An interview with Dr. Moh was made in Taipei on November 14th, 2012. As is well known, Dr. Moh has made remarkable achievements in the fields of education at Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), practice through his consulting firm, and societal activities in the Southeast Asian Geotechnical Society of which he is the founder.

During the interview, the first topic was his recent activities and interests. In addition to infrastructure developments, he is concerned with projects of bigger scales. Moreover, he believes that future geotechnical engineering should pay more attention to disaster mitigation. Design of disaster prevention/mitigation structures is one of his target businesses. From the viewpoint of the future geotechnical engineering, he mentioned that GIS will be a useful tool. Another future direction is “Green Design” by which clean and ecological community is developed. He is doing practice internationally on design of office buildings, subways, and even urban design. Risk analysis is another important topic of his activity.

The second topic was his good memory of geotechnical engineering. His best memory is that he took Karl Terzaghi’s course in his final year at Harvard. His lecture showed many slides of photographs. While Dr. Moh’s advisor was Prof. Lamb, Terzaghi also visited MIT occasionally and gave many valuable advices to him and other students. Dr. Moh states that Terzaghi had a very wide range of knowledge including soil chemistry.

After his degree from MIT, Dr. Moh worked for Woodward-Clyde and then moved to Yale University. It was this time that AIT was recruiting academic staffs for the new development of geotechnical engineering division. Initially, he got an appointment for 18 months, which was later extended to 11 years. During t hat period, he obtained good supports from AIT and installed good educational programs and equipments. He devoted enthusiastically to AIT as a vice president.

After AIT, he turned to practice. At the beginning, only he and his brother worked together. The first job was the restoration of runway pavement in the Taipei Airport. A 6m*6m panel of an existing pavement was removed, the subsoil was compacted, and the new pavement was cured. The challenge was that the entire process had to be completed in six hours during the night when no flight was scheduled. He recalls one night when a typhoon unexpectedly attacked the site, irrespective of the weather forecast, where new concrete had just been cast. It is still his good memory that next morning Boeing 747 safely landed on his brand-new pavement. Another good achievement of his was a construction of tunnel at only 6 meters below an airport runway. This job was successfully done without affecting the operation of the airport. With these achievements, his company grew to an international giant.

Finally, the interviewer made a request to Dr. Moh to give valuable advices to younger generations. He is afraid that recent fresh bachelors are not so much interested in basic academic issues as before, possibly because their lives are too easy. To improve this situation, his company takes care of 6-month internship for master students from abroad. He believes that an internship for 6 weeks, which is often the case for undergraduate students, is too short.

During the interview, the interviewer felt that Dr. Moh maintains his deep interest and strong enthusiasm in soil and geotechnical matters. It is desired that Dr. Moh will keep playing important roles in the world of geotechnical engineering and even in other areas.

by Ikuo Towhata

AGSSEA – Biodata of Chairman – Dr. Za Chieh Moh

 SEAGS – Biodata of President and Past Presidents 2015

Dear Colleagues,

Last time I wrote a message for your attention in the ISSMGE Bulletin was nearly one year ago.

In the meantime, the ISSMGE and geotechnical activities throughout the world have developed satisfactorily.

As planned, our five Regional Conferences on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering took place in 2015 and all of them were very successful. The following reports can be found in the issues of the ISSMGE Bulletin:

– for the XVI African Regional Conference in Hammamet, Tunisia, see:

http://issmge2014.ust.hk/~issmge/aug2015/3a.Conference_Report.pdf

– for the XVI European Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom, see:

http://issmge2014.ust.hk/~issmge/oct2015/4a.Conference_report_ECSMGE.pdf

– for the 15th Asian Regional Conference in Fukuoka, Kyushu, Japan, see:

http://issmge2014.ust.hk/~issmge/feb2016/5a.Conference_report_1.pdf

The reports for the 12th Australia and New Zealand Conference in Wellington, New Zealand and for the XV Pan American Conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, should also be published very soon.

We are now already in the process of preparing for the 19th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (19th ICSMGE) which will be held next year in Seoul, 17-22 September 2017. The call for abstracts has been launched earlier this year and the Members Societies are now asked to forward them to the Conference Organising Committee by the end of May 2016. The format of the Conference will be very similar to the 18th ICSMGE Paris, September 2013. After two days of plenary sessions, there will be two days of parallel sessions. In the plenary sessions, 11 Technical Committees of the ISSMGE (TCs) have requested and been given slots in which to deliver original Honours Lectures. These can be seen in the conference programme (http://www.icsmge2017.org/program/program_01.asp). The parallel sessions will be organised by the TCs themselves either in the form of Discussion Sessions (dealing with the written contributions sent by the Members Societies) or in the form of Workshops (proposed and organised by the TCs).

There are now a total of 14 ISSMGE Honours Lectures under the responsibility of the corresponding TCs (see: http://www.issmge.org/en/awards/honour-lectures) and these lectures often feature within conferences organised by the TCs of in other speciality events. The most recent Honours Lecture created (February 2016) is the John Burland Lecture proposed by the TC306 on Geo-Engineering Education.

The Board of the ISSMGE, together with the Chairs of the Board Level Committees met in September 2015 in Edinburgh, on the occasion of the XVI European Conference, hosted by the British Geotechnical Association (BGA) and then in Phoenix (Arizona) in February 2016 on the occasion of the Geo-Structures Congress of the ASCE, hosted by the Geo-Institute (the US Member Society).

The Council of the ISSMGE held its mid-term meeting in Edinburgh on Sunday 13th September 2016, the day before the opening of the European Conference. Currently there were 89 Member Societies and 72 of them were allowed to vote. Unfortunately in the meeting only 52 Members Societies were present or represented (through proxies). The main decisions taken were:

– the life of a Technical Committee of the ISSMGE is no more linked to the presidential term of office (the corresponding amendment to bylaw 16.1 was voted unanimously);

– to accept the new Cooperation Agreement for the FedIGS (Federation of the International Geo-Engineering Societies) which confirms a much lighter structure than the one envisaged in the initial agreement in 2007 (there were 42 votes in favour, 6 against and 4 abstentions).

Since the Council meeting a 90th Member Society has joined the ISSMGE: the Algerian Geotechnical Society (ALGEOS). Warm welcome to the ALGEOS: we are very pleased to have you with us!

During this last year the ISSMGE has pursued its strong commitment (“battle”!) for Open Access to geotechnical literature. More and more often the organisers of geotechnical conferences are encouraged to negotiate with the publishers of the proceedings so that free access to all the papers is allowed through an appropriate electronic link or through uploading on the ISSMGE website. It can be anticipated that the corresponding resources on our website will increase sharply in the coming years. It is one of the reasons for which we are presently in the process of redesigning the ISSMGE website. This work is done under the leadership of the Innovation and Development Committee, chaired by Dimitrios Zekkos. We shall have more news about this action very soon now.

Allow me to encourage you strongly to look at the series of Webinars which are on the ISSMGE website (see: http://www.issmge.org/en/resources/recorded-webinars). There are 5 more webinars delivered by: Prof. Richard Jardine, Prof. An-Bin Huang, Prof. George Gazetas, Prof. Samuel I.K. Ampadu and Prof. Lyesse Laloui. We are truly grateful to our colleagues who accept to devote their time to the ISSMGE and share their knowledge with us in an outstanding manner.

A lot of effort has also been devoted in 2015 by the Corporate Associates Presidential Group, chaired by Sukumar Pathmanandavel and the Technical Oversight Committee, chaired by Pierre Delage in order to discuss and hopefully narrow the gap between the state of practice and the state-of-the-art in geotechnical engineering. In particular, a very successful break-out session was organised in Edinburgh between ISSMGE TCs and CAs representatives. A companion message from Sukumar and Pierre, summarising the various actions in 2015, is included in the April 2016 issue of the ISSMGE Bulletin.

I wish to all of you the best in your geotechnical activities and… in your other activities!

Roger Frank

15th March 2016
 Message for ISSMGE Bulletin- 15 March 2016

Ooi Teik Aun

IEM Members

Proceedings of the 19th Southeast Asian Geotechnical Conference & 2nd AGSSEA Conference, 31 May-3 June 2016, Malaysia

IN MEMORIAM

The Past President – Prof. Victor F.B. de Mello

Victor’s photo taken in 1977 for the Rankine Lecture

The geotechnical community received with great sadness the notice that Prof. Victor de Mello has passed away.

In this moment I convey my condolences and deep sympathy in my personal name and on behalf of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering to Maria and Family.

Prof. Victor de Mello acted as President of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Foundations Engineering during the tenure 1981-1985 and will be remembered for his actions and passion to implement geotechnical activities worldwide.

Professor Victor de Mello was a man of prodigious energy and fine intellect. We are indebted for his outstanding contribution for the advancement of knowledge in soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering.

I had the opportunity to meet Prof. Victor de Mello in Mozambique in 1972, when he was acting as Consulting Expert for Massingir dam and I was initiating my first steps in geotechnical engineering. My debt of gratitude for him is so huge and I should like to recall this Master who teach me to think, to investigate, to be in Geotechnique and which friendship is for me a great lesson.

Professor Victor de Mello is often invited to be Keynote Speaker at international conferences of geotechnical engineering and other events and we always listen to his lectures with great interest and pleasure, as they are challenge and open new avenues of research.

I would like to highlight from Prof. Victor de Mello outstanding curriculum: i) his solid scientific background and research contributions for the advancement of knowledge of embankment dams and special foundations; ii) his significant contribution as author/co-author of papers for Journals, widely accepted throughout the world; (iii) his excellent lecturing and teaching ability to communicate, to support and to encourage students; (iv) his skill to establish synergies with Industry. I believe that everybody fully agree with me in classifying his activity with Five Es – Exciting, Elegant, Efficient, Excellent and Extraordinary.

But it is not sufficient to remember the Master, it is important to follow his example, to give continuity with energy and perseverance to his heritage and to spread his message that:
“The important thing in science is not
so much to obtain new facts, as to discover
new ways of thinking about them”.
This will be the simple contribution of the current and next generations to honor Victor de Mello memory.

ISSMGE presents to Victor de Mello family our deep sympathy.

With best regards
Pedro Sêco e Pinto
President

From ISSMGE Bulletin: Volume 3, Issue 1 Page 5
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IN MEMORIAM

Dr. Victor Milligan
(November 11, 1929 – March 4, 2009)

The international geotechnical engineering community is deeply saddened that Dr. Victor Milligan, P.Eng., FCAE, FRAE, FEIC, passed away suddenly on March 4, 2009 in his 80th year, while he and his wife Donna were on vacation in Mopti, Mali, West Africa. Dr. Milligan was a world renown geotechnical engineer, a key founding member of the international consulting firm Golder Associates, and a past Vice-President for North America of the ISSMGE.

Victor Milligan was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on November 11, 1929. He graduated from Queen’s University, Belfast in 1951 with a B.Sc. in Civil Engineering, and obtained a M.Sc. in Soil Mechanics at Queen’s in 1952. He then worked as a research fellow at Purdue University in Indiana, United States, on a King George VI Fellowship.

Dr. Milligan emigrated to Canada in 1956 and worked for Geocon Ltd., where he quickly rose to the position of Chief Engineer. In 1960, in partnership with Dr. Hugh Golder, he formed Golder Associates where he held posts of President and Chairman. Dr. Milligan was the driving force of the firm as it grew from a single office of five employees to 160 offices with over 7,000 employees worldwide. Long before his retirement from the company in 1994, Golder Associates had fully secured a worldwide reputation for excellence in geotechnical engineering – an achievement that Dr. Milligan looked upon with considerable pride. Golder Associates owes an immense debt to Dr. Milligan for instilling values that are the foundation of the company’s culture. In his “retirement” in 1994 to individual practice, he continued to act as Senior Consultant to Golder Associates and served on many Technical Review Panels and Consulting Boards for international clients with world class projects.

Dr. Milligan was recognized internationally as an expert in geotechnical engineering, especially in the fields of dams, embankments and soft ground tunnels. He worked on in excess of 150 dam projects throughout the world including one of the highest rockfill dams in Europe. In addition, he worked on 15 major tunneling projects in North America, South America, Australia and Singapore. He published over 50 technical papers, many of which were invited, keynote and award winning lectures.

Dr. Milligan received numerous awards, honours and accolades in recognition of his many significant accomplishments and contributions to engineering. He received two Honourary Doctorates – from Queen’s University in Belfast and Waterloo University in Canada. He was also recognized by many learned societies achieving Fellow status in the Canadian Academy of Engineering; the Engineering Institute of Canada; the Royal Academy of Engineering in the U.K., where only 70 such persons are allowed from overseas; and, Honourary Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers – the only person from Canada to be so recognized.

Dr. Milligan was one of the founders and the initial Editor of the Canadian Geotechnical Journal, President of the Consulting Engineers of Ontario and Vice-President for North America of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineers. He was the recipient of several prestigious medals and awards, including the Thirty-Eighth Karl Terzaghi Lecturer in 2002; the Sir John Kennedy Medal, the Julian Smith Medal and the K.Y. Lo Medal – all top awards of the Engineering Institute of Canada; the R.F. Legget Award from the Canadian Geotechnical Society – its highest award; and, the Beaubien Award from the Consulting Engineers of Canada.

Dr. Milligan was a gifted middle-distance runner when he was younger. He first gained acclaim as the first schoolboy from Northern Ireland to win the British Public Schools Mile championship. While injury prevented him from competing in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, he captained the Northern Ireland team at the 1954 British Empire Games in Vancouver. There he finished fourth in the fabled “Miracle Mile” just yards behind Sir Roger Bannister of England and John Landy of Australia.

The introduction of Dr. Milligan at the 2002 Karl Terzaghi Lecture provides good insight to his character. The introduction included the following citation:

“Victor was also the driving force behind the company’s ownership model. He wanted to build a superior company, and to do this he firmly believed that if the employees were owners, this would be reflected in their attitude towards their clients and product quality… Victor Milligan has only one standard. Whatever he does, it must be the best”.

Dr. Milligan will be greatly missed by his wife Donna, his sons Jeffrey and Michael, daughter-in-law Bobbi, grandson Alexander, great-niece Karen, his family in Northern Ireland, and by his many friends and colleagues in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Greece, Singapore, Australia, and elsewhere. That his circle of friends and family is so extensive and devoted is a testament to his integrity, loyalty, sense of humour and sharp wit, passion, and extraordinary zest for life.

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8th Young Geotechnical Professionals Conference Report

After about 17months in the organizing the 8YGPC was held in the Copthorne Hotel, Oriental Parade, Wellington on the 5th – 8th November 2008. The organizing committee had high hopes for the conference and it went off with a bang, quite literally, fireworks in Wellington Harbor. Ok they might not have been for us technically, but thanks for Guy Fawkes all the same.

The conference was attended by 45 delegates, 6 committee members – 2 of whom were multi-tasking as mentors (Lis Bowman of UoC & Ross Kendrick of Maunsell), 2 mentors (Gavin Alexander of Beca & Bruce Symmans of Tonkin & Taylor), and with keynote speaker John Atkinson of Coffeys & City University, London. One third of the delegates came from over the sea in Oz, and 38% of the delegates were females – I wonder, is the field of Geotechnics leading the way in gender equality?

One rule of the conference was that every one of the delegates must present their paper, in 10mins. Some had issues keeping to the time limit, but the water pistol dealt with those overrunning. The general consensus is that we all learnt something from all of the presentations, and the proceedings will be well thumbed.

The conference started with welcome drinks (and those fireworks) on the evening of the 5th, with a full day of presentations on the 6th followed by the conference dinner, which included a trip up the Wellington cable car, a quiz, and a talk by John Atkinson. The 7th was a half day of presentations with the afternoon comprising of a gourmet BBQ lunch on the Wellington fault line with a field trip along the fault line. Unfortunately the field trip day was the worst day weatherwise but luckily the worst of it held off till after lunch when we were  all safely on the bus. Another fabulous dinner on the evening of the 7th after which the committee showed the delegates the best spots along Courtney Place! The final presentations were held on the morning of the 8th with winners of the awards announced after lunch.

Two awards were up for grabs, judged by the mentors; one for the New Zealand delegates (sponsored by the NZGS), the Young Geotechnical Professionals Award (YGP), and one for the Australian delegates (sponsored by the AGS), the Don Douglas Youth Fellowship Award. The winner of the YGP award was Hayden Bowen from Tonkin & Taylor for his paper and presentation on Pile foundations in liquefiable soil – A case study of a bridge foundation. The Don Douglas award winner was Joel Gniel from Monash University for his paper and presentation on Predicted site behavior of geogrid encased stone columns. The mentors also felt that special mentions for their presentations should go to: Cary Everett, Sian France, Tariq Rahiman, Chris Soutar, Owen Woodland & Carol Yan.

Enough from me, here are some “sound-bites” from the delegates & mentors on the 8YGPC;

• It was a very good to meet other professionals with similar amounts of experience. I liked the informal nature of the conference and enjoyed the field trip, learnt lots.
• A very well organized and informative conference. I had high expectations and it exceeded them.
• Fantastic conference, well organized and set up to ensure delegates felt comfortable meeting and presenting in front of their
peers. Great atmosphere, fun people and highly recommended for those that haven’t attended a conference before.
• The 8YGPC has been a very rewarding experience for me. The informal nature of the conference encourages dialogue & discussion between the delegates and it provides a relaxed atmosphere in which to present. I will definitely be recommending this to my colleagues. Awesome experience so much learned and gained. Great people and contacts for life.
• The 8YGPC provided an interesting cross-section of activities of professional consulting engineers and research students. A
thoroughly enjoyable event with great networking. Great conference where I almost lost my wedding ring!
• Fun filled, great variety in activities and presentations, definitely worth coming to.
• I was very impressed with the wide range of project experience and academic research presented by the delegates at the 8YGPC. The presentations were extremely well delivered, and stimulated thoughtful and insightful debate. I greatly enjoyed the camaraderie and the open sharing of knowledge – Gavin Alexander

On behalf of the 8YGPC committee we would like to thank all the delegates for their papers, presentations & enthusiasm, the
mentors for the time & feedback, John Atkinson for his insight, our companies for allowing us the time to organize the conference,
and finally to our generous sponsors, Thank You. See you all at the 9YGPC.

Reported by Bev Curley, Opus International Consultants

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Asian Young Geotechnical Engineers Conference 2008 (AYGEC 2008)
20th and 21st December 2008

AYGEC 2008 conference was held jointly by Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Karnataka Geotechnical Center (KGC), Bangalore Chapter of Indian geotechnical Society (IGS). This event was part of the centenary celebrations of the Indian Institute of Science, which is a premier research Institute in India. Further, AYGEC 2008 was also a part of the celebrations of Diamond Jubilee of the Indian Geotechnical Society (IGS), affiliated to ISSMGE. IGS was established in 1948. The Inauguration of the conference was done by Professor N. Balalkrishnan, Associate Director of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Other dignitaries present were Professor Madhav, VP(Asia), ISSMGE; Professor.Muzumdar, Chairman of Department of Civil Engineering, Prof.Pinto (President of ISSMGE –from Portugal), Prof. Neil Taylor (Secretary General, ISSMGE from UK), Prof. Roger Frank, VP, ISSMGE (France), Prof. Mounir Boussida, VP, ISSMGE(Tunisia), Prof. Waldemar Hachich, VP, ISSMGE (Brazil), Prof. Osamu Kusakabe, VP, ISSMGE (Japan), Prof.Robert Holtz, VP, ISSMGE (USA); Prof. Michel Lisyuk, VP, ISSMGE (Russia) and many others.

The International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) had been instrumental in the development of geotechnical engineering in almost all parts of the world through the organization of international conferences. Recently, organizing conferences for young geotechnical engineers has become one of the formal events conducted by ISSMGE. ISSMGE board met on 19th Dec 2009 in Bangalore, India for the first time. Prior to this conference, Indian Geotechnical Conference 2008 (IGC 2008) was also held during 17th to 19th December 2008 at IISc, Bangalore.

AYGEC 2008 brought together young geotechnical engineers (less than 35 years) from 10 countries of Asian Region from universities, academicians, researchers, industries, government organizations and others with interest in Geotechnical Engineering to interact and exchange experiences in Asian context. This is the first time an Asian Young geotechnical conference was held in India and this is the sixth in the series.

The main theme of the conference was “Next generation Geotechnics”. Eminent persons delivered keynote lectures on different aspects of the conference themes. 7 keynote speakers presented their work and they are: Prof. Neil Taylor, Prof. Roger Frank, Prof. Mounir Boussida, Prof. Waldemar Hachich, Prof. Osamu Kusakabe, Prof. Michael Lisyuk, and Prof. T.G. Sitharam. The 29 contributions from the delegates (Bangladesh-2 papers, India-8 papers, Japan-2 papers, Korea-3 papers, Kazakhstan-3 papers, Malaysia -1 paper, Pakistan-2 papers, Srilanka-1 paper, Singapore-2, Taiwan – 3 papers, Thailand -2 papers) was received in the following sub themes and were included in the conference proceedings.

1. Geotechnical Testing
2. Foundations
3. Rock mechanics and Tunneling
4. Ground Improvement
5. Seismicity and Mitigation
6. Numerical and Analytical modelling

Delegates from Pakistan and Japan were not able to attend because of Mumbai blast attacks. Among others, 1 delegate from Korea is not here because of health reason. 22 delegates attended the conference and presented their papers.  As part of the technical programme, a technical quiz for the young geotechnical engineers was organized and two awards were presented. The presentations by the delegates were reviewed and two best presentations and 9 certificate of appreciation were awarded to the delegates.

Reported by Professor T.G. Sitharam

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