Welcome to Delaware Valley Geo-Institute!
Upcoming Events
September Dinner Meeting
Tuesday, September 16, 2025 – 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Join the DVGI on Tuesday, September 16, 2025 at The Venue at Valley Forge Casino for our 1st Dinner Meeting of the 2025-2026 programming year! Our September 2025 Dinner Meeting will feature a presentation by speaker Jennifer Peirce Brandt, P.E. of Peirce Engineering, Inc. Jennifer will speak on the 2024-2025 Geotechnical Project of the Year – Roberts Children’s Health at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The campus expansion project in University City will include an inpatient tower building connected to the flagship hospital. Peirce Engineering collaborated to provide geo-structural services required to jumpstart the project. The project was challenging due to the congested city location surrounded by medical buildings, the unknown geotechnical conditions, and adjacent research buildings and potential noise and vibration impacts. With little space to accommodate a traditional support system, a soil nail system was used to laterally support the existing foundation walls. Additional geotechnical solutions included underpinning, rock bolting, soldier beams and lagging, tieback anchors, and drilled shafts.
About the Speaker
Jennifer Peirce Brandt is the President of Peirce Engineering, Inc. She is a registered Professional Engineer in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey with over 30 years of experience in civil, highway, and geotechnical engineering. Her experience includes design of temporary and permanent excavation support systems, micropiles, underpinning, tiebacks, pile load tests, and prefabricated, panel truss bridges. Jennifer holds B.S. degrees in both Civil and Architectural Engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA where she concentrated in Structural Engineering
October Dinner Meeting (Save the Date)
Tuesday, October 14, 2025 – 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Join the DVGI on Tuesday, October 14, 2025 at Valley Forge Casino’s Parkview Ballroom for our October Dinner Meeting featuring a presentation by speaker Melinda Eason, P.E. of US Army Corps of Engineers titled, “Geotechnical Review of Beach Nourishment at Indian River Inlet.”
Presentation abstract, speaker bio, and registration details to be available at a later date.
Past Events
DVGI Annual Golf Outing – Thursday, June 19, 2025
On Thursday, June 19th, 2025, 81 DVGI members and friends participated in the annual DVGI Golf Outing at Kimberton Golf Club in Phoenixville. Engineers, contractors, and suppliers took time out of their busy schedules to support the DVGI scholarship fund. The weather was perfect, and the refreshments were cold for the 9 a.m. start at the beautiful venue. The outing was a scramble format inviting all levels of golf skill.
The Keystone-Foundation team posted the best team score overall (-4, 66), while the ECS/Peak Utility Locators team had the dubious honor of the worst or “most honest” team score (+30, 100). After the round of golf, participants gathered for lunch and drinks on the patio. Michael Derr, P.E. (Geo-Technology Associates, Inc. (GTA)) won the longest drive hole while Michael Shedlosky (MENARD USA) won the closest to the pin prize (8′-9″) and Andrew Crivelli (GeoConstructors Inc.) mastered the Shortest Driver.
The event was a great chance for DVGI members and friends to socialize in a more casual setting. Shout-out to DVGI Director, Conrad Cho, P.E., LEED AP (Langan Engineering & Environmental Services) for staffing the registration table and roaming the course with refreshments. And a big THANK YOU to DVGI Director, Lei Gu, PE, PMP, ENV SP (Michael Baker International) for his continued efforts as our Golf Outing Chair!
Special thanks to our 21 sponsors which made the event a huge success and provided over $7,000 for the DVGI Scholarship Fund. The money will be distributed to students during DVGI’s annual Student Night dinner meeting next March. Thank you for helping us make this a record-setting year! We hope to see you all again, at next year’s outing.
DVGI May Dinner Meeting – Tuesday, May 20, 2025
DVGI concluded its successful run of 2024-25 dinner meetings on Tuesday, May 20th at the Valley Forge Casino. Attendees were in for a real treat as the ASCE Geo-Institute’s 2024-2025 Cross-USA Lecturer, Prof. Richard Bathurst, Ph.D., P.Eng., of the Royal Military College of Canada, presented “From measurement to LRFD calibration of MSE walls.” Prof. Bathurst reviewed how measurements from instrumented full-scale field and laboratory tests of mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls have been used to calibrate load and resistance factors in the AASHTO load and resistance factor design (LRFD) procedure for tensile strength and pullout failure modes of these walls. Such calibrations have improved the accuracy of the MSE wall design process, allowing for more reliable predictions of wall safety and performance as well as value engineering of these structures. Moreover, Prof. Bathurst explained how a simple closed-form solution – easily calculated in a spreadsheet – may be used to incorporate these advances in the LFRD model for MSE walls, negating the need for complex probabilistic simulations for these designs.
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