New information is usually generated every time a geotechnical report is compiled – by consultants working for private clients, or by geotechnical professionals engaged in research. Dissemination of such knowledge ought to be encouraged by practitioners and regulators. Sharing information improves the standard of geotechnical investigation and reporting.
In recent years, my geotechnical reports have usually contained the following Note:
William C Cromer as author will upload this report to his website www.williamccromer.com as a freely downloadable file.
Permission is hereby given by William C. Cromer as author, and the client, for an electronic copy of this report to be distributed to, or made available to, interested parties, but only if it is distributed or made available in full. No responsibility is otherwise taken for its contents.
Permission is hereby given by William C. Cromer as author, and the client, for hard copies of this report to be distributed to interested parties, but only if they are reproduced in colour, and only distributed in full. No responsibility is otherwise taken for the contents.
The local planning or building authority is encouraged to make this report (or a reference to it) available on-line.
William C Cromer Pty Ltd may submit hard or electronic copies of this report to Mineral Resources Tasmania to enhance the geotechnical database of Tasmania.
In line with this philosophy, I’m compiling a database of my professional reports completed since 1970. I authored about 100 reports – mainly about Tasmanian hydrogeology – while employed at the Tasmanian Department of Mines in the 1970’s. You can view a list of these here (click on the link provided to download a copy from Mineral Resources Tasmania) and also view their locations on Google Earth.
If you are able to access Google Earth (you will need the Google Earth software for PC, Mac or Linux), you can see the locations of the reports on the satellite image of Tasmania in the .kmz file below.
Instructions for viewing the file are as follows:
- Click on the Google Earth file – Cromer Reports. Depending on your browser, this will download the file or instantly open it in Google Earth. In the former case, you’ll need to locate the file in your file manager and then open it in Google Earth.
- Left-clicking on a report symbol on the satellite image provides more detailed information.
My plan is to complete my 2,000-report database, and where privacy laws permit, make reports available to everyone. If nothing else, the reports – old and new, good and bad – will be an interesting historical archive of one man’s geotechnical practice in Tasmania spanning almost 50 years.