How to Truly Create Value as a Geotechnical Engineer – Ep 067

In this episode, we talk to Kord Wissmann, Ph.D., P.E., D.GE, M.ASCE,  the president of Geopier Foundations who has had a tremendous impact in the engineering industry, about how he believes geotechnical engineers can and should create value in the industry. Engineering Quotes: Here Are Some of the Questions We Ask Kord: How has having a Ph.D. helped you in your engineering career? Why do you think it is important to not only share your successes but also your failures as an engineering leader? In a talk you gave at the GEO-PIT in Philadelphia in 2019, called GeoTransformation: Getting It All Back Again, you said: "To battle the forces of commoditization, one must provide services that are differentiated." What did you mean by that, and how does it relate to geotechnical engineering? You are involved in various associations and committees. How has that experience helped grow your engineering career? What technical skills do you think geotechnical engineers should master to create value for the industry? What do you think the future holds for the geotechnical industry? What final piece of advice would you like to give to geotechnical engineers out there? Here Are Some of the Key Points Discussed About How to Truly Create Value as a Geotechnical Engineer: Getting a Ph.D. will help you learn to go a lot deeper into things, to go the extra mile, and to go into the root of the issue. You will start to develop new techniques and new technologies. Getting down to the essential root of the technology and applications is vital to successful development. You do a Ph.D. for the journey it takes you on, not for the destination. In our profession, we like to talk about everything we do well, but we don’t like talking about our failures. We don’t learn much from the things we do well — we learn more from our failures. It is easy to talk about your success, but you don’t learn and teach much from it. Instead, you must be able to share your failures in projects. To battle the forces of commoditization, one must provide differentiated services. One of the biggest influences is when you are invited to meetings and conferences, but the consultation is not about you. It makes you the contractor. It helps you learn necessary things from the consulting customer perspective. On the other hand, the influencers of the Geo Business Association, a group of business executives from the geotechnical industry, said we must educate our customers on how we work better than anybody else. The differentiation helps our customers to choose based on the experience instead of the price. You must be different compared to your competitors. Being part of associations makes you a powerful influencer and helps you build your network by reaching people outside your company. Working with these people, going to meetings, listening to them, and asking questions is a way to contribute to the industry. You get back the value of the effort you put in multiple times over. You should participate in associations in some way, whether in the local community, high school, university, or engineering associations, to give back. To create value for the industry, get a master’s degree to practice your profession, whether formal or informal. Having communication skills and teamwork is critical, but it is something you must learn by trial and error. Another essential skill engineers should master is to have the courage to continue to learn new things and implement them. The future of the geotechnical industry looks excellent. Digitalization is the first step. The second step is to categorize the data using machine learning and algorithms, because a lot of the geotechnical work is about mapping the surface and characterizing data, making geotechnics more effective and quicker.