November – December issue of Geo-Strata which is a published forum of the Geo-Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) featured an article by Patrick C. Lucia, Chairman Emeritus of Geosyntec Consultants, titled “As I See It: Geotechnical Forensic Engineering in Defense of Geotechnical Engineers”.
In the article Patrick shares his over 25 years of experience in forensic geotechnical investigation of failures and the compliance of Geotechnical Engineers to “Standard of Care”. In his opinion the majority of failures occur due to “lack of process in conducting the geotechnical engineering practice”.

Unfortunately it is very difficult to standardize geotechnical engineering practice in a way that other engineering disciplines have. The difficulty of standardizing geotechnical practice is that ground is not standard. This is why geotechnical engineering is so challenging. How can you standardize an investigation in a new project? Is the text book “influence zone” depth an adequate depth to drill? Can a few centimeters thick unfavorable clay seam be found with two 30m borings in a proposed cut? Can an undisturbed or even remolded sample be acquired from that seam? Can we pursue the client to spend additional thousands of dollars when we are unsure of what lies beneath?
Pat is arguing that “when the process of engineering is properly done and properly documented, it will far reduce the number of claims and make the defense of those claims much easier.” This is true but maybe difficult, especially in a world of fast track projects and low bids. Maybe our profession needs to do much more to “standardize” proper engineering process. Firms may need to take action to “educate” potential clients and owners about the importance of a sound geotechnical investigation, peer reviewed process in ground properties evaluation and design and necessary time that is needed.
Time is a fundamental problem in geotechnical engineering profession. It is not easily understood why maybe a month is needed for a simple foundation investigation. How can you argue when you hear “we do not have such time, we need the results in a week!”, as if we control the permeability characteristics of a clay in a consolidation test!!!
These and many other issues make our profession so challenging, difficult but at the same time so rewarding, from a scientific point of view (I don’t know any billionaire geotechnical engineer). We need to practice geotechnical engineering and at the same time educate the rest of involved disciplines in its difficulties. Unfortunately probably we are not doing very well in the second part of educating…