Technical Oversight Committee

Technical Oversight Committee

The Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) is in charge of supervising and coordinating the activities of the Technical Committees (TCs) of the ISSMGE. The mission of TCs is to provide a forum for active participation by the individual members of ISSMGE, and to promote the objectives, activities and results of the Technical Committees throughout the ISSMGE membership. The TCs are a meeting arena for discussing, developing and applying specialist geotechnical knowledge related to the behaviour of geo-materials, geotechnical engineering and engineering for society. Among other things, holding regular meetings (in person or by telecons) involving all TC members is recommended to TC officers, so as to satisfactorily achieve the TC objectives described above. 

NEWS

Sydney Conference, 1 - 6 May 2022

TCs had an utmost role in the preparation and running of the  very succesful Sydney ICSMGE, hold from 1 to 6 May 2022. Please note that the new TOC chair, nominated by Dr. Marc Ballouz, the new President of the ISSMGE, is Prof. Marcelo Sanchez. Marcelo is the founder and first chair of TC308 on Energy geotechnics. He knows very well the functioning of TCs and will certainly manage the TOC in an efficient and talented way.

Time Capsule Project

As mentioned in previous messages to TC officers, the Time Capsule Team is organising a series of 1 hour meetings with TC officers (on 18 May, 1st June and 15 June 2021) to provide further information about the contributions from TC to the Time Capsule Project. The content of the presentation made by Sukumar Pathmanandavel on 1st June can be found here. The link to participate is here.

TOC COMPOSITION

The TOC is managed by a Chair and composed by the 6 Vice-Presidents of the Regions. Each Vice-President follows the activities of the TCs from his/her region.

Chair: Prof. Marcelo Sanchez, Texas A - M University -
Members:
To be completed
The TC activities are governed by the "Guidelines for ISSMGE Technical Committees and ISSMGE Honour Lectures", that also deal with creating and naming Honours Lectures, and the process for selection of a lecturer. Please note that the Guidelines have been updated in November 2019 with some important changes, as detailed in the next Section.

TC MANAGEMENT AND MEMBERSHIP

The tools provided by the ISSMGE website to facilitate the management of TCs may be found in the User Guide for TC officers. 

Some important points with respect to the management of the TCs are recalled below:

- The term of a TC Chair is four years long, with a maximum of two terms, resulting in an eight year maximum period;
- The TC membership includes (i) four members from various countries nominated by the Chair (who also selects the TC Vice-Chair (if necessary) and Secretary), with voting right, (ii) two members nominated by the Member Societies interested in the TC activities, with voting right, and (iii) corresponding members (no limit in number) who may attend meetings and participate to the TC activities, without voting right (corresponding members also have to register through their Member Society);
- The reporting of the TC activities to the TOC, ISSMGE Board and ISSMGE Council, is planned at the end of each presidential term. The 2017 - 2021 TC Final Term Reports have been provided 6 months before the Sydney ICSMGE (1 to 6 May 2022). Here is the form that was to be filled for the TC mid-term reports in 2019. The Final Term Report from is comparable.

The last version of the Guidelines (Nov. 2019) includes the following important changes, that have to be cautiously considered by TC officers:

- The length of the term of appointment of TC members is 8 years. It can be renewed for 4 years upon proposal of the TC Chair and approval by the TOC. Approval will be based on evidence of active and essential participation;

- The Chair may suggest to the ISSMGE President and the TOC to remove or replace inactive members;

- Normally, the venue for TC ISSMGE Honour Lectures shall be within a regular Conference arranged by the TC;

- Newly created TCs are submitted to a two years probationary period prior to be definitely confirmed by the Board;

- A new Chair who has some responsibilities in other TCs (Vice-Chair or Secretary) should resign from those positions;

- To reflect the international nature of TCs, TC Chairs are strongly encouraged to select a Secretary and a Vice Chair from a different MS from that of the Chair.

TC WEBSITE (contact: webmaster(at)issmge.org)

An updated TC website is mandatory to promote the TC activites. It is in the interest of the ISSMGE to have most of the TC websites brought together within the ISSMGE website. In case they still have no proper active and informative website, TC officers are warmly encouraged to use the TC subwebsite available on the ISSMGE website to promote their activities (providing the minutes of the TC administrative meetings is encouraged) and to divulgate the technical and scientific events that they organise. TCs with own active websites are invited to insert a link in the ISSMGE sub-website.

ISSMGE OPEN ACCESS POLICY

An essential mission of the ISSMGE is to provide up to date technical and scientific information to contribute to the improvement of knowledge easily available for the profession. Following the ISSMGE Open Access policy (see the ISSMGE Publication and Conference Manual), TCs are strongly encouraged to publish in Open Access their scientific production, and particularly the Proceedings of their Conferences, Symposium and Workshops that they organise. It is also important, and not too difficult, to promote the Proceedings through major databases, as described in this report.

TC ACTIVITIES

You can download

- The TOC activity report 2013 - 2017,

- The TOC presentation to TC officers at the 2017 Seoul Conference,

- The feedback from the CAPG/TOC survey on Bridging the Gap between State of the Art and State of Practice in Geotechnical Engineering,

- The 2017 CAPG/TOC on SoA and SoP in geotechnical engineering survey findings

- The 2019 TOC report at mid-term, presented at the Council Meeting in Cape Town on 6 October 2019

- The presentation given at the Sept. 2019 TOC - TC meeting in Reykjavik ECSMGE.

- The presentation given at the Oct. 2019 Council Meeting in Cape Town

TC Officers are invited to promote the Conferences and Workshops they organise through the ISSMGE List of events by using this link (click on "Submit event").