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Eighteen people attended the 14-15 November geoelectric Liner Integrity Survey and Assessment course at the TRI campus in Austin, Texas. Organized by TRI/Environmental and I-CORP INTERNATIONAL (as the TRI-CORP Liner Integrity Center [T-CLIC]), this gathering marked the 17th course since 2004. In total, ~250 people have taken part in this unique training and education program, including registrants from England, Australia, Chile, Canada, and Brazil.
This two-day course, consisting of one day in the class room and one day of hands-on surveying in water-covered, soil-covered, and exposed liner test cells, is the first part of a certification procedure for those planning to perform surveys as the final stage of liner installation CQC and CQA. To our knowledge this is the only LIS instructional/certification course available worldwide.
The November 2011 session featured instructors Ian D. Peggs (I-CORP), Abigail Beck (Geo-Logic), and Ajay Shah (TRI). One of the more interesting sessions, held while waiting for a thunderstorm to pass, was a free-for-all multi-group discussion on the basics and nuances of performing effective surveys; and, as the class discovered, on why not all lining systems can be surveyed.
Topics covered in the classroom portion of the course included developing a survey business, electricity 101, survey history, boundary conditions, leak statistics, standards, design considerations, impacts of different subgrades (conductive geomembranes, GCLs, conductive geotextiles, geocomposites), survey equipment, case histories, and developing technologies. Sam Allen (TRI) outlined T-CLIC’s plans for the second evolution of survey equipment including the Series 1000 basic package and the Series 2000 advanced technology package.
The next course will be presented in Spring 2012.
Anyone interested in attending the course should contact cperez@tri-env.com or icorp@geosynthetic.com to receive course details when they become available.
Ian D. Peggs is president of I-CORP INTERNATIONAL Inc. and a frequent contributor to Geosynthetica.
