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Note from the Editor
We are up
and running into 2016 and it’s already April,
2016 is already flying by. I look
forward to another year as editor of the newsletter and I will do my best
to keep communications regular. I
hope that 2016 is a good and successful year for SAIEG
and for all of us!
Lindi Richer
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President’s
Message
As we move into the second quarter of the year, Council has
already been active with one Council meeting our AGM and, as usual, a
very successful Awards function being held early last month. The same
Council members from last year will continue into this year, although we
have no immediate Past President on Council as we were sad to bid
farewell to Richard, who emigrated to the UK towards the end of last
year.
Council will continue to carry on with the normal
activities, including evening talks during the year which we will fit in
where we can. Anyone who has been involved with any particularly
interesting projects and who would like to share their experiences with
other members to come forward and make yourself available for a short
presentation. The first evening session is likely to consist of 3 or 4,
15 to 20 minute presentations on recent research that has been carried
out by members on various soils and soil-related problems in southern
Africa. If anyone is involved in a project that could provide an interesting
day or half-day outing, please contact Council and we can make the
necessary arrangements.
There are now less than 150 days left before the 35th
International Geological Congress to be held in Cape Town and we are busy
(together with a number of invited international colleagues) screening
the 168 or so engineering geology-related abstracts (out of a total of
about 6500 for the conference) for acceptability. There will probably be about 80 oral
presentations (including keynote presentations) while there will be
posters for the remainder and many of the oral ones as well. The
conference will run between the between the 27th August and 4th
September, so please diarise these dates and try to get there. This will
be a conference to remember.
This year, Council will continue to engage with various
bodies such as ECSA, SACNASP and the
Competition Commission to maintain our status as relevant consultants and
to ensure that we are allowed to continue our activities in this field
unhindered by disclaimers in tenders affecting our right to bid for
projects involving engineering geological site investigations. Although ECSA has indicated that they are opposed to such
restriction and acknowledge our right (in fact this is our bread and
butter and we should be mandated to do much of this type of work),
unfortunately there are many uninformed clients who do not understand our
part in the business. Conversely, however, we often see reports, done by
geologists who are not SAIEG members or
competent engineering geologists, of marginal or even poor quality, that
bring our profession into disrepute. SAIEG, as
a voluntary organisation, however, can do little about this – only
SACNASP has the power to legally intervene, but we can make our voices
heard in this regard.
Wishing you all a busy and fruitful year ahead, although
there are indications that times are not always going to be easy,
Phil Paige-Green
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New NHBRC
Manual
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The new NHBRC
Home Building Manual was officially launched at Monte Casino on the 26th
of February 2016. This second
edition of the NHBRC Home Building Manual comes
17 years after the initial manual which has been in use since 1999. Several key role players from various
industries were consulted during the compilation of this document… Read more
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Regional Report Backs
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Limpopo
Works
are progressing steadily at Eskom’s new Medupi Power Station, with the
first unit up and running and majority of civil elements nearing completion.
The sharp decline in commodity prices has hit the Lephalale
area hard with the majority of new coal projects either deferred or
scaled back. Fortunately, the ongoing construction works at Medupi Power
Station has sustained moderate growth with a couple of new retail and
residential developments having been completed over last couple of
months. This support is expected to taper off as the project nears
completion and the general consensus amongst locals is that, should
commodity prices remain at the current depressed levels and government
expansion of the coal rail network is deferred/cancelled, long term
growth will be stunted to even negative.
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Eastern Cape
The
Eastern Cape is a unique province in the SA spectrum. Although one of the
most challenged in terms of the infrastructure gap and the need for
sustained development, the Province is restricted in terms of its tax
base and the funds available. The frequency of private development is
thus relatively low, clustered around sectors such as the DOE’s REIPPP Programme, the
automotive sector in PE and East London, and commercial developments
within the Coega and East London IDZs. Private spend in terms of residential and small
to medium commercial are relatively frequent, however naturally limited
somewhat in terms of scope. The Public sector development is fairly
significant, with ongoing construction by SANRAL
possibly representing the most focus for our Members, with district-level
projects for the development of municipal and regional bulk and local
infrastructure coming in a close second… Read
more.
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KZN
Another year has rushed by. From an
association point of view it has been relatively
quiet in KZN.
·
CPD
presentation in August. Johan van Schalkwyk led
us through the impending requirements for our on-going professional
development and how the SACNASP and Geological Society systems differ.
There was a good turnout of just over 30 people and a robust debate and question
session. I did invite other groups of geologists (ground water and
general) but few joined us.
·
In November, Gary Davis drew a
crowd of about 35 to regale us with the engineering geological input into
South African dams over the years for the 8th Brink Memorial Lecture.
That was very well received and again there were many questions and
reminiscing about the way things were done (and sometimes not done) in
the ‘old days’.
·
In KZN
the various geological groups work together when it comes to outings and
talks so one of the talks that quite a few of our members attended was by
Dr Digby Gold on a “Simplified Geology of KZN”.
We had quite a number of non-geological (engineering) people attending
this one too and it was really helpful for them to get all those
confusing rock types and hundreds of millions of years summarised into an
hour, with pictures.
Socially, it has also been a bit quite
but the highlight of the year was a braai in December. About 20
engineering geologists (and a couple of geotechnical engineers) joined us
at Drennan Maud’s offices on the Berea, Durban.
People travelled from as far as Eshowe and Hilton (and one visitor from
Gauteng), showing the enthusiasm for a good meat, beer and reminiscing
session. We are hoping to make this
an annual or even biannual get together.
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International News
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AEG
The
59th Annual Meeting of the Association of Environmental & Engineering
Geologists to be held in Hawaii, 18-24 September, 2016.
Call
for abstracts
The AEG 2016 Annual Meeting
Planning Committee invites you to join us and submit an abstract to
present. To submit your abstract, click here.
For
more information, click here.
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IAEG
The Executive Committee
of the Council for 2015 – 2018 decided to actively promote and expand IAEG membership across the globe. With Africa only
having one National group, namely South Africa, I was tasked to rekindle
previous National Groups and also establish new groups in countries where
engineering geology plays an important role in infrastructure
development.
During a recent visit to
Nigeria the Nigerian Association for Engineering Geology and the
Environment agreed to become a National Group of IAEG.
Being the most populous country in Africa the group has a membership of
more than 500 engineering geologists… Read more
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Working in India
Shortly
after my “retirement”, I was contacted by the World Bank office in Delhi,
India to assist with the development of alternative road designs and
material usage for roads falling under the Pradam
Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) programme.
This is an initiative of the Prime Minister of India announced in
December 2000 to provide access to about 178 000 villages of more than
300 people that do not have direct access to a paved road. The programme
consists of the construction of about 740 000 km of road (about half
being new and half being upgrading of existing tracks or earth roads)… Read more
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SAIEG
AGM & Gala Dinner
SAIEG held the 32nd AGM and Gala Dinner on the
11th March. The event
began with the Annual General Meeting which included a message from the
President, a financial review, reportbacks from
the various provinces and International societies. The minutes of the meeting will be
posted on the website once they are available.
The AGM was followed by the Gala Dinner and Dr Riaad Moosa gave us a
really good laugh with some of his stand-up comedy. Read
more.
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Awards
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A B A Brink Award
Did you know that if you’ve had a paper
published (in a peer review journal) recently you could be up to win a
prize? Submit your paper on our
website to stand a chance to win… More details
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Electronic
Communication
The
website is continually being updated with current news and events,
although there may be some pages which go unnoticed for a while. If you spot anything outdated or out of
the ordinary, please contact the webmaster.
Please
just go and “Like” the SAIEG Page. Facebook
A
LinkedIn SAIEG Group has been created please go
and join the group. SAIEG LinkedIn
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Membership
A number of new engineering geologists have applied to join SAIEG or have requested that their membership status
be upgraded. These are:
Members
·
Gareth Driemeyer
Candidate members
·
Siphathesonke
Luthuli
·
Charles Adebayo
·
Hennie Booyens
·
Basetsana Mmileng
·
Bridgette Shangase
·
Nigel Brink
·
Renell Poongavanum
Affiliate members
·
Tresor Mbaya
·
Georges Mandumba
Students members
·
Jabulani Justice Sello
·
Kondwani Kaonga
While the SAIEG committee has
provisionally accepted these candidates for various levels of membership,
our constitution does allow for members to lodge any objections regarding
their suitability. Members have
two weeks to lodge any objections.
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Obituaries
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WERNERR
THERON
1970-04-17 to 2016-01-03
Wernerr Theron sadly
passed away of unnatural causes on Sunday, 3 January 2016, at the age
of 45. He obtained his BSc(Hons) degree in Engineering Geology at the
University of Pretoria in 1993, whereafter he
commenced with his career at the Council for Geoscience. He moved to
the private sector in 1997, when he joined Knight Hall Hendry as an
engineering geologist. He was always keen to perform site work and has
spent a year in the Colenso area at the Tugela-Vaal Feasibility Project,
as well as several other water-related and foundation investigation
projects throughout southern Africa.
Wernerr worked for some
time at De Beers at the Finch Mine near Danielskuil.
During his employ at the mine he obtained the Chamber of Mines of South
Africa Certificates in Strata Control and Rock Mechanics in 2003 and
2006, respectively. He formed his own company, GeoTheron
cc in 2005, during which time he worked on several large projects, such
as Sishen South Mine, several mining projects in the Mpumalanga Coal
Fields, several projects in Mozambique, Lesotho and the DRC.
Wernerr had a passion
for geology and his experience base covered both hard rock engineering
and geotechnical engineering. According to his wife, he used to read
his Dana Textbook of Mineralogy at night when he couldn’t sleep! He was
a full-blood geologist who has always preferred the outdoors, camping,
fishing and off-road driving to the office.
SAIEG has lost a
great engineering geologist and his influence in our profession will be
dearly missed. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Lize-Marie, and their young son, Tyrann.
Dawid Mouton
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DR AAB
(Tony) WILLIAMS
Dr
AAB (Tony) Williams passed away peacefully at
home in Johannesburg on the 04 February 2016 just short of his 90th
birthday.
Tony
was born in Kokstad in 1926 and attended
school at Highbury and Michael House.
He joined the Navy during World War II, serving on a frigate out
east.
In
1953 he married Veronica Phillips, also from Kokstad.
He
studied civil engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand and
obtained the degrees of BSc (Eng) in 1948 and
PhD in 1976. After three years
in bridge and road construction with the then Transvaal Roads Department
he went to Imperial College, London, obtaining a DIC
in soil mechanics. In 1954 he
joined the National Building Research Institute then under the
directorship of ‘Jere’ Jennings, to work on unsaturated soils, where he
also first met Tony Brink. He later
spent ten years at the National Institute for Road Research as Head of
the Soil Mechanics Division before returning to the NBRI. Tony retired from the CSIR as Head of Structural and Geotechnical
Engineering in 1989 but acted as a consultant until 1993, after which
he and his wife enjoyed life in Pretoria and Johannesburg and at his
“shack” near Port Edward and spending time with their family of four
children and six grand-children.
A
feature of Tony’s research had always been an appreciation of the Forces
of Nature when dealing with soil conditions in southern Africa and the
necessity of ‘whole engineering’.
Towards this end he always advocated a multidisciplinary
approach to work on the common problem – drawing in people such as Tony
Brink.
Tony
authored or co-authored some 63 publications covering the influence of
climate on soil behaviour, field characteristics of South African
soils, soil profiling, mapping and data storage, the role of
engineering geology, soil suction measurements, slope stability
(including slimes dams), foundations and roads on active clays,
settlements on low density residual and transported soils and the value
of the then new impact roller, and the in-situ properties of fissured
clays.
He
is perhaps best known for his co-authorship with Jennings and Brink of
their 1973 ‘Revised guide to soil profiling for engineering purposes in
southern Africa’ which has been adopted as an industry standard, his
1982 book ‘Soil survey for engineering’ with Tony Brink and Tim
Partridge, the state of the art report with Terry Pidgeon and Peter Day
on expansive soils for the 1985 Symposium on Problem Soils in South
Africa, and the recognition that the shear strength along existing
slickensides was close to the residual strength of the mass – typically
about 50 % of the peak mass strength.
The importance of this is of course crucial for design here,
particularly that of slopes, in contrast to the common overseas
practice of using peak strength for analyzing
‘first time’ slides.
What
is less known is his compilation of the computerised ‘Bibliography of
South African Geotechnical Publications’ covering the period 1947 –
1976, which also incorporated a keyword-in-context search and retrieval
system.
Tony
received a number of awards for his work, including a SAICE Best Paper award in 1962 (with Basil Kantey), the JD Roberts Award for Building Research
in 1980, the South African Geotechnical Medal in 1991, the Gold Medal
of the South African Institute for Engineering and Environmental
Geologists in 2005 and was due to receive the SAICE
Medal for Meritorious Research at the 2016 Jennings Lecture. The official notification of this
arrived in the mail on the 04 February and he read it with quiet
enjoyment on the day of this death.
Tony
was a Fellow of the Institution and formerly active on the Council,
Pretoria Branch and Geotechnical Division Committees (including serving
as Chairman of the latter two) and the organizing committees of several
Regional Conferences for Africa on Soil Mechanics and Foundation
Engineering, contributed to many Division lecture courses, represented SAICE on the SABS 0161-1980 Code of Practice for
the design of foundations for buildings, and chaired the development of
the 1980 Code of Practice relating to the Safety of Men working in
small diameter vertical and near vertical shafts for civil engineering
purposes.
Tony
was also a keen sportsman, gaining colours for squash at Imperial and
for Northern Transvaal, conservationist and ornithologist.
Lastly,
in the words of Peter Day, Tony was a true gentleman, quiet in his
manner, generous with his knowledge, honest in his assessments, and
kind with his criticism
Tony
leaves his wife Veronica, four children and six grand-children.
Frank Netterberg
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Forthcoming Events
·
Courses
o
Soil profiling, core and chip logging course, Midrand, 13-15 April 2016
o
Soil profiling, core and chip logging course, Cape
Town, TBA
o
Rock Identification course, Durban, TBA
·
Conferences
o
First South African Geotechnical Conference, Sun
City, 5-6 May 2016
o
35th IGC, Cape
Town International Convention Centre, 27 August - 4 September 2016
o
59th AEG Annual Meeting, Hawaii, 18-24
September 2016
·
Lectures
o
Tony Brink Lecture, TBA
·
Site Visits
o
None are planned at the moment but if anyone is
involved in a project which may be of interest to our members, please let
us know and we’ll arrange a site visit
For more
information on any of these Click here.
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Contact Details
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President
Phil Paige-Green
Email: president@saieg.co.za
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Membership
Robert Leyland
Email: membership@saieg.co.za
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Website
Lindi Richer
Email: webmaster@saieg.co.za
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Vice President
Louis van Rooy
Email:
vicepresident@saieg.co.za
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AEG Representative
Robert Leyland
Email: AEGrep@saieg.co.za
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Events
Amy Maharaj
Email: events@saieg.co.za
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Treasurer
Paul Aucamp
Email: treasurer@saieg.co.za
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Newsletter
Lindi Richer
Email: editor@saieg.co.za
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Secretariat
Email: secretariat@saieg.co.za
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CORPORATE
SPONSORS OF SAIEG 2016
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