Andreas Giannakogiorgos and Ananth Balachandra to represent NZGS

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.

Leave a Reply

More like this

blog-featured-img

National Seismic Hazard Model

GNS Science has released the revised National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM). The Structural Engineering Society of New Zealand (SESOC), the…

blog-featured-img

Earthquake Design for Uncertainty

Managing uncertainty in earthquake engineering has always been a key challenge for New Zealand engineers and the theme of the…

Placeholder Image Coming

The ISSMGE time capsule project

In response to the Heritage Time Capsule (HTC) Project of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE), the New…

blog-featured-img

NZGS Ground Anchor Guideline Document Release

Ground Anchors: Design and Construction Guideline DRAFT FOR COMMENT

Placeholder Image Coming

IAEG awards for outstanding achievement in Geological Engineering Technology

In order to promote the development of Geological Engineering Technology, the IAEG XIV Congress will organize the selection of outstanding…

blog-featured-img

Sustainable use of waste soil – call for expressions of interest

We have been approached by the WasteMINZ Contaminated Land Sector Group with a proposal to set up a joint working…