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Paris, France
the 18
th
International Conference on Soil Mechanics
and Geotechnical Engineering
>
September 2-6, 2013
14
WELCOME TO THE 18 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOIL
MECHANICS AND GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING
Distinguished Colleagues, Dear Friends,
We are in Paris to celebrate the progress of our profession and to learn from each other in an
atmosphere filled with class, with fellowship, and with fun. While it is a coincidence that our
quadrennial conference would take place in the country where I was born, you can imagine that
for me it will add to the fact that our quadrennial conference is always very special. France is a remarkably beautiful
country and Paris a wonderful city to be in for the most important event that we organize every four years.
We must first thank the organizers who have worked so hard to make sure that this event will take place with a
minimum number of problems. I keep being amazed that geotechnical engineers across the world continue to
compete for hosting this event at no cost to the participants. Indeed if we had to pay for the hours spent by all the
people who have volunteered their time to serve the rest of us, the registration fee would be many times higher
than it is. For the Paris conference, the group of volunteers on the organizing committee were both experienced
and dedicated; I called them “The Dream Team”. They include Philippe Mestat, Jacques Robert, Valerie Bernhardt,
Yu-Jun Cui, Alain Guilloux, Pierre Delage, Jacques Desrues, Alain Puech, François Schlosser, Claude Plumelle, Philippe
Gotteland, Stéphane Monleau. I do not want to forget my colleague and friend Roger Frank who was the ISSMGE
Board liaison to the conference. On behalf of ISSMGE 89 countries and 19000 members, I thank you all for your
remarkably unselfish gift to our profession.
This conference is a gigantic success. Some Board Level Committees will meet on Friday August 30, 2013. The ISSMGE
Board meeting will take place on Saturday August 31, 2013 and the ISSMGE Council meeting on Sunday 1 Sept 2013;
this is where the election of the next President and the location of the 19
th
ICSMGE will be decided. The International
Young Geotechnical Engineers Conference will take place on Saturday and Sunday 31Aug and 1Sept 2013 at Ecole
Nationale des Ponts et Chaussés. The plenary sessions will take place on Monday and Tuesday (September 2 and
3, 2013). They include the Terzaghi oration by Suzanne Lacasse, 7 other honor lectures organized by TCs, 3 special
lectures organized by the French Society CFMS, a report and presentations from the Young Members and a discussion
forum on innovations. The concurrent sessions will take place on Wednesday and Thursday (4 and 5 Sept 2013). In
addition to the 28 TC-organized discussion sessions, there are 19 workshops also organized by TCs, a Franco-Chinese
workshop, a symposium on pressuremeters-ISP6, 2 sessions organized by the International Geosynthetics Society. A
total of 772 papers have been received and accepted. About 200 will be presented orally and 240 through posters.
Friday is devoted to the technical visits and to a francophone event at the CNAM Museum (where a geotechnical
exhibition will be staged starting in June 2013). On the social side, the welcome reception will be on Monday night,
The Awards luncheon on Tuesday at noon, and the Gala Dinner on Tuesday evening.
I had asked the organizers to ensure that the Technical Committees had a significant impact on the program and
they achieved that very well. I wish that future ISSMGE quadrennial conferences will see a similar influence of our
Technical Committees. This conference is a wonderful occasion to get together, to exchange opinions about the
past, the present, and the future of geotechnical engineering. I truly hope to be able to visit with every one of you.
Jean-Louis Briaud
President of ISSMGE
TH