This is a commentary written by Jaye Richardson, a materials operation manager with AMEC Earth and Environmental, Inc. It appeared in CE News in August of 2010, but I just came accross it in CENews.com’s top 10 of 2010 list. He offers some very interesting insight into the decline of the materials testing and inspection business into a purely cost-driven business with little emphasis on the ‘quality’ in QA/QC. He has a great writing style too, highly recommended! [Source: CE News. Image: HEA on Flickr]
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ASTM Updates June 2009
D5434 – “Standard Guide for Field Logging of Subsurface Explorations of Soil and Rock” and D4429 – “Standard Test Method for CBR (California Bearing Ratio) of Soils in Place” are two standards revised this month that may be of interest to geotechnical engineers. Those in the construction services and materials testing business should take a look at a number of changes to relevant standards. This month there are also a few revised standards related to detection of different ions in water. I also see that there are a number of geothermal and solar standards that were reapproved this month, most of them seem to have been last modified in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Click through for the full list of new, revised and reapproved ASTM standards from June.
ASTM Updates October 2010
Time again for a summary of changes to ASTM standards that may be of interest to geotechnical engineers, engineering geologists and those in geoconstruction and even lab testing or CQA. This month there is a new standard for a new type of geomembrane, revisions to standards relating to ultrasonic testing and general nondestructive testing terminology, evaluation of particle shape in aggregates, and re-approval of standards relating to non-asbestos fiber-cement based products. Click through for more.
ASTM Updates for April 2011
It’s that time again. Here are a collection of changes/additions to ASTM standards that are relevant to geotechnical engineers, soils labs, CQA firms and related disciplines. There are a couple of interesting new standards available. D7698 is a new procedure for estimation of in-place density and water content of soil and aggregate by correlation with complex impedance. I’m not eactly sure what that is, but it sounds cool. There is also a new standard (D7702) that provides guidance for the evaluation of direct shear results involving geosynthetics. Read on for these and other updates.