After a career of three decades and more than 3,000 projects, addressing what he calls “dirt problems”
He is never tired for Guoming Lin, Vice President of Terracon and Senior Consultant. “Each project, regardless of size, requires some kind of foundation,” says Savannah Geotechnical Expert, Ga. “To ensure -you work, you have to understand soil mechanics. The more interesting and challenging a soil problem, the more rewarding it is to solve it.”
Few places would seem more appropriate to the passion of solving trouble solving than the southeastern coastal plain of Georgia, a region full of sand substrates and soft and soft clay. His ability to find innovative and profitable solutions to challenging soils and challenges of the Foundation has earned him the affectionate nickname “Dr. Dirt”.
Lin’s experience has been crucial for the growth of Savannah and the coastal region of Georgia.
Photo courtesy Terracon
Mark Board, engineering manager of the Kinder Morgan Inc. Infrastructure Developer Kinder Inc., who has been working with Lin for more than 20 years, says that after his geotechnical prescriptions it is a long -term guide principle for company projects. “I know others who did not do it and wished later,” says Board, who also praises Lin’s ability to “make very complex geotechnical principles and concepts interesting to be understandable and interesting to those who have not formed us in this field. He has a genuineness that makes each client feel as if he were the most important.”
Julie Mclean, an engineer in the city of Savannah and the lead director of development services, adds that Lin’s experience in geotechnical engineering has been central to the city and the growing region of Coastal Georgia.
“Given the persistent challenges posed by weak soils in coastal developments, the collaboration of trust between Guoming and the city of Savannah has been invaluable,” he says.
Lin has been working with the port of Savannah for more than 30 years.
Photo courtesy Terracon
Finding a race
Born in the Fujian province of China, Lin attended Hohai University in Nanjing, winning a degree in Hydraulic Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Geotechnical Engineering. After two years of teaching civil engineering at the University of Southern -East Nanjing, protests nationally in 1989 by students who demanded great freedoms culminated in the lifting of Tiananmen’s square. The repression of the government, which caused hundreds of deaths, led to widespread concerns about China’s economic and political future.
Lin accepted an opportunity the following year to study at the Federal Institute of Swiss Technology in Zurich, allowing him to leave China quickly. From there, he went to the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where he obtained a doctorate in 1993 with a dissertation on structural damage mechanisms linked to differential earth movements that result from activities such as mining and extraction of oil and groundwater.
“It has a genuineness that makes each customer feel like it was the most important.”
—Mark Board, engineering manager, Kinder Morgan Inc.
That same year, Lin moved to Savannah to serve as a Guardian Geotechnical Consultant for the main projects developed by the Ports of Georgia Authority, which was already on the way to becoming one of the largest and fastest deep and faster interior terminals.
Since then, he has managed and supervised geotechnical explorations in hundreds of newly built and improved projects in the ports of Savannah and Brunswick. Lin has also directed the Geotechnical Teams of Terracon to carry out many battery loading programs, managing stability of slope for dredging projects and designing multiple soil improvement technologies.
Lin’s engineering experience and engineering philosophy made a powerful impression on Chris Novak, who joined the authority in 2012 as Vice President of Engineering and Facilities. Instead of continuing Lin and Terracon’s arrangement, providing experience to port contractors, Novak immediately implemented a policy for the expert and his team to work directly with the authority of all projects.
“This was one of the best decisions I made during my first days in the authority,” says Novak.
Lin applies his experience to a wide range of project sectors, from energy and manufacture to hospitality and sports.
Photo courtesy Terracon
Expansion of the application range
The growth of the Port of Savannah has promoted development in other sectors of the city and coastal Georgia. In turn, this has allowed Lin to apply his geotechnical skills to a wide range of projects, such as energy, manufacturing, sports facilities, hospitality places, public works, airports and federal facilities.
On the island of Kinder Morgan, ga., Ga. Among the projects are three terminal expansions that have added storage tanks, a deployment to the larger baga, a new mass installation that allows the terminal to export GNL to other countries and a 7,000-foot storm overload wall to protect it from hurricane floods.
Lin was also key in the work of geotechnical tests and terracon materials for the Hyundai Motor Hyundai Motor, a 2,500 -hectare campus, with four constructions for the production of electric vehicles and the Savannah Conventions Center on Hutchinson Island on the Savannah river. Involved in the initial construction of the installation in 2000 on the island, much of which was made a dredging filling, Lin was re -touched in 2020 to help develop a deep foundation system to support an expansion of 858,400 square meters and the five -story parking cover.
Lin’s well -regarded experience is not a surprise. “It always makes me smile with other clients who show the same feelings of trust and love for him like us,” he says.
Lin has helped Kinder Morgan through the difficult ground conditions on his Elba island, Ga.
Photo courtesy Terracon
A sedimentary journey
Lin, on the other hand, is equally grateful that his passion for solving a wide variety of “dirt problems” has fostered many collaborations and professional relationships with clients, members of the Terracon team and colleagues in the industry. He has always pledged to share knowledge obtained from these efforts through his active participation with the American Society of Civil Engineers, Deep Foundation Institute and the Academy of Geoprofessional, gaining the diplomatic certification of the organization.
The work for Asce allowed Lin’s first return to China in 2018, visiting a large land claim project in Zhejiang to observe the use of vacuum induced consolidation technology in land improvement. “This technology has been widely adopted in China, as well as in other parts of Asia and Europe, but is largely unused in the United States,” he says. “To solve this gap, we published papers, cases stories and design guidelines to promote its application.”
Lin has also published more than 20 works in journals and professional procedures. One of the recent projects will be the topic of a spring presentation at the annual conference of the Geoprofessional Business Association: on June 18, 2022, the collapse of the wall of landing of the shuttle between the Hutchinson Island Convention Center and the Hotel, where the meeting is being held.
Born in China, Lin studied in Switzerland and Tennessee before moving to Georgia.
Foto Courtesia Guoming Lin
Lin’s investigation found that the main cause of the head movement was not a magnitude 3 earthquake that was close to that day, as originally thought, but the result of the filling settlement that caused the structure’s helical qualification system to fail. The terracon repair strategy of deadly companies supported by batteries and relieving the flat shape is intended to be more appropriate to the geotechnical characteristics of the island.
A licensed drone pilot, Lin combines personal and professional travel with a photographic passion for landscape. It also supports the needs of the community in collecting funds for Habitat for humanity and other charitable organizations. Lin and his wife, Mingming, have a son, Leon, who is the founder and CEO of a Start-up company in Silicon Valley Tech. For someone with a reputation as an expert in finding innovative solutions, the old Lin wishes to know more. “I am not very well with chemistry because it did not stand out during my education,” he says. “There are times when this knowledge could have helped with a broader solution.” This can explain Lin’s eagerness to dive -on any geotechnical challenge that comes out of him. “I enjoy all the projects, either big or small,” he says. “Each one allows me to learn.”
