1. XVI EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON SOIL MECHANICS AND GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING,
EDINBURGH, 13 – 17 September 2015
Corporate Associates Presidential Group – Breakout session

2. Bridging State of the Art (SOA) and State of Practice (SOP) in Geotechnics
Welcome by ISSMGE President Professor Roger Frank
CAPG plan of work - Introduction by CAPG Chair Mr Sukumar Pathmanandavel
Presentation of SOA and SOP Professor Pierre Delage
Findings of a recent TCs survey on SOA and SOP Valérie Bernhardt, Kim Chan, Chaido Doulala-Rigby (Yuli)
Discussion with the floor Led by Karel Allaert

3. CAPG Organisation and Activities
Core team from Coffey, Terrasol/Setec, Tensar, GHD, Jan de Nul and Siemens, all Corporate Associates. A stable team, teleconferences held at 6 weekly intervals.
Strongly supported by the President, Roger Frank, and also the ISSMGE secretariat. Close collaboration with Technical Oversight Committee (TOC), through Pierre Delage.
Key activity over past 18 months has been work on implementation of the CAPG plan 2013 to 2017 (available on the ISSMGE web page).
Also, working on activities to increase the number of Corporate Associates

4. CAPG Plan 2013 to 2017
Key purpose of the plan is to increase the interaction between academic and the commercial sector, for the betterment of the geotechnical profession and commercial practice.
The tool we have chosen to have this interaction is through conducting a survey of the State of the Art (SOA) and State of Practice (SOP) of geotechnical and geo-environmental engineering.
The form of the survey will be prepared using input and information from the ISSMGE Technical Committees (TCs)
The completion of the survey will be by 30 Influential companies in the world (reflecting practitioners/ users of practitioners view point). The results to be (hopefully) presented/ published at the 2017 Seoul Conference.

5. Activities to increase the number of Corporate associates
We have 30 CAs, which is a significant drop in numbers from what we had a couple of years ago. We have CAs in,
Africa – Nigeria (1),
Asia – HK (1), Japan (1), Kazakshtan (1)
Australasia – Australia (3)
Europe – Belgium (1), France (5), Germany (3), Netherlands (2), Norway (1), Russia (3), Turkey (1), UK (2)
North America – USA (2) , Canada (1)
South America – Brazil (2)
Some of the dropouts are initiated by the CAs, usually at renewal time
The ISSMGE took action on long overdue non payment, and removed 6 CAs in March 2015 and a further 7 CAs in June Four of these were from the Paris complementary registration.

6. What are we doing about it?
Thanks to Valérie Bernhardt, of Terrasol/Setec, we now have,
Created an updated and much improved brochure (July 2015)
Updated the benefits to Corporate Associates document (July 2015)
Improved the CA and CAPG pages in the ISSMGE web page, so it is simple to follow and everything you need (including the Brochure) is there.
We are also asking the Board of the ISSMGE to exert their individual and collective influence by speaking and promoting Corporate Associates in public forums and on their official visits. We know this is starting to happen.
If each of you, representing your country, can have a friendly discussion with one or more potential CAs, then by the time we meet again in Seoul, we could have doubled the number of fee paying CAS!
Thank you.
Sukumar Pathmanandavel, Chair, CAPG

7. Brief introduction on the CAPG plan and work
Introducing the Core Team of the CAPG
Key activities of the CAPG (2013 to 2017)
Execution of the CAPG Plan 2013 to 2017 and
Activities to increase the number of Corporates Associates
CAPG Plan 2013 to 2017
Commercial – selection of influential companies in the world
Academic – understanding state of the art and state of practice in key areas of geotechnical and geo environmental practices
Development of the survey questionnaire for deployment in 2016
Activities to increase the number of Corporate associates
CA Brochure
ISSMGE website
Activities by the Vice Presidents of the ISSMGE
Activities by the President of the ISSMGE

8. State of the Art – State of Practice: two “virtual” objects (1)
SOA: we know through papers, conferences, books and discussions with experts that people know many things on a given subject; we have an idea of existing knowledge
We need the knowledge of knowledge
We also know that frontiers exist and should be overpassed by research
SOA reports prepared for conferences (including TC conferences) highly depend on the author’s personality. They can be:
Quite personal, mainly centred on the author’s own contributions with some references to colleagues, either through books or SOA conference paper
Wider, with quite a complete panorama, either through a book (e.g. Mitchell and Soga 2005 on soil microstructure) or a SOA conference paper (e.g. Alonso, Gens and Hight on Unsaturated soils, ECSMGE Dublin 1998)
Many fields have no SOA reports providing updated SOA (we have a feeling of what could be the SOA but there is no report)
TCs are the place where experts contribute to develop knowledge in an interactive manner in a given field (through Conferences, workshops,..)
10i TCs are more fundamental and more prone to provide SOA reports (see questionnaire report)

9. State of the Art – State of Practice : two “virtual” objects (2)
SOP: we know how people solve practical problems in a given field through papers, conferences, books, discussions with practitioners and final achievements
Practical problems solving includes:
Conception
Calculation
Execution
Measurements and feedback
Good knowledge of SOP is essential to practitioners in their field
SOP can be partly caught through:
Books (mainly for basic problems like foundations, retaining structures,…)
Guidelines provided by various institutions including 20i TCs devoted to practical applications
SOP reports from conferences, when they exist; Codes of practice (UK)
Short courses proposed by some 20i TCs (e.g. TC211 on Ground improvement), by some universities and continuing education organisations
Standards have a particular role:
They can be open and allow for extension and new developments (Eurocodes)
They can be straight and restrict new developments
National cultures and administrations are also important in either allowing or restraining developments, including law issues
Some problems have no standards, guidelines… but rely on extensive interaction between scientific research, technical innovation and practice
Large structures involving high risks: dams (ICOLD), radioactive wastes (National waste agencies)
Innovative issues: offshore geotechnics, energy geotechnics (hydrate bearing sediments)

10. Presentation of the results of the TC survey
Aim of the survey issued by CAPG to TCs
Gain better understanding of the state of the art (SOA) and the state of practice (SOP) of various geotechnical practices.
In order to be able to identify main areas of possible improvements in the SOP to help advance the geotechnical engineering profession towards state of the art in geotechnical practice.
TC survey issued in January By the end of February 2015, we had received answers (out of 32 TCs in total). Thanks a lot to TCs for their interest and involvement.
This lead CAPG to organise this breakout session in Edinburgh because the survey results highlighted that it is necessary to have a discussion/debate between TCs and CAPG in order to identify the areas of possible improvements.

11. Presentation of the results of the TC survey
Questions about existing situation within each TC

12. Presentation of the results of the TC survey
Questions about existing situation within each TC
Questions 5, 7 et 8 to be detailed in the following slides.

13. Question 5: Are there any significant gaps between SOA and SOP in the area of interest of your TC ?
Response summary:
TC responded: 25
Yes: 16
No: 9
Selected responses:
“There are no knowledge gaps, but challenge is to disseminate the SOA to practitioners.”
“Gaps are due to inertia of practitioners/industry.”
“Implementation is a high cost at the beginning, but highly competitive at the end.”
“SOA (except for recent developments) is for the most part already incorporated in relevant International Codes.”
Most TC10x comment on their TCs being mainly academic/research oriented (and thus having few relations with practitioners).
A few TC20x and TC30x comment on good overlapping of research and practice in their field.

14. Question 7: Are there needs to close the gaps between SOA and SOP within your TC?
Response summary:
TC responded: 25
Yes: 16
No: 7
Yes/No: 2
Selected responses:
“It depends on the way that national and international institutions are capable to recover the SOA-knowledge in the engineering practice.”
“There is a need to facilitate the dissemination of the SOA to practitioners.”
“There is a need to exchange experience and culture.”
“Even though we lack documents specifying SOA and SOP, the point of our TC is to educate the community and bring the SOA into practice.”
“We have always paid attention to maintaining a good connection between SOA and SOP”

15. Question 8: Are there key technical topics of TC that CAPG should concentrate its efforts on?
Response summary:
TC responded: 25
Yes: 19
Possible: 3
No: 3
Key TC technical topics and CAPG Actions:
“Use of knowledge gained from research to be used in engineering practice”
CAPG to help bridging the gap between research and engineering practice – CAs are not aware of most of the work carried out by the TCs; CAPG to investigate and implement with TCs efficient ways of communicating TCs wider activities to practitioners – good example TC211
“Lack of digital infrastructure to reach the Industry; need for Geotechnical ‘Apps’ – including sustainability ‘apps’ such as CO2/embodied energy apps
CAPG to investigate with Academicians the possibilities and a possible way to ‘fill’ some of the generic gap – e.g. real time monitoring apps, simple design apps

16. Question 8: Are there key technical topics of TC that CAPG should concentrate its efforts on?
“Wider use of numerical modelling in practical geotechnics (see comment) – e.g. modelling deformation, unsaturated soils, suctions etc”
This is quite a tricky one and CAPG would need suggestions from the TCs and the CAs on how numerical modelling can widely be embedded/adopted and benefit practical, real time applications
“Promotion/adoption of non-traditional methods and materials in transportation – e.g. rail/pavements+geosynthetics.”
CAPG to help lobbying the use of geosynthetics (see comment) with various specifiers/asset owners through its members memberships/connections – e.g. UK DfT contact via IGS UK, through FedIGS etc
“Spread waste management and pollution control knowledge in least developed countries. Address key environmental impacts from new energy sources like biogeotechnology, shale gas, geothermal, Aeolian, wave, solar etc”
CAPG to recruit and connect new and existing CAs practitioners in this field with TC215 and possibly RedR and Engineer’s without Borders/others?,

17. CA’s problems encountered in the field regarding geotechnics
Protection of intellectual property
Companies look for solutions/calculations/practical working methods while working on a certain job => increase of lead on the competition
Knowledge stays within the company
Area of tension between companies and academic world
Standards vs empirical practises
Correct use of (local or international) standards
Companies working in very specialised fields sometimes want to “overrule” existing standards because they see other phenomena happening
E.g. hydraulic fills with crushable sands in dredging industry and their acceptance criteria via CPT-Dr relationships
Acceptance of innovation/cost-effective measures
Companies like to think “out of the box”
Prove/justification of solutions cannot be given via existing standards
Own feedback is not accepted by client/consultant

18. CA’s problems encountered in the field regarding geotechnics
Solutions
Mind setting of companies, academic world, consultants ... in executing a job with an open and constructive attitude to each other.
Seen the questionnaire, answered by most of the TC’s, many TC’s are tackling this “communication problem” already.
Still, the communication to the outside world mostly stops at the borders of ISSMGE
Could CAPG be a catalyst in this conversation!?