Principal Engineer

BE (Hons) | PhD (civil) | FEngNZ | QSO

Sjoerd has over 20 years' experience working in the geotechnical engineering, development of geotechnical software and geotechnical data management and has worked on a diverse range of award winning projects in New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Myanmar and the Middle East including design lead and technical director roles in commercial and industrial land development, deep basements for CBD buildings, landfills, power plants and desalinisation plants, large dams and also large infrastructure projects including embankments on soft soils, roading and rail bridges, tunnels and underground stations. He has also undertaken liquefaction hazard studies for councils both in New Zealand and Myanmar.

One of his main specialisation areas is geotechnical earthquake engineering including seismic site response, liquefaction, lateral spreading, effects on structures, ground improvement, hazard mapping, developing earthquake loss models for insurance and reinsurance purposes, earthquake resilience assessment and stake holder engagement including expert evidence work for hearings, mediations and the courts. Sjoerd has a wide-ranging network with leading geotechnical earthquake engineers from the top international research institutions and have collaborated on many international research projects and co-authored over 100 journal papers and conference proceedings on liquefaction and lateral spreading and its effects on the built environment.

His other specialisation area is development of software for geotechnical engineering applications and geotechnical data management. He had a pivotal role in leading the geotechnical response to the damage caused by the 2010 – 2011 Canterbury earthquakes. As part of the response, he set up the Canterbury Geotechnical Database which subsequently expanded out to become the New Zealand Geotechnical Database. He also co-founded a software as a service company, InfinityStudio.AI, focusing on automation of geotechnical engineering.

Sjoerd has a track record with large corporate and government clients who come for help to solve large complex problems, often well outside his core geotechnical engineering competency and which have no precedence, and he has repeatedly built teams of people and harnessed digital solutions and successfully solved those problems delivering great outcomes to clients. This is evident by the numerous accolades including being named one of the University of Auckland 40 under 40 Disruptors and Innovators Alumni, being awarded the Institute of Professional Engineers New Zealand Freysinnet supreme technical award for building and construction and receiving the Queens Service Order, Honorary Companion for services to geotechnical science.

Branch: North Island-based
M: +6421 378 964

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