Geotechnical News • June 2018
25
GEOTECHNICAL INSTRUMENTATION NEWS
Introduction by John Dunnicliff, Editor
This is the 92
nd
episode of GIN. Just one article this time, on my
favourite subject, Human Factors. In the red book I called these
People Issues, but the former is a more common and better term. The
article is followed by some discussions by manufacturers of instru-
ments (which I found very interesting) and a closure.
A ‘Must Read’ Manual for
Anyone Using an Inclinometer
“Use of Inclinometers for Geotechni-
cal Instrumentation on Transportation
Projects
State of the Practice”,
Transportation
Research Circular Number E-C129,
October 2008. By George Machan,
Landslide Technology
and Victoria
G. Bennett,
Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute (RPI).
Although written nearly ten years ago,
I’ve only just discovered this. By far
the best document that I’ve seen on
this challenging subject.
/
circulars/ec129.pdf
A Tale to Reinforce your Faith in
Human Goodness
Last week my wife Irene went shop-
ping in a town about 5 miles away,
population 25,000.
When she returned to her car, she
discovered that she’d lost her wallet.
Annoyed with herself! So she went to
the nearby police station to report the
loss.
A few hours later the phone rang – a
policewoman saying that the wallet
had been handed in. “Are you going to
be in this evening?” A puzzled, “yes”.
“We’ll see you in about an hour”.
Wow!
About 2½ hours later the phone rang,
and in a voice interrupted with laugh-
ter, “We’re lost!” Now, we live down
some narrow lanes in a National Park,
but we’re NOT isolated. She described
where they were – not far away, so I
started to give directions, mentioning
a nearby hotel. More laughter, “We’ve
passed that lots of times this evening.
We have SatNav, but it’s just told us
to go to the end of this lane, park and
walk. Let’s meet at the hotel”.
So we did. They were in a largeish
police van (probably a ‘paddy
wagon’), policewoman A driving.
Policewoman B jumped out, laugh-
ing, “I’ve been bursting for a long
time” and rushed into the hotel. (This
explained why they wanted to meet
at the hotel rather than at our house!).
“We’ve been driving around and
around – we’ll never forget this eve-
ning!” Both were in their 20s.
More chat, more laughter. Wallet
returned. Nothing missing. Receipt
signed. Repeated “We’ll never forget
…”. Hugs all round (Kevlar jackets,
we think). Vigorous waving goodbye.
Profuse thanks sent to the finder.
An afterthought – what would have
happened if we had called the emer-
gency number because we were
burgled?
Down the hatch (England)
Gezondheid (“To your health”).
Netherlands
Some remarks on the importance of human factors
in geotechnical and structural monitoring programs
John Dunnicliff
In my experience as a ‘getting hands
dirty’ practitioner for geotechnical and
structural monitoring, I’ve learned that
technical issues take us only half way
to success. The other half consists of
what I used to call ‘People Issues’ and
my Italian colleague Giorgio Pezzetti
has found a better term: “Human Fac-
tors”. Failure to attend to the human
factors has so often led to failures of
monitoring programs. As my fellow
octogenarian Elmo DiBiagio, from
the Norwegian Geotechnical Insti-
tute, recently wrote to me,
“We have
solved most of the ‘what to measure
problems’ and we have well proven
instruments. The people may be the
weak link in an instrumentation proj-
