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Geotechnical News • March 2013
49
ASFE NEWS
THE
GEOPROFESSIONAL
BUSINESS
ASSOCIATION
ASFE
A not-for-profit association established in 1969, ASFE’s purpose is to
help geoprofessionals maximize their importance and value to the
marketplace, achieve business excellence, and manage risk. ASFE
creates more awareness of geoprofessionals’ value through outreach
activities targeted to organizations of clients and those that influ-
ence them. It increases the supply of trusted geoprofessional advisors
through high-impact programs, services, and materials it creates for
the personnel of ASFE-Member Firms.
The First Six Months:
President David A. Schoenwolf,
P.E. Reports
ASFE President David A. “Dave”
Schoenwolf, P.E. delivered the follow-
ing remarks on October 27, to mem-
bers attending the 2012 Fall Meeting
in Denver, Colorado.
It’s an honor for me to stand before
you as president of this amazing orga-
nization. ASFE was created to look
after the business needs of geoprofes-
sionals and we have kept ASFE true to
that course, evolving as business needs
have evolved; changing as the nature
of business risks have changed.
Part of our evolution has involved
modification of our purpose, from
an organization that focused almost
solely inside – creating umbrellas our
members use to protect themselves
from what’s raining down – to an
organization that also has an outside
focus, to help change the nature and
extent of the rain, not just to reduce
the risks of geoprofessional practice,
but also to reward those who strive for
excellence and to encourage more to
do so. Achieving our common goal of
overcoming the commoditization and
marginalization geoprofessionals too
often must contend with depends upon
having more outstanding geoprofes-
sional practitioners available to serve
as their clients’ trusted professional
advisors. But to be outstanding, indi-
viduals need more than great technical
skills. They need the business skills,
including the interpersonal skills that
all outstanding service providers seem
to possess. Not only do those skills
enhance the bottom line; they help in
the area of risk management, if only
because, as we all know, friends don’t
sue friends.
...neutralize an
extremely dangerous
paper...
We created a strategic plan to help us
achieve our purpose; we update that
plan every three years, to provide a
path going forward based on experi-
ence; knowledge of what works and
what doesn’t. We’re now in the fourth
year of our efforts, focused on
helping
our members maximize their impor-
tance and value to the marketplace,
achieve business excellence, and
manage their own risks and those of
other project participants.
Of course, the real reason I’m here
is to answer the question, “What has
ASFE done for me lately?”
One of our most important initiatives
has been developing a response to a
situation that was covered in the latest
issue of NewsLog. In essence, we
have been working diligently behind
the scenes to
neutralize an extremely
dangerous paper
that appeared in
ASCE’s
Journal of Geotechnical and
Geoenvironmental Engineering
. The
paper, by William N. Houston and
John D. Nelson, includes a discus-
sion of the legal theory behind the
standard of care concept; a discussion
the authors are not qualified to present
in any type of authoritative manner,
and which they got just about 100%
wrong. Since the paper was published
in a professional journal, it could be
cited in court by hired-gun experts
who make their living by assassinat-
ing the character and competence of
their peers. Worse, the paper purported
to discuss what the standard of care
actually is for “Foundation Engineer-
ing on Expansive and Collapsible
Soils,” based upon research methods
that were not revealed, but which we
know involved geotechnical reports
that were as much as 35 years old, and
excluded anything less than five years
old, even though the standard of care
MUST be based on what is happening
at the time under consideration, which
in this case is NOW. Fortunately, it
appears that our two rebuttal papers,
prepared by Ji Shin and Michael
Byrne for the Legal Affairs Commit-
tee, and Dennis Shallenberger for the
Geotechnical Committee, will be pub-
lished and that ASCE may be consid-
ering some changes to the peer review
process that permitted these papers to
be published in the first place. We will
keep you informed so that, in turn, you
can keep your attorneys and insurers
informed.
We have known for some time that
papers such as this, and the work of
hired-gun experts nationwide, could
be countered if we could somehow
develop a
formal standard
that iden-
tifies the specific types of actions a
civil engineer should take to be able to
testify properly on what the standard
of care was at a certain time and place.
ASFE conceived a plan to get this
done and has been leading the charge
for close to ten years. Now, it appears