Actes du colloque

Proceedings of the 18

International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Paris 2013

Member Society

Voting Member

Non-Voting Member

U S A

Professor Robert Holtz

Professor Jorge Zornberg

Uzbekistan

Professor Askar Zhussupbekov*

Venezuela

---

Vietnam

Mr Nugyen Min Hai

* Denotes Proxy vote

APOLOGIES:

Prof. Kok Kwang Phoon (Chairman TC304 – Risk)

OPENING REMARKS

The President opened the meeting by welcoming all delegates.

He went on to state that Council would need to consider the

eligibility of two Member Societies when votes were being

taken. Dominican Republic had sent an email stating that they

had paid their fees, but that payment was made after it was no

longer possible for the Secretary General to check the ISSMGE

account. The Syrian Geotechnical society had offered to settle

their arrears, but current banking sanctions prevented it from

doing so. The President asked if Council would allow these two

member societies to cast votes during the meeting. This was

agreed.

LIST OF DELEGATES AND OTHER PERSONS

PRESENT

The Secretary General presented a list of delegates who had

indicated their intention to attend the Council Meeting. All the

voting delegates present were noted and as were the Member

Societies who had transferred their voting rights by proxy.

QUORUM

A roll call was established. The complete list of delegates is

given at the beginning of these minutes. The Secretary General

confirmed that there were 81 Member Societies entitled to vote

and since the voting delegates (including proxies) exceeded two

thirds of this number, the meeting was declared quorate to deal

with all matters.

MINUTES OF THE COUNCIL MEETING IN TORONTO,

OCTOBER 2011

The Minutes of the Council Meeting in Toronto had been

redistributed with the Council Meeting papers. The President

asked if there were any comments or corrections to the Minutes,

and there were none. On a show of hands the Minutes were

approved with 77 votes in favour, 2 abstentions, and none

against.

MEMBERSHIP

The Secretary General presented an updated summary of the

present membership of ISSMGE (Appendix 1). He confirmed

that currently there are 87 member societies, with four new

Member Societies joining since the Toronto Council Meeting in

September 2011: Belarus (joined in July 2012), Bosnia &

Herzegovina (May 2013), Guatemala and Malaysia (September

2013). There had been no contact with the Georgian Society for

Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering for more than

four years, and its membership has been suspended. Currently

there are 19800 individual ISSMGE members.

The current list of corporate sponsors is included in

Appendix 1. There had been a substantial increase in Corporate

Associates (currently 52 and an additional 7 who were

exhibitors at the Paris Conference and had taken up the offer of

the complementary offer of a year’s membership).

Regarding the ISSMGE List of Members and CD, the

Secretary General reported that by the time of the extended

deadline that the Member Societies had been given to submit

information, the Secretariat had received such a small response

that he took the executive decision to abandon plans for

producing the CD in 2013. He went on to report that Member

Society lists of members were updated on the ISSMGE website

whenever these were received and also the contact details of the

member societies themselves were kept up-to-date on the

website.

AMENDMENTS TO STATUTES AND BYLAWS RE

GENDER NEUTRALITY

The President introduced this item. One of his duties as

president was to choose the individual to deliver the Terzaghi

Oration. After consultation with Member Societies and Board

Members, the President invited Suzanne Lacasse to be the

Orator. He then noticed that the Statutes and Bylaws were not

gender neutral, and although a footnote appeared in the Statues

stating that “

the use of the masculine gender in the Constitution

does not imply the position described is occupied by a male

person

”, he felt that it was time that the Statutes were brought

up to date. He had asked the Secretary General to propose the

changes, and these had been reviewed by the Board prior to

inclusion in the Council Meeting Agenda.

The Secretary General stated that strictly speaking each

amendment to the Statutes and Bylaws should be considered

separately and voted on separately. However, since the changes

all related to the same issue he asked for Council’s approval that

all the amendments could be considered together. This was

approved nem con.

After a request by the President the motion was proposed by

Jorgen Steenfelt (Denmark) and seconded by Gautam Gandhi

(India). The President then asked for comments. Samuel

Ampadu (Ghana) asked for changes to Statute 10B to read “The

Secretary General may shall not ...”, and “...shall if necessary

resign ...” This amendment was approved. There were no

further comments, and the amended proposed changes to the

Statutes are given in Appendix 2. On a show of hands the

amendments were approved with votes as follows:

For:

Against: -

Abstain: 1

REGIONAL REPORTS BY VICE PRESIDENTS

The President invited the regional Vice-Presidents to present

their reports in turn. The reports are included in Appendix 3.

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