The 20th GFWA Prize for final year undergraduate projects in geomechanics at universities in Western Australia was held by the Australian Geomechanics Society on 9 October at Engineers Australia of Perth. As last year, this year’s master of ceremony was Michael Smith from Water Corporation. The judges were Hamish Nelson from Golder Associates, Dr Harun Meer from SGS and Colin Dickson from Halcrow. This year’s winner was Stephen Suryasentana of UWA whose project title was “Numerical based prediction of CPT-based p-y curves for laterally loaded piles in sand”. Peter Gaitskell of Curtin University was chosen by the audience as the best presenter. His project title was “Image analysis of railway ballast”. The third finalist of this year’s competition was Mathew Ryding of UWA who presented his project, “Towards a rational analysis method for backfilled flexible pipes”.

Left: Rob Simpson, GFWA managing director presenting the20th GFWA Prize to Stephen Surasentana; Right: Peter Gaitskell (left), Mathew Ryding, Stephen Suryasentana with Rob Simpson (right)

 GFWA Prize winners and finalists over the past several years have been: