1850
Proceedings of the 18
th
International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Paris 2013
working around projects in cities, by using tailormade
workshops
Intervention models for effective communication from
geotechnical designers to construction crews.
Together with already available techniques, these tools are part
of the GeoRM toolbox. A study of 40 recent geotechnical
failures shows that 90 % of these failures was caused by the fact
that right knowledge and tools are available in the Dutch
geotechnical community, but not used by the right engineer in
the right way and at the right time (van Tol 2007).
6 GEO RISK MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION
Routinely applying GeoRM in projects requires embedding
GeoRM in its organizations. This implementation of risk
management in general, and of GeoRM in particular, is not a
spontaneous process (Van Staveren 2009). Organizational
conditions, like the organizational structure and the
organizational culture should facilitate, rather than frustrate, the
routine application of GeoRM.
For this reason specific working sessions have been
organized with the Geo-Impuls, for clients, contractors, and
engineers. During these working sessions it has been made
explicit to which degree four key conditions for GeoRM were
available in the participating organizations. These key
conditions are (1) shared GeoRM understanding, (2) GeoRM is
formally embedded in existing procedures, (3) interdisciplinary
application of GeoRM within the organizations, and (4) GeoRM
cooperation with external parties and stakeholders. During the
sessions it became clear that for most organizations
considerable steps for optimizing these GeoRM conditions can
be made. Therefore, each participant defined at least one
specific GeoRM embedment action to be executed in his or her
organization. This exercise provided in total 44 concrete actions
for embedding GeoRM in client, contractor, and engineering
organizations of the Dutch construction industry.
Regarding the development of a shared GeoRM
understanding, examples of actions are including GeoRM in
internal project management courses and explicitly discussing
the main geotechnical risk in regular project meetings.
Examples of formally embedding GeoRM is providing a
clear internal procedure GeoRM procedure and applying
GeoRM products in projects.
Concerning the interdisciplinary application of GeoRM, it
was for instance decided to involve a geotechnical engineer in
tender-kick off and subsequent meetings and to integrate risk-
based geotechnical engineering during tenders with design,
quality, contracts and safety. With regard to the GeoRM
cooperation with external parties, demonstrating to project
stakeholders how to deal explicitly with geotechnical risk and
embedding geotechnical risk in contracts were some of the
actions. All of these actions are straightforward, concrete and
relatively easy to execute in the going concern of projects.
These activities demonstrate that implementing GeoRM in
organizations is merely a matter of a lot of relatively small steps
towards an explicit way of risk-based geotechnical engineering,
than one major change management jump.
Rijkswaterstaat, the executive agency of the Ministry of
Infrastructure and the Environment and the largest Dutch public
client organization for construction projects, provides a
pioneering role in embedding GeoRM in its entire organization.
They work parallel on developing all of the four key conditions
for implementing GeoRM in their organization. Developing a
shared GeoRM understanding is ongoing by regular meetings of
the geotechnical experts, where they exchange experiences and
lessons how to apply their geotechnical activities in a risk-based
way by taking the GeoRM process steps. Furthermore, a formal
GeoRM procedure that fits in their project process is in
development. This GeoRM procedure is communicated to the
project managers, contract managers and environment
managers, in order to become accepted and used in an
interdisciplinary way. Finally, Rijkswaterstaat is going to
subscribe the application of GeoRM to the engineering
consultancies and contractors, which involves the application of
GeoRM together with external parties.
7 CONCLUSIONS
Due to the inherently uncertain nature of the subsoil, building
in, on, or with ground remains risky. Nevertheless, modern risk
management approaches are readily available for more
explicitly and well-structured dealing with inherent ground
uncertainty. Therefore, the Dutch industry wide geotechnical
development programme Geo-Impuls has been started. It aims
to substantially reduce geotechnical failures in all types of
construction projects. Geotechnical risk management or GeoRM
has been adopted as the main approach to achieve this objective
by the forty organizations participating in Geo-Impuls.
The Geo-Impuls program is founded on four pillars: (1) the
geo risk management process, (2) georisk management
principles, (3) geo risk management tools, and (4) geo risk
management implementation.
The process of geotechnical risk management is similar to
the process of project risk management. Because it involves the
same sequence of the similar risk management steps, GeoRM
fits excellently in any sort of project risk management. By being
geotechnically driven, GeoRM is simply a more detailed and in-
depth approach of project risk management.
Geo-Impuls takes the principle-based route for allowing fit-
for-purpose geotechnical risk management, which is worked out
in eight specific GeoRM principles. These are based on generic
ISO31000 risk management principles and translated into
straightforward actions for geotechnical risk remediation. In
addition to developing GeoRM tools, GeoImpuls dedicates
considerable attention to routinely applying these tools by
implementing the GeoRM processes and principles in
organizations. These organizations are clients, contractors and
engineering firms. This requires embedding GeoRM in the
existing processes of organizations. Implementing GeoRM in
(project) organizations is therefore considered the key success
factor for effectively and cost-efficiently managing geotechnical
risk. In final conclusion, applying GeoRM gives geotechnical
risk the attention it requires, in all phases of engineering and
construction projects, in order to realize project success.
8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank all participants of the Geo-
Impuls development program for sharing their knowledge and
experience in the program, on which this paper is founded.
9 REFERENCES
Cools, P.M.C.B.M. 2011.
The Geo-Impuls Programme reducing
geotechnical failure in the Netherlands
. In:
Proc. of 3
rd
International Symposium on Geotechnical Safety and Risk,
München, pp 191-198.
ISO 2009.
International Organization for Standardization 31000:2009
Risk management – Principles and guidelines
. ISO, Geneva.
Van Staveren, M.Th. 2009.
Risk, Innovation & Change: Design
Propositions for Implementing Risk Management in Organizations
.
Thesis, University of Twente, Enschede.
Van Staveren, M.Th. 2006.
Uncertainty and Ground Conditions: A Risk
Management Approach
. Elsevier Publishers, Oxford.
Van Tol, A.F., 2007,
Schadegevallen bij bouwputten,
Cement 2007 (in
Dutch).
