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Note from the Editor
Season’s
greetings! Another year is coming
to an end and this one really flew by.
This is the final newsletter of the year. And what a year it has
been, it’s definitely had its ups and downs, I’m certainly glad it is
coming to an end!
If
there is anything you think should be included in our newsletter please
let me know. Enjoy the holidays
and travel safely!
Lindi Richer
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President’s
Message
With this year quickly coming to an end, I’m pleased to
present the second edition of the bi-annual SAIEG newsletter. It’s hard to believe we’ll be saying goodbye to 2013
and hello to 2014 in less than one and a half months’ time! The end of this year marks the halfway mark of my 2
year term as president of SAIEG, which has also flown by. It’s been a year of happy welcomes to new members,
as well as a few sad unforeseen departures.
From an operational and financial point of view, things are
running smoothly. We’ve held a few events this
year, including two evening lectures, three courses and one speciality
conference. The Tony Brink
Memorial Lecture, provided by Peter Day, was recently held in Midrand and will be going to Durban and Cape Town
shortly thereafter. Based on the great
attendance in Midrand, I’m sure that a good
number of the KZN and WC members will make the
most of this great opportunity to hear about Peter Day’s wealth of
experience in the industry, as well as catch up with colleagues and
friends.
Members should
hopefully have noticed that the usual cover charge to evening talks,
including the Brink Memorial Lecture, has been dropped.
We hope this will entice members to attend the events without
having to worry about payment and the bureaucratic admin that may follow
in some companies! So there’s no excuse, we hope
to see you at all future events!
Richard Puchner
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REMINDER
– SAIEG Postal Address:
PO Box 1603
Houghton
2041
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Regional Report Backs
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Western Cape
Windfarm activity
continues. Aurecon
Geotechnical is involved with West Coast 1 Windfarm
near Paternoster. SRK
geotechnical are involved with the Hopefield
Wind Farm… Read more
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Eastern Cape
Engineering
geologists in the Eastern Cape continue to soldier on in what are
relatively tough economic times. This though is
a large province with a need for infrastructure development and
maintenance… Read
more
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Limpopo
The last 6 months has seen vigorous activity in the
greater Lephalale area with civil works
progressing well at Eskom’s new Medupi Power
Station and Exxaro’s nearby Grootegeluk
Coal Mine… Read more
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KwaZulu Natal
A
massive, new town development including housing from RDP
to up market, commercial, industrial, schools and community facilities;
everything except a cemetery is . The
geotechnical challenges include active clays, unstable shale slopes and
substantial earthworks in less than ideal soils.… Read more
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International News
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AEG
The 56th AEG Annual Meeting and
Conference was held in Seattle from 8-15 September 2013. Since I was not
able to attend this year, past Chair of the South African Section, Oliver
Barker attended the Board of Directors meeting which followed after the
conference. Our membership chair, Rob Leyland, attended the conference.
Read his report-back here.
Preparations are already underway
for the 57th AEG Annual Meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona which is scheduled
for 20-28 September 2014. The call for technical papers is open, with the
abstract deadline: 1 May 2014. Online submittals may be made at
www.aegweb.org. For more information about the event as well as
fieldtrips, visit http://www.azaeg.org/aeg2014/
Richard Puchner
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CSI: Far West Rand
10.20am,
Saturday morning. The Sharks are in a bad place,
Auckland I think and struggling. The mobile
springs into life, it’s the Chief. ”Get your ass
over to the Lab now, it’s going down!” I try to
explain that I am 125 clicks away, but he is in no mood to listen. Deputy Oosthuizen will have to do, his anniversary
can wait. An hour later the news comes through,
it is worse than I thought, it always is. Overnight,
cracks, on the outside wall, have cut the lab amidships, the entrance has
headed south. I struggle to put the pieces
together. “Abandon ship” I order… Read more
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Tony Brink Memorial
Lecture
SAIEG held the 6th Tony Brink Memorial Lecture in Midrand on the 7th November. The lecture will also be held in Durban
on the 19th November and Cape Town on the 20th
November. The lecture was given by
Peter Day. His talk was entitled
“Geo-Engineering in South Africa: What we have achieved and where we are
going”. In March this year, Peter
Day received a Doctor of engineering degree from the University of
Stellenbosch for his thesis entitled “A contribution to the advancement
of geotechnical engineering in south Africa”. In his lecture he conveyed what he
described as the “allure of geotechnical engineering”, with all its
challenges, uncertainties and opportunities. He reviewed the state of practice in
the fields of geo-engineering and explained where he would like to see
the profession going in the future.
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Christchurch
earthquakes:
a South African perspective two years on
 Aurecon Ground Engineering Cape Town is currently
assisting Aurecon Ground Engineering Christchurch New Zealand with
individual geotechnical reports for damaged homes as a result of the
recent sequence of earthquakes and aftershocks that have affected the South
Island’s largest city (population about 450 000). These reports are part
of the insurance process. The author visited the city in January 2013 to
gain a better understanding of the Christchurch geology and geomorphology
in terms of the inputs into the geotechnical reports, and at the same
time to observe first-hand the effects of the earthquakes on the city as
a whole. South Africans are not commonly directly exposed to ground
shaking and the devastating effects thereof, apart from low magnitude ground
shakes related to mine induced seismicity from time to time. The
widespread accessibility of various forms of media these days does of
course give us an inkling of the effects of such disasters. However,
until one has visited an earthquake disaster zone one does not really
understand the sheer scale of events that can overwhelm the land and
community. On this basis the author presents a summary of his
observations of the Christchurch earthquakes and their effects… Read more
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University News
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Pretoria
The
Department of Geology at the University of Pretoria offers honours,
masters and doctoral degrees in Engineering and Environmental Geology
with specialisation in either Engineering Geology or Hydrogeology. Given the recent changes of the degree
names to allow for an individual specialisation in hydrogeology, the
growth in student numbers can mostly be ascribed to the interest in the
new groundwater programme and the additional field of professional
registration in water sciences.
The honours class amounted to 13 students in 2012, 5 in 2013 and a
prospective 15 in 2014 which is roughly divided 50-50 between the two
specialisation options. The
programme attempts to give the students maximum field exposure and
included a trip to Lesotho during 2012… Read
more
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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
“Like” the SAIEG Page on Facebook.
Click here
A
LinkedIn SAIEG Group has been created please go and join the group. Click here
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Condolences
We are deeply
saddened to have received news of two members of the engineering geology
fraternity having passed away this past month: Mr Greg Dyke and Dr Dirk
van der Merwe.
Greg passed
away on 8 October of a suspected heart attack. He
has been a member of SAIEG for a number of years and served on the SAIEG
council from 2005 – 2008.
Dirk passed away on 14 October at his
retirement village at the age of 87. Dirk was
one of the first engineering geologists in South Africa and developed the
Van der Merwe Method for the prediction of heave. He
is survived by his three children.
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Membership
We would like to welcome George Brink and
Siyamazi Ndlovu as Full Members to SAIEG, as well as the
following:
Candidate Members: Egerton Hingston, Kent Roysten Gravelét-Blondin, Prashant Mahabeer
Affiliate Members: Chingamidzai Gwiza, Sisa Mfithi
Honorary Member: Roy Schlemon
A number of new applications were
reviewed and provisionally approved by the SAIEG council. These are:
Pierre Roux (Full Member)
Dewald Kruger (Full
Member)
Ayanda Nxumalo (Candidate Member)
Demi Fayemiwo
(Student Member)
Bohlokwa Modisadife (Student Member)
Existing members of SAIEG have two weeks to
lodge any objections regarding their suitability before they are accepted.
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Request
TO MY ENGINEERING GEOLOGICAL AND GEOTECHNICAL
FRIENDS
I retired fully in March 2012, and have started to
write my “Working Life Memoir” covering largely the years I worked as an
Engineering Geologist from 1990 to 2009. My plan
is to publish this work, once completed and professionally reviewed etc.
(It will take some time to accomplish, I know).
For most of this time I was with Ninham Shand (also a short
time with Aurecon) and the latter part was with
SRK. However I worked
with many people from other firms in joint ventures etc.
I intend this to be a more light-hearted look at my years in the
profession, the wonderful people I worked with, the variety of projects
and countries I worked in, and also consider changes and improvements in
technology and approaches over this time. I will
not dwell in great technical detail on various projects as this will
become too dull, but rather weave a story of what I got up to in that
time!
You will appreciate that sometimes the memory
fails, particularly with regards to dates when things took place, so I
would love to have input from anyone who knows me, who worked with me, or
who has any memories of me (be they good bad or amusing!). Also any photographs would be much appreciated.
I would also like to put a section in the book to
highlight SAIEG as a professional group, and my involvement with the
Council over a number of years.... for this I’ll have to interact perhaps
with Richard Puchner and Phil Paige Green/Greg Heath, as I only have
sketchy records of when I was voted on and what happened when.
I can be contacted directly on:
Cell: 083
2718 659
Home: 011 882
8233
E-mail: mrwynne@icon.co.za
Here’s hoping to hear from you.
Best regards to all.
Margaret Wynne Pr Sci Nat
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Contact Details
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President
Richard Puchner
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
Greg Heath
Email:
vicepresident@saieg.co.za
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AEG Representative
Richard Puchner
Email: AEGrep@saieg.co.za
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Events
Amy Maharaj
Email: events@saieg.co.za
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Treasurer
Amy Maharaj
Email:
treasurer@saieg.co.za
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Newsletter
Lindi Richer
Email: editor@saieg.co.za
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Secretariat
RCA (Dianne Brooks & Yolandé Oosthuizen)
Email: accounts@saieg.co.za
Email: secretariat@saieg.co.za
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CORPORATE SPONSORS
OF SAIEG 2013
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