Last week, we were proud exhibitors at Geotechnica 2021 which was held once again at the Warwickshire Event Centre. It was a welcome return to face-to-face networking and business development for the geotechnical industry and what a great couple of days it was! It was wonderful to see familiar faces again after a long 18 months and have the opportunity to showcase our rigs and equipment. ‘Bob’, one of our newer tracked 20 tonne CPT rigs and ‘Paolo’, one of our smallest CPT rigs weighing only 1.5 tonnes were both on site for attendees to explore first hand. As well as the CPT rigs, we had selection of equipment available to investigate including a brand new self- boring pressuremeter (SBP) and cone pressuremeter.

Running alongside the exhibition were two conference areas. This included the ‘Aquaread Geotechnical Conference’ which featured talks regarding procurement for ground investigations and safety, health and environment. The second conference was the ‘Early Career Geopractitioners Conference’ which comprised of a series of hard-hitting short duration talks provided by leading UK experts. The aim was to provide training and learning development experience for recent graduates and those in the early development of their geotechnical/ geoenvironmental career, share knowledge and provide an opportunity for discussion.

Darren Ward and John Holt from In Situ gave a joint presentation in the ‘Early Career Geopractitioners Conference’ titled ‘In Situ Testing- CPTs and Pressuremeters’. Darren gave a brief history of Cone Penetration Testing (CPTs) and explored the benefits of using CPTs, types of equipment and cones available including seismic, gamma and environmental as well as an overview of data acquisition and advanced uses of data. John Holt, who manages our Pressuremeter Department, explored the types of pressuremeters available for testing and which type of ground each is best suited to. This includes the self-boring pressuremeter (SBP), the high-pressure dilatometer (HPD), Menard Pressuremeter and cone pressuremeter. Attendees were then able to follow on from the talk by looking first hand at the equipment and rigs on our stand where our in-house experts were happy to talk further and answer any questions.

The Networking Dinner also proved to be very popular especially with the addition of a large screen so we could watch England beat Denmark and a very generous supply of Gin and Tonic donated by GTD Group who were one of the main sponsors of the event this year. The whole event was a great success, covid measures were in place and everyone was able to network safely and enjoy getting back out in the real world after 18 months!