PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Finding Common Ground and Fake News?! T here seems to be a lot of concern these days about what information is real and what’s fake. Given the spread of nonsense that people pass around the Internet as “news,” it’s no wonder that suspicion abounds regarding the things that may be represented as “facts” (or even maybe “alternative facts”). But I’m going to try to stay away from politics and focus on the simple issues of integrity and trust and how these relate to the DFI. DFI is recognized as an organization of engineers, contractors, suppliers and academics who work to advance our industry and profession and can be relied upon as an unbiased source of information. Although individually, we may have our biases, preferences and commercial interests, as a collective group, we recognize the need to set these aside for the common good of our industry and organization. This is our strength; this is why we must always endeavor to be objective and impartial in our DFI publications and committee activities. Our value as an organization is dependent upon our credibility as a reliable and unbiased source. This stand takes nothing away from other organizations that may have a different mission. For example, ADSC and PDCA are trade organizations whose missions are to advance the commercial interests of their members and the technologies they practice. There is nothing wrong with that, but neither group will be considered to provide a credible answer on some questions, such as, should I specify a driven pile or a drilled shaft? I believe that it is in our membe r s ’ comme rc i a l interest that we have DFI recognized as an authoritative and reliable source that is working for cont inual advancement of our industry. When a consensus voice is needed on a subject, DFI can provide that voice as well as a forum for all sides of an issue to be discussed and deliber- ated openly. The work of our technical committees to establish practice guidelines and advance technical issues of importance is valuable to us all, and the value of such work relies upon our Dan Brown, Ph.D., P.E., D.GE. President [email protected] credibility as an organization. Our recommendations are logical and “Our value as an organization is dependent upon our credibility as a reliable and unbiased source.” based on direct experiences, observations from the field, measurements and facts. Case histories and research presented at DFI conferences and seminars, and in the DFI Journal typically attract hard questions and scrutiny from the audience and/or reviewers — this is as it should be. So, I am proud of our track record at DFI and the many hours of hard and serious work that our mem- be r s have volunt a r i ly devoted to earning our repu- tation and credibility. I promise to try my best to jealously guard that repu- tation, and I hope that you will all join me in working to maintain the great reputation that DFI enjoys as we strive to Find Common Ground. The DFI Testing and Evaluation Committee released a video on Static Load Testing of Deep Foundations Elements: Top-Down and Bi-Directional Static Load Testing. The 24-minute tutorial presentat ion is avai lable at http://www.dfi.org/StaticLoadTesting and provides a brief summary of the current state of the practice for axial static load testing. It shows how static load tests for various deep foundation elements are setup and run, how the test data are analyzed, and how the deep foundation design might change as a result of the testing. New Video on Static Load Testing “The video is intended to provide nonpractitioners a better understanding of this foundation testing method,” says Gerald Verbeek of Allnamics Pile Testing Experts and chair of the DFI Testing and Evaluation Committee. “This is the first video in what the committee plans to be a series of introductory videos on foundation testing methods and data analysis.” DFI gratefully acknowledges the efforts of committee member Bob Simpson (Robert C. Simpson, LLC) for his countless hours of work on the video. Simpson was awarded the DFI President’s Award in 2016 for this work. DEEP FOUNDATIONS • MAR/APR 2017 • 7
