Ramsey elected to IGS Foundation leadership position.

Boyd Ramsey has been elected as Secretary / Treasurer of the International Geosynthetics Society Foundation. The IGS Foundation was created in June 2019 and the new Board of Trustees recently selected by the IGS Council.

During the September Board of Trustees meeting, the leadership for 2019/2020 was selected, with Jacques Cote serving as Chairman and Boyd being elected to the position of Secretary / Treasurer. Ian Fraser, Jorge Zornberg and Fumio Tatsuoka complete the Board of Trustees membership. The Foundation was established to aid the IGS in fundraising outside the traditional IGS dues model and to support the advancement of geosynthetics both from a scientific and market perspective. The announcement on the creation of the Foundation is linked here https://www.geosyntheticssociety.org/a-million-dollar-boost-for-geosynthetics-education/   It is the goal of the Foundation to raise one million dollars by the end of 2020. 

Boyd Ramsey to lecture at South African Landfill Conference

.Boyd Ramsey will deliver a Keynote Lecture and hold two workshop sessions at the upcoming South African Landfill 2019 Conference & Exhibition. The conference will be held at, The River Club Western Cape, South Africa on the 6th and 7th of November 2019. The conference website is linked here: https://iwmsa.co.za/event/landfill-2019-conference-exhibition

The keynote, titled: “Only the strong survive”: Advances and Modernization of Construction Quality Control and Assurance for Civil and Geosynthetic Construction of a modern, durable and sustainable landfill, will be presented in the opening session of the conference. On the second day, two workshops will be held, one focused on case histories and forensic exhumations of geosynthetic materials and a second workshop on geosynthetic capping and closure of landfills.

Ramsey supports US DoE installation.

In early July, 2019 geosynthetic construction was completed on a solid waste disposal site located at a Department of Energy facility in the east central United States. While the specific site identification is confidential due to security reasons, this site is typical of those involved in the processing, production and waste disposal of nuclear materials for the defense and power supply of the United States. Boyd Ramsey attended the installation and aided in the barrier system installation of a compacted clay liner and a 2,0 mm SKAPS HDPE textured geomembrane with additional geotextile. The installation and material performance went extremely well: a night installation for wrinkle reduction over an appx. 2 hectare site.

Evening deployment and welding

Ramsey attends Tunisia seminar

In late April, Boyd attended a one day geosynthetics seminar presented by the Association Tunisienne Géosynthétiques. The event was held in the capital of Tunis and drew over 100 attendees. This Tunisian organization is a prime candidate for development of a new IGS chapter, part of an IGS initiative to expand the IGS presence in Africa. The one-day seminar was well attended with high quality technical presentations.

Ramsey completes China tour

Boyd Ramsey has recently completed a brief tour of China with lectures at technical events and Engineering Design Institutes and site visits in the interior of China.   The two-week tour covered several sites and cities and focused on new technological advances in geosynthetic barriers and installation methodologies and techniques.  The China market continues to lead in the area of continuous monitoring of the performance and integrity of barrier systems and new advances in that technology were a focus of the trip. 

Boyd Ramsey lectures at Brisbane WMRR event.


Boyd Ramsey lectures at Australian Waste Management event

In late March Boyd gave a set of three lectures at the Australian Landfill and Transfer Station conference held in Brisbane and sponsored by the Australian WMRR association. The talks covered advances in géomembrane barriers, new technologies in geosynthetic installation and a series of case histories, including his recent work on strain hardening as a predictor of geomembrane stress crack performance. All of the talks were well received and it was a very educational and useful conference.

Boyd Ramsey attends ASTM, Polyethylene Films-AMI and Geosynthetics 2019 conferences

In January and February of 2019 Boyd attended three industry events in the United States. The winter meeting of ASTM D-35 was held in Houston. The annual AMI conference on Polyethylene Films was held at the Marriott Fort Lauderdale, FL Hotel and convention center and the IFAI/GMA sponsored Geosynthetics 2019 event was held in Houston at the Marriott Marquis convention center. All three events were well attended and presented advances and market information on geomembrane and polyethylene materials and usage. In Houston Boyd appeared in a panel discussion on geocomposite testing frequency, attended multiple IGS and GMA breakout meetings and Chaired a session on environmental geotechnics. In addition, I was able to reconnect with several longstanding colleagues, pictured here.

Boyd Ramsey delivers Geomembrane Market size presentation in Dusseldorf

On November 6th, 2018 at the AMI Waterproof Membranes conference held in Dusseldorf, Boyd Ramsey delivered a presentation on the global size, scale and composition of the geomembrane marketplace.   Read more

Boyd Ramsey attends 11th ICG in Seoul Korea

Boyd Ramsey attended the 11th International Congress on Geosynthetic held in Seoul, Korea in September.  The international conference, held every four years, was very well attended and also very busy.  In addition to the IGS Council meetings, Boyd presented two papers and chaired a technical session and the IGS Technical Committee on Barriers meeting.  At the IGS General Assembly, Boyd was re-elected to Chair the IGS Finance Committee. Read more

Ramsey delivers a series of lectures to the Australian market on geosynthetic drainage materials

During the first week of August 2018 Boyd Ramsey presented a series of lectures on geosynthetic drainage materials. The lecture series was presented by Global Synthetics and included Richard Brachman of Queens University on geomembrane topics and Kent von Maubeuge discussing GCLs. Events were held in Perth, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Read more