September Dinner Meeting
Event Details
Geo-Institute/Seattle Section Geotechnical Group – September Meeting
Co-organized by University of Washington GIGGS and Geotechnical Group
Thursday, September 29, 2022, 5:30 PM
Alder Auditorium, University of Washington
$50 Meeting & Dinner/$35 Meeting Only
Register at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/5582915
Join us for our first in-person meeting of the year on September 29th at the University of Washington. The meeting will feature a presentation by Silas Nichols of the Federal Highway Administration followed by food and refreshments.
Paid parking is available at the UW W12 Lot or the Central Plaza Garage.
Geotechnical Challenges for the Future of Transportation
Presentation by Silas C. Nichols, PE
Principal Geotechnical Engineer, FHWA Office of Infrastructure
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) maintains strategic plans for research, development, and implementation activities to address a broad range of multi-disciplinary issues impacting transportation geotechnics and the geotechnical discipline as a whole. Innovations in construction equipment, increased load carrying demands for foundation elements resulting in significantly larger and deeper foundation elements, and performance and climate issues impacting our infrastructure have tested our design methodologies, construction means and methods and our common assumptions about design and service life of geotechnical assets and features. The FHWA is currently planning and executing a long-range plan to address big picture issues in the industry and to position geotechnical engineering to better align with evolution of the discipline including technology, material, and equipment advances. The presentation will discuss our identification of amplifying issues in geotechnical engineering, and how we are currently working to address them.
Biography: Silas Nichols is the Principal Geotechnical Engineer for the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Infrastructure. Silas is responsible for providing leadership and direction for the FHWA National Geotechnical Team through policy support, technical developments, and coordination with industry and professional groups. Silas’ experience is in both public and private sector engineering work. Professional experience includes design and construction services for numerous routine, and complex or unusual projects throughout the United States; development and delivery of instructor led and web based training for continued education of transportation engineers; development and delivery of university courses; invited and keynote presentations; authoring technical articles and editorial columns; and various levels of participation on technical and steering committees.
Silas is internationally recognized for accomplishments related to design and construction, risk in project delivery, and quality assurance in foundation construction. He has led, and overseen a variety of research efforts and the development of several geotechnical engineering circulars (GECs) that have established or updated the state of the practice for highway geotechnics, provided expert forensic assistance in several high-profile projects throughout the United States, and provided technical training and expert assistance to numerous foreign agencies on a diverse selection of topics. Silas is a Certified Instructor and a Master Trainer for the National Highway Institute (NHI) and teaches classes part-time at the University of Delaware. Silas has a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Syracuse University, and a master’s Degree in Geotechnical Engineering from Tufts University.