President's Message

Martin McIlroy
MGE Engineering

CalGeo President 2020-2021

Hello my fellow geotechnical practitioners! I have been looking forward to my presidency, but I expected my initiation to look a bit different. These are challenging and inspiring times given the uncertainty due to the Corona Virus and the civil unrest within our communities; also an incredibly important $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill in Congress could pass and provide future work for our field.  Who knows what will happen in the next year with all these developments?

I do know that CalGeo has supported geotechnical practitioners for 50 years, and we have financial and programmatic foundations that we can rely upon. Our membership is growing, we have a solid financial footing, and our programming increased to meet our members’ demands for excellent technical, legislative, and business/industry content.

We have transitioned seamlessly to online meetings and webinars during this pandemic due to the leadership of our board and Kelly Cabal’s efforts and foresight. We have included new areas on our website for member resources, and we will continue to engage our members and the geotechnical community as we expand our influence in California. Further, we have an industry leading salary survey that David Hamilton recently revamped to provide better and faster data analysis and streamlined presentation capabilities. Collaboration amongst members, with universities, and with our industry partners is at an all-time high, and we need to continue this momentum especially in these challenging times.

For this next year, my goals to help CalGeo continue to meet and exceed your expectations include:

• Grow our collaborations and sharing amongst our members, affiliates, Emerging Geo-professionals, student chapters, affiliated universities and other geotechnical associations.
• Establish a 3- to 5-year major project plan coordinated with future presidents to implement over multiple terms.
• Increase contact and collaboration with other state geotechnical associations to promote technology transfer and to accomplish common goals.
• Update CalGeo’s strategic plan for the next 5 years.
• Add additional loss prevention seminars/series geared for project professionals and upcoming company leaders.
• Develop seminars focused on marketing, training support staff, and accounting.
• Meet with the student chapter board members throughout the year.
• Convene and facilitate a symposium for student chapters and Emerging Geoprofessionals to promote sharing operational information, volunteer efforts, and projects that each are working on and to encourage additional collaboration and resource sharing.
• Add technical series webinars similar to the recent Site-Specific Seismic Ground Motion Hazard Analysis 6-Week Short Course

The history of CalGeo and goals set by past presidents tells me that we don’t shy away from challenges. We will strengthen and expand our programming and services and continue to lead the geotechnical industry.  These goals along with our expanding programming will generate additional CalGeo members and confirm that membership in CalGeo is beneficial and essential to geotechnical engineers.