A team arriving ten years later knows what it has to do, and also why. This thread also serves the monitoring committee, now mandatory for every mine and active until restoration is complete, which expects verifiable answers about what was promised.
Operations
Operations produce the memory of the other phases
Operations are the longest phase of the cycle and the one where Enviro works today. The structured requirements, completed tasks and documented works of those years make up most of what will serve the reclamation plan and closure. A site that structures early approaches each revision with a file already built rather than with archives to sift through, whatever its technological starting point.
When the project changes
A project changes over its life. Its commitments must follow
A new waste rock pile, an added discharge point or a capacity increase can require amending an authorization, revising the reclamation plan, and sometimes a new assessment when the expansion reaches half of the operating area. Because each requirement is tied to its infrastructure and its sources, Enviro shows, before the change is made, which conditions, commitments and monitoring programs will be affected.
Direction
What Enviro does today, and what we are working toward
Today Enviro covers operations and reclamation planning. That is what exists, can be demonstrated and is being deployed on a site right now. The upstream phases pose different problems, since writing a notice of intent or producing an impact assessment calls for support in producing documents more than for an operational system. Lichens is working on these tools without announcing them before they are ready. If one of these phases gives you the most trouble, tell us, because that is what sets the order in which we take them on.
Your site is already somewhere on this line
The demo starts from the phase you are in. We look at what already exists on your side and what would serve the next phases.