CANADIAN GEOTECHNICAL SOCIETY NEWS
Message from the President
I hope you all had a good summer and
were able to take some time off and
spend it with family and friends.
In the last couple of President’s Mes-
sages, I have reminisced a bit. I’ve
been surprised at the positive feed-
back that I’ve received from both the
younger and older CGS cohorts alike.
Let me have one more kick at this
reminiscing can.
When I started as a geotechnical
consultant in the early 1970s, reports
were written in long-hand, then put
into a “typing pool”. Eventually a
typed draft came back for your review.
Similarly, you sketched rough drafts of
the accompanying drawings, submit-
ted them to a draughting department
and several days later, voilà, hand-
draughted drawings came back for
review. After appropriate review,
changes were submitted to the typist
and draughts-person. A couple more
days, and perhaps another iteration,
you finalized your report and mailed
it (remember Canada Post!), to your
client.
Some might say this process, which
could take up to a week for a small
project, was inefficient; however, in
many ways it wasn’t. For one, before
you started preparing your report, this
process required you to have a good
idea of what you were going to say
and how you were going to say it. The
time between the first draft and the
final report allowed you time to con-
tinue thinking about the project, mull
over the findings, your analyses, con-
clusions and recommendations, then
allowed time for an appropriate review
by a senior colleague. This process
also forced you to plan ahead; there
was little room for last minute report
preparation. I remember a poster in the
Doug VanDine, President of
Canadian Geotechnical Society
