WeSI Geotecnica is proud partner of COGAN project

The need to maintain the European construction industry at the forefront of engineering knowledge in the face of severe competition from emerging economies forms the basis of European political priority (2003/887/EC, COM(2007)860, Lisbon Strategy). Geotechnical analysis is currently a highly active sector and the state of the art has undergone considerable evolution. These innovations, however, are still for the most part restricted to academia and have had only a limited impact on industry, despite their great importance. The same European political priorities aim to facilitate industrial uptake of the latest scientific developments. A number of benchmarking exercises (i.e. devising a problem and asking a group of people to perform independent analysis, and then comparing the results) have been performed in geotechnical analysis (e.g. COST Action C7 - see Annex 2). They showed that different users failed to obtain consistent results, even for well-defined problems using the same software, demonstrating that users have insufficient knowledge and/or training in the use of geotechnical numerical analysis. The needs of the geotechnical sector, above those of

many other engineering sectors, were identified in the industry needs survey of the EASIT project (see Annex 2 and CD-ROM). Some of the findings, relevant to the present proposal, from the 1094 respondents are highlighted below.

• Lack of investment/time for training: 55% (69% from geotecnical sector) rated as major/common issue.
• No convenient, cost effective and relevant external training: 43% (57% from geotecnical sector) rated as major/common issue.
• Would a system that defines skills and provides links to training resources be useful? 81% (88% from geotecnical sector) “Yes”.

COGAN will address these highly significant issues in geotechnical analysis directly through the development of key e-learning modules and an Educational Base providing clearly defined competences to be covered by future training providers. The fact that 8 organisations are willing to get involved and the support from ERTC7 and Plaxis, the largest training provider in geotechnical analysis in Europe, are also arguably clear evidence of interest in the COGAN deliverables.

Learn more about COGAN here.