IGS North America Presents
WEBINAR: Pond Liner System Design and Operation
Presented by Richard Thiel, P.E., President, Thiel Engineering
Tuesday, January 30, 2018 | 1:00 – 2:30 pm EST (includes Q&A time)
Registration Cost:
$20.00* – IGS-NA Members | $80.00 – Non-members
Earn 1 PDH
* IGS-NA Members receive one FREE webinar coupon on paying annual dues
Though pond lining applications are common, the proper design and operation of pond lining systems requires great care. A large number of facilities in need of liquid containment are sensitive sites at which pond leakage could result in geotechnical failure of the embankments and subgrade, environmental damage, loss of valuable operational solutions or water, and disruption of operations. In this webinar, Richard Thiel, P.E., will share decades of insight into the proper design and operation of geosynthetic pond lining systems.
The engineering information in the session provides guidance and key considerations for those who work with potable water reservoirs, stormwater detention ponds, mining spoil containment sites, irrigation water storage, wastewater lagoons, food and industrial processing facility wastewater treatment ponds, hydrofracking containment ponds, pumped storage reservoirs, and more.
Attendees will learn about:
Participants will earn 1 PDH at the conclusion of this webinar.
Who Should Attend: Owners and operators of liquid containment facilities; contractors involved in lined pond construction and maintenance; and civil engineers, hydraulic engineers, water engineers, stormwater engineers, wastewater engineers, agricultural engineers, gas and oil extraction engineers; and mining engineers that design containment facilities.
Presenter Bio: Richard Thiel, P.E., has more than 30 years of experience and specialization in containment design applications for geotechnical projects, waste containment, secondary containment of fuel, and leach mining applications. His work has involved extensive interaction with feasibility evaluations, design, permitting, design peer review, economic evaluations, failure analyses, and construction of waste facilities and surface impoundments. He is an expert in the design of liner systems with soils and geosynthetics, leachate management systems including pipelines and pump stations, geotechnical site reconnaissance and resource investigation programs, construction quality assurance (CQA), and assistance in developing state solid waste regulations.
Please send all questions to info@IGS-NA.org or call +1 561 463 5868.
IGS North America Presents
WEBINAR: Understanding the Role of Minimum Average Roll Values (MARV) in Geosynthetic Specifications
Presented by Beth Wilbanks
Tuesday, December 19, 2017 | 1:00 – 2:00pm EST
Registration Cost: $20.00
FREE for IGS-NA Members!
Earn 1 PDH
Understanding minimum average roll value (MARV) is essential in ensuring data support product requirements reported by the manufacturer. There appears to be confusion in the geosynthetic industry concerning the application and definition of product requirements particularly as they relate to MARV. MARV is a statistical value and not a ‘minimum’ number. The interpretation of these values has become an issue and actual data may not support a calculated MARV that meets or exceeds the published MARV.
Attendees will learn about:
Participants will earn 1 PDH at the conclusion of this webinar.
Presenter Bio: Beth Wilbanks has been with TenCate Geosynthetics for approximately 20 years. During most of that time she led the Quality department and was instrumental in achieving ISO 17025 laboratory and ISO 9001 quality management accreditation. Her current role at TenCate Geosynthetics is Director of Product Management. She is actively involved in ASTM Committee D35 on Geosynthetics and was recently recognized for her efforts in the development of D8102 Practice for Manufacturing Quality Control of Geotextiles. She continues to work in the quality area and has coauthored and presented a paper on the MARV topic and its impact on the geosynthetics industry.
Please send all questions to info@IGS-NA.org or call +1 561 463 5868.
This past summer the geosynthetic community lost a great Geosynthetic Pioneer. André Rollin was always willing to help and promote communication between various parties in our industry from the Academic side to the Geosynthetic Contractor. News of his passing away was felt worldwide in our community. The sad news of losing André left a hole in our hearts, he will be missed and remembered at both International and Regional Conferences that he attended annually worldwide.
ANDRÉ ROLLIN – GEOSYNTHETIC PIONEER
André Rollin was one of the few genuine pioneers of the geosynthetic discipline. Even in 1977 he was attending the 1st International Conference on Geosynthetics in Paris (France), he has worked to the end on this topic.
From 1966 to 1997, he was Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal (Canada), in charge of a research team about geosynthetics. Afterwards, he was consultant, expert in geosynthetics applications in the environmental and mining fields, for the consulting firm Solmers-Genivar.
He is the author of more than 170 scientific papers and co-editor of two books on geomembranes, « Géomembranes, Identification and Performance Testing » (Chapman and Hall,1991) et « Géomembranes, Guide de Choix » (Presses Internationales Polytechnique,2002). He received several awards, among these, excellence de la North American Geosynthetics Society in 1991. He was the President of the Canadian Institute of Engineers between 1998 and 2000.
Convinced of the importance of the cooperation between academic and industrial institutions, he managed more than one hundred contracts of Research and Development on geosynthetics. He was the leader of many Training courses for professionals in Ecole Polytechnique ,McGill in Montreal ,University of Sherbrooke, Royal Military College in Kingston, University of Syracuse, Wisconsin, but also in South America, Brazil, Ecuador, and in Europe, University of Grenoble, Lyon Mulhouse in France , Liège in Belgium.
He took a very active part in the standardization process for tests on geosynthetics. He was President of the RILEM CommitteeTC103 about geomembranes, he was member of the Committee ISO-TC38 SC21 from the beginning, the first President of the ISO-TC221 on geosynthetics, and secretary of the Committee ASTM D35. He was also vice-President of the North American Geosynthetics Society.
His training as chemical engineer, his open-mindedness to the interdisciplinarity, his passion he’s passed to, his great and sparkling intellect made decisive his contribution to the development of the geosynthetic discipline. One will retain specifically his original morphometric approach, using picture analysis, for geotextile filters and his chimio-physico-mechanical study of geomembranes.
In his private life, he was very attached to his stone house of the Perrot island, in front of the Montreal city, where friends and work colleagues often met merrily. On the other hand, he was an outstanding collector of stamps, watches, jewels, and President of the Circle of Quebec Collectors.
André you will truly be missed by us all.
—
Biographical Note IGS France Chapter Leader & long-time colleague and friend of André,
Jean-Pierre Gourc | jean-pierre.gourc@ujf-grenoble.fr
University Joseph Fourier, Grenoble
IGS North America Presents:
Electrical Leak Location Webinar Series
Episode 1: Overview of Electrical Leak Location (ELL) Methods and Their Application
Presented by Abigail Gilson, M.S., P.E.
Date: Tuesday, November 21, 2017 @ 1:00 – 2:00pm EST
Registration Cost: FREE
EARN 1 PDH
Presenter: Abigail Gilson, Director of TRI Environmental’s Liner Integrity Services | ABeck@TRI-ENV.com | +1 512 623 0511
Overview of Electrical Leak Location (ELL) Methods and Their Application
All geomembrane-lined containment facilities should be tested for leaks before going into service. Early detection of leaks allows for swift and effective repair pre-service, protecting the engineer, contractor, owner and in many cases the environment. There are a variety of different methods available for electrical leak location. Choosing and specifying the most appropriate method requires an understanding of the technologies available: their benefits and limitations. In many applications an ELL method must be specified in the design phase, before construction starts, to ensure a successful test.
This presentation identifies the various common ELL technologies and identifies criteria which should be considered when specifying electrical leak location (ELL) methodology. Earn 1 PDH at the conclusion of the first webinar.
DOWNLOAD EVENT PDFAttendees will learn about:
Presenter Bio: Abigail Gilson, M.S., P.E., is the Director of TRI Environmental’s Liner Integrity Services. She has a wealth of experience in geomembrane-lined containment facility design and construction and has performed electrical leak location surveys since 2004. As a graduate of TRI’s inaugural liner integrity class in 2003, her electrical leak location field experience has exceeded 100 projects and 110 million square feet. She has written and presented papers to industry conferences and taught short courses worldwide regarding the technical aspects of liner integrity and leak location surveys.
Ms. Gilson’s expertise is available for providing equipment, field training, classroom education, instructional presentations, engineering consulting, and liner integrity survey execution. She has trained staff in all of TRI’s office locations to provide local assistance on survey projects.
We believe EDUCATION is essential to attaining the appropriate and widespread use of geosynthetics as engineering materials. IGS-NA is dedicated to expanding the use of geosynthetics through education. To achieve this the IGS-NA is actively: training future users of geosynthetics, training geosynthetic educators, and promoting geosynthetics as part of engineering curricula.
To facilitate these educational goals we have two exciting programs:
Educate the Educators | A Geosynthetics Training Program for University Professors
December 2017, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
We know that many undergraduate engineering programs completely lack geosynthetic instruction, often instructors may not have the knowledge, confidence or materials to effectively teach geosynthetics. In order to address this the IGS-NA offers Educate the Educators (EtE), a 2-day, funded program for University professors. EtE provides specialized, hands-on training and lecture materials to equip attending Professors with the tools they need offer effective geosynthetics course work in their engineering programs. Attending professors receive instruction, course materials (including power point presentations, hand outs and sample binders) and have continued access to the instructors as they develop their own programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Building on the success of EtE Austin, held in 2015, participants will receive training and educational material on the fundamentals of geosynthetics as well as exposure to the state-of-knowledge on geosynthetics in reinforcement and environmental applications. This year approximately 35 Student-Professors will attend our second EtE event, to be held in Kingston, ON in December of 2017.
We are very excited to have four exceptional educators and pioneering researchers as the EtE lead instructors: R. Kerry Rowe (Queen’s University), Richard J. Bathurst (Royal Military College of Canada) Richard Brachman (Queens University) and Jorge Zornberg (University of Texas Austin).
Educate the Students | A Guest Lecture Series for University Students
2017-18 School Year, on location as arranged
Educate the Educators is only part of the long-term strategy to train “future users” of geosynthetics. We also want to directly Educate the Students (EtS) by offer engaging and effective geosynthetic lectures which will immediately impact engineers-in-training. Lectures will be tailored to need of each program, and topics may range from fundamental to sophisticated. Particular focus will be made on large engineering schools. IGS-NA will support the development of the content and the costs associated with the transportation of the professors to/from the guest lectures.
In 2015 we hosted 45 EtE Student-Professors in August of 2016 we surveyed those professors, this is what we found…
40% of 2015 EtE Attendees’ University Programs contained NO Geosynthetic Content what so ever of those surveyed, 87% of those professors responded with a plan to incorporate the EtE programming at their institution.
Of those …
Of the 60% of the attendees whose course work already included some mention of geosynthetics 82% indicated that based on the EtE an increase in the geosynthetics content was incorporated for the 2015-16 academic year!
The budget for these two programs is $80,000 US. The IGS-NA is offering sponsorship programs in order to fund both projects. IGS-NA is seeking sponsors. If you or your company would like to consider supporting long-term quality growth of geosynthetics usage through sponsorship of either or both of these programs. Please don’t hesitate to call or write. Sponsorships available.
Thank you Current Sponsors!
Gold Sponsor $20,000 USD
Silver Sponsor $10,000 USD
Bronze Sponsor $ 5,000 USD
If you are interested in sponsorship or have additional questions please contact John Henderson, J.Henderson@TenCate.com< or call +1.706 693 1836.
The International Geosynthetic Society (IGS) announces:
Geohydraulics in New Orleans LA
November 7 – 9, 2017
Two Separate Events to Support the Development and Implementation of Geohydraulic Technology
The International Geosynthetic Society (IGS) Technical Committee on Hydraulics will host a committee meeting and Think-Tank to discuss three emerging technical topics. This discussion will bring together some of the top-contributors in geohydraulics community to strategize about the path forward on each subject, including considerations of technical consensus vs continuing technical needs, educational efforts and potential publications. Selected individuals will be requested to serve as facilitators to foster discussion and interaction.
For event 2, there will be a two-day engineering seminar on state-of-practice design & construction for coastal and river protection in North America. Attendees at this course will be exposed to the range of technologies available to address hydraulic management. Instructors will address design: criteria, methods & codes – and provide guidance for the evaluation of product performance and selection. Attendees will receive 16 PDH or 2 CEUs.
EVENT 1 – Geohydraulic Experts’ Think-Tank & Committee Meeting
Renaissance Pere Marquette New Orleans – November 7, 2017
$100/person
EVENT 2 — Geohydraulics I – Geosynthetics for Coastal & River Protection
Renaissance Pere Marquette New Orleans – November 8 – 9, 2017
Costs: $650 Member | $670 Non-Member
Presented by: The International Geosynthetics Society, Technical Committee on Hydraulics.
Learn more about the IGS-TCH Hydraulics Week.
Exhibit And Sponsor Opportunities are also available.
REGISTER TODAY
We proudly announced the winners of our first ever photo contest during the General Assembly held at Geotechnical Frontiers 2017. The photo contest was open to all members of IGS North America. Members were invited to submit photos demonstrating geosynthetics in action. Members submitted photos during the first quarter of 2017. Photos were evaluated on their clear demonstration of geosynthetic technology, esthetic quality of photos and clarity. A panel of judges scored these photos and winners were selected based on highest scores. All submitted photos will be used by IGS-NA to support educational efforts of the IGS-NA. Don’t forget to set you best geo-photos aside for next year’s contest!
Tough Cell being used on a Road Base with Sand Infill in a low CBR area. Location: Northern Alberta, Canada
High scale separation using Mirafi® S1000M Non-Woven Geotextiles for the construction of the New Mexico City International Airport to improve soil bearing capacity with imported bank materials over the area where the Texcoco Lake was in Estado de México, México.
Mirafi® Rsi Series for Soil Reinforcement. Sub grade stabilization facing unstable, saturated soft soils for the Villahermosa Freeway in Tabasco, Mexico.
Educate The Educators
A Geosynthetics Training Program for University Professors
4-5 December 2017, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Too many young engineers enter the field without state-of-the-art geotechnical knowledge because their formal schooling overlooks a key discipline in current geotechnical practice: GEOSYNTHETICS
Let the geosynthetics community provide you the resources to teach your students about geosynthetics!
We know that many undergraduate engineering programs lack geosynthetic instruction, often instructors may not have the resources, confidence or materials to effectively teach geosynthetics. In order to address this the IGS-NA offers Educate the Educators (EtE), a 2-day, funded program for university professors.
EtE provides specialized, hands-on training and lecture materials to equip attending professors with the tools they need to offer effective geosynthetics course work in their engineering programs. Attending professors receive instruction, course materials (including power point presentations, hand outs and sample binders) and have continued access to the instructors as they develop their own programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Building on the success of EtE Austin, held in 2015, IGS-NA is now offering a second EtE event, to be held in Kingston, Ontario in December of 2017. We are very excited to have four exceptional educators and pioneering researchers as the EtE lead instructors: R. Kerry Rowe (Queen’s University), Richard J. Bathurst (Royal Military College of Canada), Richard Brachman (Queen’s University) and Jorge Zornberg (University of Texas Austin).
Each successful applicant will need only to organize transportation to/from the course. The IGS and IGS-NA and their sponsors will provide food, lodging and course registration to all successful candidates.
Schedule Overview
Applicants will be asked to upload their C.V., provide information about the courses they teach and write a short description identifying how they would hope to incorporate the information from EtE in their curriculum.
Interested participants can apply online.
Please send all questions to info@IGS-NA.org or call +1 561 463 5868
IGS-NA General Assembly
March 14, 2017 | 6:00pm Eastern
Hyatt Regency Orlando
All members of the geosynthetics community are invited to the IGS-NA General Assembly meeting being held on Tuesday, March 14 at 6:00pm during Geotechnical Frontiers 2017 in Orlando, Florida. All are encouraged to attend the meeting and participate in the round-table discussion at the conclusion of the General Assembly.
IGS- NA General Assembly Agenda
1) Call to Order (Henderson)
2) Quorum (Peggs)
3) Agenda (Gupta)
a) Request for new business from members
b) Approval of agenda
4) President’s 2015-2017 Report (Henderson)
5) Treasurer’s 2015-2017 Report (McCartney)
a) Statement and approval of accounts
b) Approval of dues and other fees
6) Announcement of 2017-2019 Board of Directors (Henderson)
7) Introduction of 2017-2019 President (Henderson)
8) 2017-2019 President’s Address (Brachman)
9) Appreciations (Brachman)
10) Awards (Brachman)
a) IGS-NA Photo Contest Results
b) Other
11) New Business Stay Connected
12) Close General Assembly
13) Roundtable Discussion and Brainstorming Session (Brachman)
The Mission of IGS North America is to provide leadership in advancing geosynthetics education and research to attain their appropriate and widespread use as engineering materials as the Chapter of the International Geosynthetic Society (IGS) for the United States of America and Canada. IGS North America. Providing leadership in advancing geosynthetics education and research.
IGS-NA is proud to announce the opening of its first ever Photo Contest to all members of IGS North America. The contest will be open from January 24 until Feb 20, 2017.
Take advantage of this great opportunity to demonstrate geosynthetics in action! All entries should include a photo title, description, and photo credit. First, second, and third place winners will be announced on Tuesday, March 14th during the General Assembly held at Geotechnical Frontiers 2017.
Photos should clearly display a geosynthetic type/function in use. Photos should provide a clear understanding of what geosynthetic type/function or event is being demonstrated. Contestants must be an IGS-NA member in good standing.
These photos will be used to promote the exemplary work of the geosynthetics community, raise awareness of the importance of your expertise, and add to the beneficial dialogue between professionals and the larger engineering community. Credit to the winning submissions will be given. Promote your work. Promote your field.
SUBMIT YOUR PHOTOS HEREThank you for your participation!
For questions about the IGS-NA Photo Contest please contact Becky Slaybaugh at info@igs-na.org.
We are the North American Chapter of the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS), serving and representing infrastructure and sustainability professionals in Canada and the United States.
