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Geotechnical News December 2010
Foundation Drilling
Conducts a Roundtable Interview
The following article appeared in the
August issue of
Foundation Drilling,
published by ADSC:The International
Association of Foundation Drilling.
It began, formally, in 1969 as Asso-
ciated Soil and Foundation Engineers
(ASFE), a business-focused associa-
tion of geotechnical engineering firms
desperate for survival: Their liability
problems were so severe, professional
liability (PL) insurers worldwide with-
drew coverage. ASFE’s mission was
to learn what was behind the situation
and to develop programs, services, and
materials member firms could apply to
make the problems less onerous. An in-
dependent survey conducted by Birn-
berg & Associates in 1985 revealed
that ASFE was achieving its mission:
ASFE-member firms were able to ob-
tain PL coverage from most AE insur-
ers, and they were paying rates lower
than most other AE firms’. The survey
also revealed that ASFE members were
the most profitable of all the nation’s
design and environmental firms.
The organization was prospering,
too. Membership had grown consider-
ably as had the members’ average size
and service mix. In fact, geotechnical
engineering had become but one of
many geoprofessional services most
member firms provided, in addition to
environmental, geo/civil design, geol-
ogy, and construction materials engi-
neering and testing. This diversifica-
tion prompted the group to change its
name to its by-then well-known acro-
nym, begetting ASFE, Inc., which is
still the group’s legal name. For clar-
ity’s sake, the organization added ta-
glines to explain itself. Most recently,
it became ASFE/The Geoprofessional
BusinessAssociation, but the change of
name was just one of several important
changes the organization adopted. The
group also embraced a new purpose,
“To maximize the geoprofessions’ im-
portance and value to the marketplace.”
Foundation Drilling
Editor Scot Litke
wanted to learn more and invited the
group’s Executive Committee to par-
ticipate in a roundtable discussion.
Guests included ASFE President James
W. “Jay” Martin, P.E.
(AMEC Earth &
Environmental, Inc.)
, President-Elect
David R. Gaboury, P.E.
(Terracon)
,
and David A. “Dave” Schoenwolf, P.E.
(Haley & Aldrich, Inc.)
. This is what
they had to say.
Litke:
So what prompted this move?
ASFE has spent 40-plus years creating
a reputation for risk management.
Martin:
We’re not abandoning risk
management. It’s an essential business
tool and one that we’re really good at
it, frankly. What we’re trying to do
now is a lot bigger than risk manage-
ment. In essence, our new purpose is to
change the environments where most
of the risks seem to come from.
Litke:
And which are those?
Martin:
The markets where geopro-
fessionals are marginalized and com-
moditized.
Litke:
I think we need to define
terms. “Marginalized and commod-
itized” means what?
Gaboury:
Marginalized means
we’re put into a position where we
have little or no opportunity to apply
what we know so we can add value to
a project. We’re on the outside looking
in instead of being on the inside look-
ing out. We’re not sitting around the
table as major project participants or
contributors. We’re order-takers. We’re
not invited to the decision-making pro-
cess. Sometimes we’re not even invited
to the jobsite unless something goes
wrong. And given the nature of geopro-
fessional practice, it’s easy for things to
go wrong, if geoprofessional services
are applied ineffectively.
Litke:
And commoditized?
Schoenwolf:
Commoditization oc-
curs most frequently in those markets
where client representatives and other
AE professionals tend to regard geo-
professionals as all more or less the
same. In other words, they seem to
think that it doesn’t matter which geo-
professional you retain, you’ll get more
or less the same kind of results and, in
many cases, the same kind of me-first
attitudes about risk avoidance.
Litke:
I assume risk avoidance and
risk management are not one and the
same.
Schoenwolf:
Correct. Unfortunate-
ly, it seems as though a lot of geopro-
fessionals think risk avoidance and risk
management
are
the same, and that has
aggravated some of the over-arching
problems we’ve reorganized to deal
with. In the same markets where geo-
professionals are commonly marginal-
ized and commoditized, they’re also
criticized by client representatives and
professional colleagues who believe
geoprofessionals want to avoid respon-
sibility for what they do. And all too
often, the criticisms are valid. A proj-
