ESdat Environmental Data Management Software has been used to manage and report on large datasets generated from an investigation of groundwater contamination on an industrial facility in Adelaide. ESdat was used in managing site data and the maintenance of conceptual model and time series outputs at a complex site over an extended period. [Editor] Click through for the rest of the article. [/Editor]

It takes planning and good leadership to decide on an effective solution to problems associated with a building asset. Recently, a large wholesale warehouse facility in Cincinnati began to experience large sinkholes across a significant portion of their customer parking lot. Unable to determine the problem at that time, store management was forced to close a portion of the parking lot, inconveniencing their customers. This particular parking lot is unusual in that a drainage system is located directly under the parking lot, consisting of a network of pipes spanning 250 feet in length and 12” in diameter. Joint separations in the underground drainage piping had caused enough soil erosion to create sinkholes in the asphalt. Engineers were concerned that other unknown sinkholes could cave in anytime, resulting in further costly damage, and potentially posing safety hazards to customers.

[Editor] Click through for the rest of the article. [/Editor]

[Editor] The pile driving analyzer or PDA is used to measure the response of piles during driving. It was originally developed to analyze pile drivability, but is sometimes used as a substitute for pile static load tests to determine . Mr. Scott A. Barnhill, P.E., Executive Vice President of consulting firm GeoEnvironmental Resources, Inc. located in Virginia Beach, Virginia has seen PDA being used and misused over his 33-year career. In this article, Mr. Barnhill describes pitfalls in relying solely on the PDA for pile capacities, and also describes what PDA is good at and how it can be used successfully. [/Editor]

[Editor] Do we as geotechnical engineers and engineering geologists realize the impact of what it is that we do in our professions? Kleinfelder CEO Bill Siegel thinks we need to step back once and a while and look at the significance of our work. In this article contributed to GeoPrac.net, Mr. Siegel describes his observations at more than 50 Kleinfelder offices in this regard. I think I for one will have to work at taking his advice. Click through for Mr. Siegel's excellent article. [/Editor]

[Editor] Geofoam is a great tool to have in your geotechnical toolbox. It can be used to reduce vertical loads to control settlement or to reduce lateral loads on bridge abutments or other structures. The Pacific Street Bridge Project in Omaha, Nebraska is one project that used geofoam for both of these purposes. In this article, author Nico Sutmoller, Geofoam Specialist with Insulfoam, LLC describes this excellent case study in the application of geofoam to meet the project objectives and provide aditional efficiencies during the construction phase. Nico, thanks for sharing with us! [/Editor]

In this third and final installment of the popular VBA and Excel for Engineers and Scientists series, we will look at one of the most important techniques for extending Excel with VBA, the Range Object. I'll show you the best way to refer to single cells, multiple cells, how to get values from them and put values back into ranges using the VBA. And we'll program up a simple Monte Carlo Simulation example and lastly we'll look at how to read and write to text files and to manipulate files and folders in Windows.

[Editor] Miles Davis of Quantum Geotechnical Ltd. and gINTDev gives us a sneak peak at a "future feature" in gINT. Of course, gINT Software is a Premier Sponsor of GeoPrac, and the article has been published with the complete knowledge of the company. We welcome this first contribution from Miles and look forward to Part 2 and future articles sharing his gINT expertise! [/Editor]

In this part 2 of 2, various types of retaining walls are examined as possible alternatives in a side-hill retaining wall situation. These include conventional wall types such as CIP walls, MSE walls, gravity walls and soldier pile walls and some less conventional approaches such as lighweight concrete fill, hybrid soil-nail and geofoam wall systems, ground improvement and micropile walls.

Part 1 of this Side Hill Retaining Wall article covered the definition, significance, problems and failure modes, investigation techniques, analysis, and construction considerations of side hill walls. A PDF version is now available for download as well. Click through for the article and the download link!

Side-hill retaining walls refer primarily to fill-walls built partway down the sides of an existing slope or embankment. They are encountered in roadway and rail widening projects as well as site development but usually in steep terrain. This article provides an overview of the problems, failure mechanisms, investigation approaches, analysis tools and wall type alternatives for these structures. Click through to read the article!

Our first article from Robert Thompson with Dan Brown and Associates. A project profile of a challenging project invoving a railroad spur for a quarry. It involved ground improvement, soil nailing, and MSE walls.

Geotagging is the process of adding geographic metadata (ie. latitude, longitude and sometimes elevation and bearing) to digital photos or other media. In this article, I will examine the equipment needed, the software to help with the process and what you can do with your geotagged photos.

Nate Hekman discusses transient stability analyses with SLOPE/W 2007. At the end of the article, he refers the reader to a downloadable example problem for a rapid drawdown condition in both PDF and GSZ (GeoStudio 2007) format.