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Note from the Editor
As the
year draws to a close I wish you all a happy and safe holiday! I have a feeling
that 2016 is going to be a bustling year with two big conferences headed
our way. The “first” is the First
Southern African Geotechnical Conference that will be hosted by the
Geotechnical Division of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering
(SAICE) under the auspices of the International Society for Soil
Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE). The conference will be
held in Sun City in May. The second is the 35th International Geological
Conference to be held in Cape Town in August (more details in the
newsletter). Either way it will be
an exciting year!
Lindi Richer
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President’s
Message
As 2015 rapidly runs out, we can take stock of the past year.
Based on my experiences and talking to SAIEG members at the recent
function. It appears that most of our members are busy enough to keep the
“wolf from the door” without being worked to death. The words thrown
around by our Government officials regarding coming developments and
infrastructural activities certainly point towards a busy time ahead,
although I am not sure where the funding for all of the grandiose ideas
proposed is going to come from. Anyway, we can only hope and wait.
SAIEG/IAEG wise it has been a busy year with a number of
developments and changes. The feedback from the Annual Meeting in Delhi
(discussed elsewhere in this Newsletter) looks promising in terms of our
international fees and possibly the distribution of Bulletins to all of our
members. On the AEG front, developments are more complex, with the
amalgamation of the national groups outside the USA into one
“international group”, removing some of the AEG South African sections’
autonomy. Feedback I this regard is also included elsewhere in this
Newsletter. We will just have to wait and see how this progress on this
front.
With the 35th IGC preparations hotting up (see elsewhere in
the Newsletter), many of our members will be involved with various
organisational issues. Probably the main one that will affect a lot of us
early in the new year will be the review of the abstracts received
(hopefully a large collection) for the engineering geology sessions – we
will be calling on many of you to assist with reviewing abstracts that we
think you may have significant knowledge about. Fortunately, they are
only one page abstracts and not entire papers that need reviewing, so the
time requirements are generally minimal.
The AGM and awards evening is planned for the 4th March
2016, so mark this in your diaries now and make sure you are in town on
that day – based on the experience of Amy’s previous awards evenings,
this will be an outing to remember.
As we all get ready to enjoy the year-end break and start
relaxing and doing all of those things that there has been no time for
through the year, I would like to wish you and your families all the best
for the festive season, take it easy on the roads for those who are
travelling, and we look forward to an interesting and active coming year
for SAIEG.
Phil Paige-Green
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REMINDER
– SAIEG New Postal Address:
PO Box 1603
Houghton
2041
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Regional Report Backs
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Limpopo
Not much
to report other than steady state operation being achieved for Medupi’s
Unit 6 (first unit to be commissioned) and completion of Phase 2 of the
Lephalale Mall, in June, which has seen an effective doubling in floor
space.
Regionally
most new mining projects have either been deferred or are being hampered
by the acute downturn in the commodities cycle. The impact of this
downturn has been especially severe towards operating mines in the region
with Kumba Iron Ore forced to close down their Thabazimbi Iron Ore Mine
and many other mines (coal, PGM’s and ferrochrome) forced to cut back on
production and reduce costs in efforts to remain profitable.
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KZN
On 18th
November Durban hosted the 3rd leg of the 8th Brink Memorial Lecture at
UKZN Science Education Centre. There were 33 attendees, a clear
indication of the calibre of the speaker, Gary Davis. A good social
catch-up with old (word used advisedly) colleagues followed.
A ‘new’
geotechnical company of old hands has opened its doors on the east coast:
MSJ Geotechnical Consulting Services, guided by Mark Richter & GV
Price, will be operating out of Riverhorse Valley.
On the
work front... Read more
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University of
Pretoria Report Back
The final exams are completed and the marks being finalised
at present. The honours class of
2015 were 11 strong with 2 of the group specialising in Hydrogeology.
As usual SAIEG provided financial support for the excursion
that took place during November. The excursion serves as a final
practical exam for the students as well as the end of year social event.
This year we stayed over in Clarens and visited the Ash River Outfall,
numerous road cuttings, Golden Gate, Sterkfontein and Driekoppies dams as
well as dolerite quarries.
The local beer breweries came in handy in the very hot
temperatures we had to endure during the heatwave.
Thanks again to SAIEG for the support.
Louis van Rooy
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ABA Brink Award
Did you know that if you’ve had a paper published (in a peer
review journal) this year you could be up to win a prize at our Gold
Awards Dinner, usually held in March. Submit your paper on our website to
stand a chance to win… More
details
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35th
International Geological Conference 2016
Have you booked your flight to Cape Town?
South Africa is the host nation for one of the world’s
largest events, and this time it’s no ball game.... It’s time for Africa
and yes, we are going to rock! South Africa will once again be hosting
the ‘World Cup of Geosciences’, the prestigious International Geological
Conference (IGC) at the Cape Town International Convention Centre from 27
August to 4 September 2016.
Three main topics have been identified for this 35th
IGC. A total of fifty themes will
be covered under the three main topics.
Engineering geological aspects are mainly covered under the
‘Geoscience for society’ topic.
Some aspects could also be categorized under the ‘Geoscience in
the economy’ or ‘Fundamental geoscience’.
Phil Paige-Green is one of the theme champions for
Engineering Geology and Geomechanics and has already earmarked a number
of interesting field trips forming part of the conference. SAIEG would like to invite all their
members to take part in this event which does not come around too
frequently on our continent. Slope
instabilities, aggregates, investigation techniques, construction
materials, karst problems, rock and soil mechanics are only a few of the
topics which could be discussed over a glass of some of the world’s best
wine.
Well-known international engineering geologists such as
Jeffrey Keaton, Scott Burns and others will be attending this event. It is a platform on which we as
engineering geologists can present the high quality of work conducted in
our country.
Early bird registration has already closed, but all
interested parties are invited to submit their abstracts before the end
of January 2016. Standard
conference registration will close on 01 June 2016. Let’s make ourselves count at this
event and show the international engineering fraternity what South Africa
has to offer, not only scientifically, but also as a nation.
For any further information, visit the IGC
website at: www.35igc.org.
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SACNASP
For those of you who don’t know SACNASP is introducing
Continuous Professional Development (CPD) points system. In order to
renew our SACNASP registrations, we will need to prove that we have
sufficient CPD points in the different categories over a five-year
period. Without sufficient points, we will not be able to renew our
registrations, which means by law, that we cannot practice our
professions. The official start date is January 2017. Read
more
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Report back:
SAIEG 8th Tony Brink Memorial Lecture
Gary Davis presented the Tony Brink Memorial Lecture in
Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban on the 4th, 17th
and 18th November respectively. Gary’s talk entitled “An Engineering
Geological Reflection on South Africa’s Dam Legacy” took a trip down
memory lane of South African Dams.
It covered a blend of personal reflection intertwined with a walk
through South Africa’s dam building history; from the early days at the
turn of the last century, through an era of major projects, and then
another round of pioneering projects, to a new focus on dam safety.
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 DOLOMITE
CORNER
Recent Observations on the West Rand
By Samantha Constantinou &
Tharina Oosthuizen
Council for Geoscience personnel recently visited two very
large sinkhole occurrences on the West Rand. While these events
fortunately occurred away from highly populated commercial and
residential areas, they have directly affected infrastructure... Read
more
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THE NEAR MISS
Something all of us should read and take note of.
By Tony A’Bear
This is a short article describing a near miss that Deon
Bester and I survived a couple of Mondays ago. There should always be an inquiry into
an accident or a near miss, not to establish culpability but to
understand what happened, why it happened and what can be done to prevent
it from happening again.... Read more
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IAEG News
The
IAEG Executive and Council meetings were held in New Delhi, India on 25
and 26 October 2015. Louis van Rooy represented Africa, as well as South
Africa, at these meetings. A number of matters of importance to South
Africa were discussed. The most important issues is one of fees. It was
decided that the reduced fee option (not including the Bulletin) will be
maintained, that there will be an option of receiving an electronic copy
of the Bulletin rather than the paper copy and that the fee scales should
be according to the World Bank rating of countries, which may mean that
South Africa is regarded as a "poor" country and that reduced
fees will apply… Read more
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 AEG News
The
AEG annual meeting was held in Pittsburgh on 19-26 September 2015. Robert
Leyland attended the meeting as the chair of the South African Section.
While there, Rob also manned a small stall with some promotional
materials for the 2016 IGC to be held in Cape Town. There was
considerable interest in the IGC conference so we may get some delegates
from the USA and hopefully get one of the more prominent ones to give a
talk to SAIEG while here... Read more
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SAIEG Membership
Rates for 2016
#FeesMustFall…
We heard you and SAIEG membership fees will remain unchanged for 2016
across all membership categories.
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Membership
The following members have been struck off the roll for
various reasons:
·
Mr Frederik Grové
·
Ms Chingamidzai Gwiza
·
Mr Itai Mazheteze
·
Mr Blessing Taenzana
A number of new engineering geologists have applied to join
SAIEG or have requested that their membership status be upgraded. These are:
·
Johannes Hendrik Nell – Full member
·
Deon Bester – Candidate member
·
Tarisai Kamanura – Affiliate member
·
Kondwani Koanga – Student member
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.
Congratulations to Tony
A’Bear who has been approved as Fellow!
SAIEG Council acknowledges and thanks Tony for his
contribution to the Engineering Geological industry and the Society.
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SAIEG Committee
for 2016
Richard Puchner will be leaving us as he is moving to the
UK. So his post as Past President
will remain open. We thank Richard
for all of his hard work with SAIEG.
The rest of the committee will remain the same as 2015.
President – Phil Paige-Green
Vice-President – Louis van Rooy
Past President – None
4 Corporate (Ordinary) Members – Amrita Maharaj, Lindi
Richer, Robert Leyland, Paul Aucamp, Tharina Oosthuizen and Debbie Abel
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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: website@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
RCA (Di Brooks)
Email: accounts@saieg.co.za
Email: secretariat@rca.co.za
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CORPORATE
SPONSORS OF SAIEG 2015
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