The 12th International Symposium on Mining with Backfill was held on 19-22 Feburary 2017 in Colorado Convention Center at Denver, USA. Headed by Vice President Zhan Kai, BGRIMM delegation attended the symposium and visited the SME Annual Conference & Expo. During the symposium, Vice President Zhan Kai had fruitful academic and technical exchanges respectively with David Stone (symposium chairman), Prof. Ferri Hassani from McGill University, and representatives from other international companies. Four papers from BGRIMM were included in the published conference proceedings.