Following our call for expressions of interest in February I’m delighted to announce that the NZGS management committee has selected Andreas Giannakogiorgos and Ananth Balachandra to represent us on two important technical committees. These committees are preparing updates to the National Seismic Hazard Model and the Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering Modules respectively. The roles filled by Andreas and Ananth are to provide input to the committees as practitioners, and to support the lead members of the committees. These committees are usually run by our most experienced members, and we hope that bringing in future leaders at this early stage will build in resilience for future updates of these important documents.
Andreas Giannakogiorgos
Andreas will support Rick Wentz as our representatives on the National Seismic Hazard Model Technical Advisory Group. Andreas has a wealth of experience in this area and we believe that he will provide real value now as well as, we hope, continuity for future revisions in years to come. Andreas is Miyamoto’s Geotechnical Engineering Technical Director with more than 20 years in consulting for large scale civil infrastructure, commercial and residential projects in New Zealand, Australia, US, Mexico, Indonesia and Greece.
Ananth Balachandra
Ananth has already attended his first meetings of the MBIE/ NZGS Modules Finalisation Project in June and July, and is reporting back to the NZGS committee regularly. Ananth is a geotechnical engineer with Tonkin + Taylor and has 9 years’ experience in a broad range of civil engineering projects.
Ananth completed his Master of Engineering (Honours) at the University of Auckland in 2019, completing it in a part time capacity while continuing full-time employment. His thesis topic was to validate numerical simulations of soil structure interaction for buildings on liquefiable deposits.
Ananth has capability and experience in a variety of geotechnical engineering fields and has a specific interest and experience in geotechnical earthquake engineering.
