By lyndamyer
The announced variations in DFI Europe, which is a division of Deep Foundations Institute (DFI), are as follow:
The new president is Maurice Bottiau of Franki Foundations, Belgium; Dr Anne Lemnitzer from the University of California, Irvine, is the new vice-president; and Valérie Bernhardt, managing director of Setec-Terrasol in France, will join the board next year.
While Frank Haehnig was president for 10 years, Bottiau succeeds him and is the director of the French, Dutch and UK branches of Franki, and has more than 30 years’ experience in the design and execution of piling, diaphragm walls and soil improvement. Additionally, European Federation of Foundation Contractors (EFFC) president, DFI trustee and DFI Europe board founder and member are his other international industry leadership roles. He was the DFI John Mitchell Lecturer at the 2022 DFI-EFFC International Conference on Deep Foundations and Ground Improvement in Berlin.
As a member in geotechnical engineering at the University of California, Irvine, and a visiting scholar at the University of Applied Sciences, Leipzig, Germany, Lemnitzer is co-editor in chief of the DFI Journal and a member of the DFI Board of Trustees. In addtion to serving as the lead in advancing the chapter’s educational workshop for high school and college students to inspire careers in geotechnical engineering, Lemnitzer was on the organising committee for the DFI-EFFC Conference in Berlin and chaired DFI’s 2018 Annual Conference.
Being managing director of both Terrasol (a subsidiary of Setec) and SCEL (the Setec branch in the UK), as well as a Setec board member, are the honors of Bernhardt, whereas she also is an elected member of the Geotechnical Board of Syntec Ingénierie. As a volunteer for the French Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (the French Chapter for the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering), she was chair from 2016-2020. Bernhardt is also a shareholder of Time for the Planet, a citizen community dedicated to global action against greenhouse gases.
