General

I spent Tuesday at Presentation Day 2018, following up from our support of another couple of Dr Tam Larkin’s students using TSLOPE in their Part IV Research Project.   This year Ada Ng and Joseph Graham completed a study titlted “Slope conditions resulting in a critical 3D Factor of Safety”. We congratulate them on completion of […]

Over the past couple of months I have been working my way through the new book authored by Duncan Wyllie, “Rock Slope Engineering Civil Applications Fifth Edition”.   The book format at 620 pages is readable on an aeroplane.  However it should be on the desk of all engineers involved with rock slope engineering; it is […]

I spent Saturday at Presentation Day 2017, where final year Civil and Environmental Engineering students (from a class of 240) presented their research findings undertaken as partial fulfillment for the requirements of the Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) degree.  The students, who had worked in pairs, should be congratulated on the high standard of their work, […]

Last Tuesday I assisted Stuart Read (on left of image) and Fred Baynes who were leading a two day course on Principles and Practice of Engineering Geology for 26 members of the New Zealand Geotechnical Society.  We spent the morning inspecting, and logging part of the lower slopes of the abandoned quarry at Owhiro Bay, […]

Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand is located at the south end of North Island.  The city was built around a sheltered harbour, however there is limited flat land and development has moved on to areas with challenging topography.  Excavations are commonly required to accommodate housing, and infrastructure.  As a result, we are interested […]

I have just received my copy of the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering Bulletin volume 50, no. 2 (June 2017). It is a special issue on the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake that affected parts of both South and North Islands of New Zealand. I live near Wellington, and the shaking at my house at 12:02am […]

A colleague recently contacted me to see if I had a copy of a paper published in New Zealand Engineering in 1964.   At the time of publication, I was a high school student, but the paper did come to my attention a few years later when I started my professional career.   The author, Tom Grant-Taylor, […]