Geotechnics day 06.11.2014

The student's point of view

Atmosphere at the Geotecnical day

I am studying civil engineering for the fourth year. I heard of geotechnical engineering for the first time a couple of years ago and since then I have tried to learn everything possible about the subject, resources and leisure time within the area of this discipline.

When I read on the SGY's (Finnish Geotechnical Society)  website about the geotechnics day I thought that I have to get to the scene. As luck would have it the Turku University of Applied Sciences had booked a few extra tickets for students. So by train we went to Helsinki. The occasion itself was in Bio Rex, a few hundred meters from the Helsinki railway station.

The occasion began early in the morning and when I got there I realized how big of an occasion it was. There were probably hundreds of people. The atmosphere was casual and networking with the professionals was possible to. Surprisingly, there were even a few familiar faces, mainly the guest speakers from the University of Applied Sciences.

Presentations started and I was pleased that, although I did not have a lot of experience in geotechnics, however, I was able to follow and understand almost everything in all presentations.

The agenda was long with 15 different topics. Excluding breaks presentations were continued until the afternoon.

There were a lot of interesting subjects, but particularly memorable were topics related to the construction of the metropolitan area densely populated environment. Improvement of Ring III due to continuous growth in traffic, re-piling pier's in the South harbour of Helsinki, the City of Helsinki problems with groundwater, when the impervious surfaces are gaining more and more space, etc.

The presentations were dealing with a lot of the actual projects success and problems, that the engineers had come across. I must say that for me these problems seem to be insurmountable problems, but however include engineer's daily basis in working life.

On the agenda one can notice that recovered materials have become important in foundation engineering. Also new water permeable pavements and road structures have progressed from CLASS (Climate Adaptive SurfaceS) projects to pilot projects. This is good news for the Helsinki metropolitan area groundwater.

Geotechnics day as a whole was very interesting and a well-organized occasion. As a student I got a lot of new ideas in this field and I saw what kind of problems and plans professionals are working with. Even at this stage it is clear that I will take a part in geotechnics day next year.