alive and well - Geological Society of Australia

Cross-section through the GreatEscarpment north of Wollongongthat illustrates the landforms,geology and slope retreat rates(from Wilson et al, 2005).A detailed understandingof the coastal geology andgeomorphology was critical in theconstruction of the Sea Cliff Bridgenorth of Wollongong.A smaller number of engineering geologists continue to workfor government authorities such as State government transportdepartments. However in our experience these positions arecontinuing their long-term decline as more of this work isoutsourced to private consultancies. The hollowing out ofgeological experience from government departments needed tooversee and appropriately manage such outsourcing is wellbeyond the scope of this article. It is an issue likely to be ofconcern in the near future if the trend continues.TeachingOne fundamental grass roots element of engineering geology —academic teaching — is on death row. Over the past decade therehas been a flood of overseas-trained engineering geologists toAustralia (particularly from the UK and to a lesser extent fromNZ) to satisfy demand in the industry that cannot be addressedlocally. Many of these geologists have undergraduate training inengineering geology and geotechnical engineering. This differsfrom our experience in Australian universities where engineeringgeology hardly rated a mention, and was certainly never a coursecomponent.The presence of the discipline in universities in Australia, andin many other countries around the world, is essentially now nonexistent.Greg McNally’s own departure from the School ofApplied Science at the University of New South Wales (UNSW)was a final sad blow (and he is sadly missed in that role, althoughfortunately not lost to the industry). The School ofCivil Engineering at UNSW still offers the popular Master ofEngineering Science degree and is at least one small source ofsome engineering geology training, although most graduateswould come from the engineering side. The AGS runs ‘Geologyfor Engineers’ and ‘Engineering Geology’ continuing professionaldevelopment (CPD) courses in alternating years. This stemmedfrom the pioneering work of David Stapledon, and was taken upby Alan Moon and Fred Baynes. It is now run by Fred Baynes,Mark Eggers and Phil Flentje. These eight-day field courses arealways fully subscribed well in advance. There are others inacademia who run other short courses here and there (and thereis not space here to list them all) although in general it is truethat the discipline does not have a place in Australian academiatoday and this is a very sad state of affairs. There is a fledglinggroup developing a nebulous epistemic Engineering GeologyGroup that will work towards restoring this imbalance. Interestcould be directed towards Flentje.An identity problem?What does an engineeringgeologist do these days?The nature of the work is very broad, increasingly so, reflectingthe diversity of clients and broad nature of projects. Unlike otherapplied specialities of geology, engineering geologists can findthemselves working practically anywhere and therefore must beable to draw on their knowledge of all disciplines of geology.Engineering geology remains founded on building an understandingof the geology of a site, including its ancient and recenthistory, to build an awareness of the geological influences onproposed engineering works, and to clearly pass this informationon to geotechnical and civil engineers and others for use indetailed design. The multidisciplinary work can include geologicaland geomorphological mapping, management of geotechnicalinvestigations, engineering characterisation of rocks and soilslikely to be encountered, identification of any materialsdeleterious to the proposed work and how they should bemanaged (eg, acid rock and soils, or natural occurrences ofasbestos), aquifer investigations and management, carbonsequestration, coal seam gas issues, assessment of potential slopestability issues and the means to address and or mitigate them,examining and assessing the hydrogeology of the site and itseffect on proposed development, undertaking informedinvestigations of the impact of climate variability and our myriadof terrains, landslide risk management and the myriad ofTAG September 2012| 33