PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE I Will See You in the Big Apple! H ello everyone! As fall approaches, DFI is gearing up for our Annual Conference — the highlight of our year. Following a highly successful conference in Oakland, Calif., we are meeting in New York City this year. We will be in Times Square in the middle of Manhattan, and we hope to draw over 1,000 participants! The exhibit space is sold out, and as I write this, we already have close to 400 people signed up to attend. As you recall, we had 920 folks in Oakland. DFI has grown significantly. It wasn’t that long ago that our annual meetings included about 400 people. This year, we had more than 400 at SuperPile ’16 in Chicago! As many of you know, DFI was founded in the NYC area, and we are headquartered nearby in New Jersey. We have had several annual conferences in New York through the years — 1979, 1987, 2000 and 2008. So this meeting will be somewhat of a homecoming for DFI. I hope that everyone “We will be in Times Square in the middle of Manhattan, and we hope to draw 1,000 participants!” realizes that DFI exists to serve its members. Re- member, “DFI: It’s All About You.” DFI con- tinues to evolve accord- ing to the needs of the membership and has always endeavored to move forward with new John Wolosick, P.E., D.GE President [email protected] technologies and services, what- ever makes sense and moves our industry forward. Our Committee Project Fund is Why Choose a Career in Deep Foundations Current DFI members talk about why they chose a career in deep foundations — from the challenges of working with soil, which is highly- variable, to the satisfaction of being involved in the construction of major infrastructure projects. Check out the new video on the home pages of www.dfi.org and www.dfitrust.org. sponsoring $130,000 of industry-related research this year. The research topics are grassroots requests from our Technical Committees — addressing current and relevant needs within the deep foundations industry. Also, the DFI Educational Trust is awarding $150,000 in scholarships this year. We are giving back to our members and member companies as we have never done before. And we are making significant strides to bring bright, young engineers into our industry. We are also recognizing the achieve- ments of our DFI members at the confer- ence. David Weatherby is the recipient of the 2016 Distinguished Service Award (see p. 29) and Hayward Baker is being presented with the 2016 Outstanding Project Award (see the cover story, p. 14). I would like to thank everyone for their contributions at various levels within the Institute. Be it technical input, monetary contributions, volunteer time or teaching at our seminars — it continues to amaze me how many high-quality contributions we received from a variety of our members. Let’s keep up the good work and celebrate our success in New York! (Can you imagine a cocktail party with 1,000 participants? I can’t wait….) DFI offers FREE membership to students worldwide who are interested in the deep foundations industry. Learn more on the Membership page at www.dfi.org. DEEP FOUNDATIONS • SEPT/OCT 2016 • 7
