Dr. NORBERT MORGENSTERN - GB Interview - CICLO GB 2024 #interview

the [Music] all fore [Music] but la [Music] dear colleagues and Friends good afternoon ladies and gentlemen welcome to the Brazilian technical group today we are on a v interview with Professor noish morstein my name ISO S I have the honor today to have a conversation with Dr noish about his life and professional career Dr noes is a distinguished civil and GE technical engineer and before we start the conversation today I would like to invite Professor s font to start the interview Dr noes thank you very much my gratitude ER for you accept my invitation and

now I will give the answers for Professor s Professor s thanks again for the your participation in this section okay thank you Thiago and Professor morgus I uh I was I received this phone call regarding uh uh this uh interview and uh I accepted uh the task of participating because I was really uh uh glad to see you again and share this moment with you so thank you very much for accepting the invitation of Thiago and I'm very happy to here thank you and uh I've been listening to a number of uh uh interviews and

lectures that you gave recently and to warm up for this session and I prepared here a few questions for you uh but I think it would be before asking the question perhaps to give a at least an explanation why not read uh your CV I think uh your CV is very is very long but I would like I would like to to to say a few things just to warm up for this uh Professor morgus uh as you saido was born in Canada in the city of Toronto he graduated in Toronto University and went to

Europe to England to obtain his Graduate Studies or his PhD and he stayed there for a while until 68 and then he returned to Canada and in Canada he developed a great career he taught to lot of students if you go anywhere around the world you will find uh student of Professor morgus and we are very proud we are also very proud and we feel like we belong to a club and this club is a as a club of former Professor Morgan's students according to Awards he has all the major Awards in geotechnical engineering all

the major Le lectures he gave these lectures uh in Canada he received many special awards from the government the society and so we are with someone that is highly distinctive in this profession in his career so uh that's the reason we cannot read all his CV and it would take all the time we have but uh professor morus and I we prepared a few questions and I would like to start uh asking you the you you stayed in Imperial College uh during the years of 19 if I recall correctly from 57 to 68 first first

as a graduate student and then as a a professor there and in P college at that time was uh uh the place in geotechnical engineering and my question would be why what made you decide to move to U what was the the main reason that you said well it's time to go to a place and you went to U so uh could you elaborate the the process if you may well that's a very very interesting question that has many perspectives uh as an answer the U firstly by the by 1967-68 uh I had was maturing

as a professor beginning to do a little Consulting work but uh there was a kind of repetition of work tied a little bit to the London clay problems and so on and having had travel a little bit on the around that time to other countries and seeing different geological settings I was attracted to the idea of changing the if you like the geological World in which I was working away from the stiff Fisher London clay issues which were uh interesting then and continued to be interesting to wanting more variety uh to to expand professionally uh

the the second issue is a little more personal we had just had our first child we'd had Wonderful Life in London up to that time but we wondered whether we could afford to continue with that wonderful life and perhaps we would go to another kind of community with a different social involvement and and and uh uh perhaps uh with a growing family less Financial pressures that was part of part of the search for alternate places uh so well began to look at at uh where I might go I wasn't actively uh applying but uh I

got an invitation among the places that I knew a little bit about because I'd traveled to western Canada on a lecture tour in 1967 and I remembered visiting Edmonton where the University of Alberta is and it had some history in geotechnical Engineering in Canada and I remember U being impressed with the energy the the Community was beginning to expand beginning to take off uh the the technical problems were um abundant and the the visions of development in that part of the world were very ambitious and I remember saying to myself at that time a year

before saying oh if we ever went back to Canada that looked like an interesting place to be so a year later just by by coincidence in a sense we we offered a a very nice job at the University of Alberta and and and everything came together uh looking for a sense of change in an environment that would be challenging uh challenging uh technically so that's the background a combination of of technical Ambitions and and family needs it's very interesting because it really uh was a a game change uh for U in GE techic engineering because

uh it was also very good What U that you have decided yeah and I think that looking at also listening to the interviews I I found a very interesting question that you asked last year in Toronto during uh your life award achievement by uh uh you have this interview together with Professor hick and you asked about U Know amongst the things that uh happened in your career which ones were uh that you you felt more or you feel more proud of and you you gave the following answer please correct me if I'm wrong you said

that in teaching and research you would look at uh uh the students that you you are very proud of your former students especially the ones uh that you meet in many places and it's always good to see the history and that is was a big contribution and the second was the technical aspect the profession and you mention uh the oil sense uh uh engineering or oil s development so at that time you have a mining tailing mining tailing uh uh yeah say say involvement and I have a question for you regarding this uh you you

were in UK during uh the time there was the Aban disaster yes it was in 1967 if or 66 maybe and uh 144 people were killed at that time yes and uh especially children because the the the mass went through the school yes and in 2015 here in Brazil we had a major tailing D failure yes so that was know good uh more than 50 years separating the two so uh in your say career in all the problems you had with tailing dams what change or what did not change because we had such a long

spin of of time and the problem still exist so I would like to to hear your opinion about that and your reflection on this issue I I think what well what didn't change for a long time was captured in the deenal lecture that I gave which many of you will undoubtedly know that we had I think professionally a sense of comp complacency that we knew more than we really did and in a way that's the theme of the recent lecture that we're we're discussing uh and it took a long time took a long time before

we began to recognize the responsibility uh arising from lack of understanding of some of the things we were doing but that was perhaps uh driven to large degree by the lack of responsibility in the mining industry itself so that going back to certainly the 19 60s and even much later dealing with waste was regarded as a cost issue to be minimized as cost and done at least in hindsight without care without the sense of responsibility and it took a very long time for the mining industry at least even at with the the leading operations to

develop a safety culture that change the way things are doing which we've done which we've done in the last few years but the evolution of that safety culture has been a very painful learning experience so there a bunch of things part of it resides with our professional complacency that in another lecture I called embedded ignorance which is illust Illustrated the most recent lecture and and to a large degree the the the attitudes in the in the mining industry as a whole around the world leading companies in a sense if you like of of of in

terms of public policy so there are two Dimensions to the issue thank you for the question okay Professor noes ER I have a question for you ER what mental professors or Engineers inspire you well I think all the group that I worked as at Imperial College inspired me and they've taught me and and gave me a a great sense of wanting to to follow them Professor Ralph peek was an inspiring person uh I think uh Professor Michael jamovi that I had the pleasure of working with were inspiring I think I think the the the inspiration

come from the the breadth of understanding they weren't some were some were leading scholars in terms of basic research but I think it was the working at the connection between the Leading Edge of knowledge and the Leading Edge of professional practice has has always been my dream and these are all people who excelled at that interface between uh fundamental findings and and and challenging applications that was the kind of culture that we tried to develop at the University of Alberta I think fairly successfully with the great achievements of many of our students okay okay thank

you for this so another question for you Professor noes ER you have a lot of projects a lot of challenge ER if you explain the big challenge the big project what's the the experience you can explain for us well I think that's embedded in this lecture of from certainty to uncertainty I think the uh evolution of safety culture and dealing with stability that Victor Deo I and some others assisted in in in in creating in Hong Kong was an important example of what we can do when we think in a more systems manner I think

some of the dams I've been involved in have been uh challenging in terms of uh dealing with complicated geology I think it's a connection between geological understanding and Geo geomechanical Behavior are are the things that uh that have been satisfying for and create a place for for for for getting satisfaction out of challenge I'm just nearing the end of many decades of work on a major hydroelectric project here and with difficult foundations it's been very satisfying and of course work in the oil science was was and remains um ongoing challenge because the complexity of materials

social and obligations in terms of tailings management and of course the evolution of environmental considerations so there lots of lots of examples I've been fortunate to to participate in thank you hello Professor Norbert morgenson it's an honor to be here with you thank you uh Thiago also invited me to put some questions and I'm linked to Canada I have been in Ottawa during my PhD uh I had an acceptance letter from also University of Alberta Alberta and University of um Vancouver but I decided for University of Ottawa because I used to work in Brazilia State

national capital of Brazil and I thought that that time it would be great or good to be there close to the uh Center of power of Canada to know some people Etc so let's uh also would like to remember some people that he studied in Canada University of Al Alberta Andreas my supervisor in the Masters and I think Jose hioa in memori because we we don't have him here anymore uh worked with Professor fredin so uh I'm linking to Canada to this uh people in a personal experience uh Thiago invited me and I I have

some questions here about your main um conference certainty and uncertainty over 64 years this Beth to geotechnical engineering knowledge includes the discovery of the limitations uh that you got in the field as you said in that conference tag used to say that 90% of our problems occur because we don't apply what the state ofth art State ofthe art can offer what in your opinion about this statement today compared the 60s and 70s do we currently have 90% of the state-ofthe-art solutions to face the challenge bance in your technical engineering well I think as as my

lecture goes at some length to to make a case I think the evolution of performance-based design when you fully understand all of its implications and its power constitutes a major Advance which many people have have have contribut to getting to the state of material characterization instrumentation and computation to have high assurance that geotechnical structures and so forth will behave as intended so I'm I'm the whole heart of that lecture was to indicate that the the without without confronting the issues of uncertainty and developing tools to in to understand it better and interpret and make Corrections

uh we would be in as bad shape as we were decades ago but I I'm very pleased with the with the evolution of that integration moreover it's rapid rapid adoption in practice on major projects so I I I think I'm repeating in a sense the heart of that lecture so let's go to the uh industry floor we say here in Brazil the sh Fabrica people H Brazil say here uh in the 60 when you started as an engineering Professor professional and you were there in the Peri of college which were the basic activities that you

started to develop for example myself when I started at the PHD University of AO I started doing some um laboratory tests and I was a teaching assistant there and I used to have some friends in the side the laboratory and they say oh you are old but you can uh perform the T yourself so which were your activities well you have to remember firstly my research was on slope stability and and and all the mechanics of that I arrived at Imperial College at the time but Bishop had just uh produced his slip Circle method and

uh the laboratory was expanding in the in the capacity we take for granted of measuring poor pressures and a Ling effect to stress in practice and that was novel even in the in in in in anybody's practice at that time that one could make reliable measurements one began to understand stress path effects and one had effective stress methods of analysis to uh to to put into practice and demonstrate that that uh that design would be improved with that integration of those those set of Concepts and that was a very exciting time and wonderful opportunity to

to build on that and to uh and and to grow uh the uh as I began to get more experience my my bent was always somewhat more to the analytical side of things what we Computing was just coming along I did some my first programming in what was called machine language as opposed to some of the things we do today very painful and so forth so so the other uh the other tool that we now take for granted is ease of calculation and so on so all of those things were um were I had the

the opportunity I guess the privilege to begin to integrate all of those uh to to to P to push forward uh as well plus I had I was very close in the my early career with Professor skempton who had a very broad range of interest and an and an insistence on understanding the GE geology of settings uh ge geotechnical settings so I think that was and I was always very interested in the geological background uh in everything we do and that's become quite fundamental in in in the way I approach problems and I would say

that one of the one of the challenging part of of our our academic career and even perhaps in practice is the reduced uh reduced educational opportunities and so on to to to understand geological settings and their complexity at least in the shallow deposits we tend to work in and and we you know we're now Computing with ease and we're measuring with these and the the education and experience with complicated geological settings um uh plagues us and that was part of the uh part of the issue of some of the tailing Dam failures that that I've

been involved in I hope that answered the question I'm not sure that it did okay very nice Professor no about the persons bishop and Ison how do you describe Bishop andto the impact in your life and professional challenge well you know as a young academic when I joined the staff it was the the uh the practice for the whole bishop and and and scampton Gibson and David hankle Nick ambes who a seismological colleague and so on we would all have lunch together every day and the discussions would go from a theoretical issue to to a

to to a practical problem to a job that somebody was involved in so once once education for a young person like myself was expanded every lunch day so the the I guess guess I guess the important aspect of that the collegiality was very strong and and and uh and that that was a a hidden element of my Evolution to have the the the uh the opportunity to be to be kind of engaged partly as a as a at the outset as a listener and as as I matured a little bit more as a contributor to

the kind of discussions of uh whether they're technical minutti or challenging jobs or other things related to the academic world uh on almost daily basis so so that's I guess the the point that I would make to to those who are still early on your career if you look for collegiality in the environment that you that you're living in and working in whether it's academic or practice and and ensure that lifelong learning is is encouraged at that stage that's the critical issue I think lifelong learning became became if you like organically embedded in me through

those through those those experiences they were very very important yes uh I'm back again yeah it's a it's interesting to see you of the answers that you gave I was this afternoon looking at uh uh paper that you wrote and presented in Australia in the year 2000 and it was entitle it is entitle Common Ground yes I remember it and uh in this uh paper you you reflect on the unifying concept of uh the elements that put together geotechnical engineering and you establish three main component so mechanics Rock mechanics and geological engineering or engineering geology

and uh it's a it's an exciting paper and you formulate several questions there and you answer of course the question that you formulate and you end up with the point of uh what is the the value of geotechnical engineering that is added for the society and I'd like to hear you elaborate about that because I think it's uh it's very important because it describes perhaps very well your philosophy for CH well I guess the the uh I think in beded lecture which I haven't looked at for a very long time was the the sense of

the the commonality of the issues uh that uh that the three if you like disciplines that we rely on have together and that that some of the separations that have come by having separate societies uh are hinder hinder the the the the transfers I don't think I was successful in that lecture because I think I was promoting more integration among the societies and that for a number of reasons be was was not as effective as as uh as I had hoped the I would say these days I'm I I'm not as mobile as I used

to be but I walk almost every day with my colleague uh Professor Derek Martin whose background is in rock mechanics and we share uh discussions about various assignments and so forth and and and the uh this experience reinforces the fact that that breaking down the discipline boundaries enriches all of our work uh particularly when you're dealing with natural materials with their discontinuities and strain weakening and brittleness and so on um the I think the I think we can still do better in in uh in uh in in in crossing crossing discipline boundaries and and what

I pleased about in the world of because I'm great advocate of course of performance-based design now that it forces that that Crossing of boundaries because you can't isolate yourself from the harder materials from the softer materials and so on and so forth when you're looking at totality on this on the structure so I I I think the the intent I would still support the intent of that paper on common ground but I would say we haven't uh we haven't become as as Comm as integrated as we should a very important point and uh I think

that it has an I think some kind of implication on the way we teach the subject yeah that's an important Point that's an important Point yeah encourage the students too and I still remember that in one of our brief conversations back in the 70s you mentioned that one should never be afraid of moving and studying a new subject yeah and at that time you are already working on permafrost yeah unsaturated soil mechanics staining them and that is a very wide brange of things and that is as a piece of uh uh say example for for

students especially the ones who are beginning their career to sort of so have this as a light to discover but uh so it's uh and I I also had a chance of flipping through my notes and I had a reference from 1968 in a rock mechanics book Rock mechanics and Engineering practice and you wrote a chapter on this on this book and Sy EV and it's a book on Rock mechanics one if you consider that the ISR isrm was formed in 19 66 yeah 1968 you had a chapter so you also worked uh in rock

mechanics which is I was actually uh we had at Imperial College Rock mechanics was was not taught in the geotechnical program uh uh in my day but it was taught in the Hydraulics program by professor Charles jger who is a consultant to English electric doing dams around around the world and he was kind of self-taught and he gave lectures in their graduate program but he retired from that post and I took up teaching Rock mechanics at Imperial College um uh in I guess 6866 or so on thinking that uh I would uh take take a

hand in the kind of integration that that that I was beginning to believe in but the mining department um subsequently retained ever hook and and of course ever had very good connections with the mining industry and and and and the the need for the rock mechanics to Glow in the mining department which wasn't well integrated with civil engineering at a bureau College was really important and and uh that kind of swamped the the early efforts that I had in in teaching Rock mechanics certainly the the the the paper that you write which is kind of

written from a so mechanics perspective uh was was by early entry into attempting integration uh which which I never fully achieved academically but but have achieved uh if you like internally I would add that I think when we I remember going to the first International Conference on Rock mechanics uh I guess it was in Lisbon and and some of us had the view that we would make a case not to form a separate society and try to have an integr society that view was was rejected by by many of the leaders from from Europe and

and of course we they did form a separate Society in my sense in in hindsight uh it was a little arrogant to to inhibit that growth of that it needed that that singularity in order for it to expand effectively given the problems that existed but we now need to to learn from each side both in terms terms of geomechanical perspectives as well as as well as instrumentation and so on yeah and uh I I have one final comment here that I have to to to make is that uh during your time as president of of

the international Society I still recall that you created uh the series of conference for young geotechnical Engineers you promoted that excess and one of them was held in Brazil and I am not sure if you still remember that you encouraged us to promote that in South America we received funds from help from the Canadian government and that was one of the concern today in every meeting we have a separate meeting for the young engineers and that was just due to some kind of your effort as as well so uh when you think back are you

happy the way it developed say the the integration of the young even mid career Engineers into the main conferences well I'm glad that you remember that so favorably because that tradition still exists here the young Engineers conference or the portion of a conference set for young Engineers is very productive and encouraging and makes people more let's say more comfortable and at ease and and and more ambitious intellectually and so on and and I don't know how how broad it is I haven't followed the details of of society meetings uh recently but I'm very pleased that

that you remember that in such a favorable manner it's something that we must continue to do in order for our um in order for our our subject to evolve plus I mean there are tools out there that only young Engineers can understand these days and they're as opposed to some of the tools that you get a little blunted with at my age so let's go here again you are being bombarded by a lot of questions but we are having fun here Professor sorry I have uh two questions and it it's they are coming in the

sequence of Professor Ser font H we we realized how your objectives were driven by practical applications you said that you learned uh from the field and not and not from the research and teaching that the theories they have a lot of limitations so how long did it take to become involved in a geotechnical project and you feel confident you felt confident that you your experience were sufficient to sleep well at night knowing that most of the known uncertainties had been addressed so you would not need to spend several years living in Brazil well it it

it's uh the lecture of from certainty to uncertainty in 64 years is the attempt to answer that question it was a gradual a gradual incremental learning process that to to find things that were within codes and within common practice really were deficient when you went outside their range of empirical assessment it's easy to say that that's so obvious but it isn't so obvious when you're dealing with commercial practice or Rush practice and so on and so forth so so it it's been evolutionary and and uh I I I think by about uh 20 30 years

ago I was beginning to make a point in some of my research and some of the Publications the learnings from challenging cases to emphasize the need to to to recognize limitations in an ongoing Manner and and that's been a big driver in my my mindset uh for fortunately the tools have come along to help address the problems that we could never have imagined uh in in the 60s or 70s or even later plus the other the other interesting thing I must say that uh uh for for the if you like the ambitious uh academic as

I was in the past the need to go to different locations uh uh and get get local experience is also important for example some of you may know that I came to Brazil I must have been first visit might have been in 1972 and did some teaching in in Rio atoki uh and and uh and and and that was motivated by the need to understand residual soils because I was beginning to be asked questions about residual soils and why are better I remember Professor costan nunas helping me and others um and made periodic visits to

VIs as did later my colleague Dan eisenstein so on so so so one's curiosity should take you around trying to get experience in in in in other environments as well I hope that helps answer the question oh great that's great so uh I'm gonna um show some parallels here I'm gonna try an experience uh I used to work to in the pavement field and we do need a lot of uh standards for serviceability so Pavements require high serviceability standards however the prevalence of both holes and routing poses a significant challenge for the field in light

of this issue what advice would you offer to Pavement professionals to address both strength and de formation concerns taking in account account environmental loads and specific circumstances within the field it's worth nothing to that activing a cost effective pavement solution proves elusive in every country due to the variations in predictions versus actual performance what I what I say here everywhere you have potholes well you're probably by by the question better equipped to answer that than I am I haven't worked on pavement related issues but the answer uh should should deal with the reality around the

world it's kind of a cost benefit issue but I think the costs have to be not just the local construction cost they've got to be the social cost they've got to be all kinds of other costs that if you don't invest in in in the outset and I I think that I think that and you can perhaps help answer the question that that I'm going to ask that that aren't the cost benefit analyses of many paver designs uh Limited in their vision of what what the what the what the costs associated with not doing things

better at the outset so it is it's often a short Vision short-term Vision in terms of making the investment and I think the perhaps the uh the standards in the most General sense have to be raised uh in order to make that case but I this survise because I'm not not experienced in that class of problems okay Professor noes I have two questions yes okay I'm sorry for a lot of questions pleasure about victoro in my understanding your relationship with victoro was amazing can you describe it for us well we we didn't work a lot

on on I think probably Hong Kong was one place we worked together I might have worked on a couple other things but but uh I I found him one of the uh most Amant of people that I've encountered and and most enthusiastic so one could never uh never leave uh social or professional meeting uh with Victor without being enriched I didn't always agree agree on some technical detail and so on but it was always a special pleasure to to discuss and to debate and and and and to work together and I think the uh I

think as the what I think the uh as the Dello lecture that I gave uh showed the the perhaps one of our joint with some others contributions was to indicate the remarkable success of advising and Improvement not just in a technical detail but the evolution of the safety culture in Hong Kong that led to a dramatic reduction in deaths in that society and that that came out of that came out of if like a sort of concern about holistic activities as opposed to single geotechnical details and Victor was very good in understanding those things well

he was certainly gave me uh some guidance in in in our discussions at those s so it's always a thrill to to be with him to work with him okay very nice social occasions were wonderful okay amazing ER Professor no the last question for you is what advice would you give a young person start activity as a GE technical engineer I'm pausing because there are U so many challenges for a young person today I have yes I have uh seven grandchildren and this is a common discussion none of them are geotechnical Engineers but they're all

very very active young minds the uh I think I think one of the one of the challenging things other than you know get experience and and work with best people and ask questions and be inquisitive and and be geologically sensitive I think the Big Challenge anybody who's starting out uh in their career today is to wonder how AI is going to affect their activities and affect the environment in which they do work and so on there's no simple answer to that we're all learning at the moment but the evolution of of these tools uh is

is dramatically going to affect the professional lives of everybody and certainly the young person is right in the firing line and uh those are those are discussions I have whenever my grandchildren come and we have dinner together they teach me what they're doing in that area and and and and it's always a learning how rapidly some of these intellectual AIDS are affecting the workplace so so I would other than the if you like the usual advice of gain experience and and and so on and work with good people and all of that I think the

that's the new dimension of learning for anybody starting out in their career okay okay very nice Professor noes thanks again for your participation in Brazil group s please you can finish this interview well I I am the one must say thank you for you Char to give me the opportunity to share this moment thank you with professor morgus and I must confess that I never had uh the courage and to say in a straight facei that I called him NY morgus and I I would like to I would like to do this but I all

the time I I I have this idea in my mind of Professor Mor but anyway I I looked at and just to close I would like just to say a few words of thank because maybe some of you or perhaps the viewers would not know but the PHD program of puc R ping was created thanks to a special Grant from the Canadian government Ceda through the Ceda agency and also with the participation of U OFA and Professor played a very important role as well as uh the professor from uh the structure engineering uh and we

have our PhD program started exactly uh uh doing to this push and that's it's a demonstration of the generosity and the personality of professor morgus as a as a person always contributing to to to the new generation and to share his knowledge uh and we as student at that time we could observe that every time we would approach his office he would have his door open and we could just knock at the door and if he was not very busy he could say uh listen to us so Professor Mo thank you very much I really

am very happy and touched with that so I hope everybody feels the same and could listen to that and thank you take some uh take the knowledge from you thank you very much thank you let me let me give you a little footnote where I live is a there are many re is it a small town of about 10,000 people but lovely place in the mountains and there are quite a number of retired geotechnical Engineers uh here and and some uh some from from Brazil and and we recently had the first meeting of the Canmore

which is the community social geotechnical and social dining club and you may all know Hinrich heints who was yes is one of the leading members of this social and geotechnical dining club and Angela Cooper was here as well so we have a strong Brazilian Focus going on even Among Us semi-retired people wow yes say say hello to them will I will indeed thank you very much that's very nice to hear this take care everybody good luck to you all thank you bye bye byebye