Escaping the Golden Cage: Learning to Practise the Art of Observational Geotechnical Engineering

John Simmons has a BE (Civil) from the University of Queensland in 1971, and an MSc (1974) and PhD (1982) in Civil Engineering (Geotechnical) from the University of Alberta. After a childhood of building dams he started his engineering career as a bridge construction worker and progressed to specialise in field mapping of rockslides in the Canadian Rockies and landslides in suburban Edmonton. He held teaching and research positions for several years at James Cook University, including investigations of pavements, coral reef materials, soft estuarine soils, slope stability of saprolites, brittle failure of mine pillars at Mt Isa, and introduction of operational piezocone technology to Australia in 1986. From 1990 to 1995 he worked for BHP Engineering where he coordinated and supervised geotechnical projects in Australia, Algeria, Indonesia, Vietnam, and India. During this time he was seconded to BHP Coal (now BMA Coal) where he shared responsibility for open cut geotechnical services for BHP’s Bowen Basin coal mines. In 1995 he commenced an independent geotechnical consultancy, where his projects have ranged from bat caves to reclamations and heavy duty port pavements, slope stability and slope hazard management for open pit coal mining, foundations, ash dam designs and certifications, materials testing, and investigations of professional misconduct. Since 2011 he has been a conjoint fellow at the University of Newcastle where he co-supervises research and helped develop a very large high-capacity direct shear testing facility. He has written three theses based on finite element modelling of seepage, arching in earthfill dams, and the mechanics of progressive failure, and authored or co-authored over 90 publications including book chapters on tropical and residual soils and on dragline waste dump design.