ENGINEERING GEOLOGY/Codes of Practice 449 geology, soil mechanics, rock mechanics, hydrogeology, and mining geomechanics Examples of work activities are as follows Geotechnics is concerned with the foundations of any type of building or structure, such as dams and bridges, and with excavations, slopes, embankments, tunnels, and other underground openings The exploitation of natural resources involves surface and underground mining, the extraction and protection of groundwater, and the extraction of natural materials for construction, hydrocarbons, and geothermal energy Geo-environmental considerations include protection and conservation of the geological environment, rehabilitation of contaminated land (soil and groundwater) and of mining areas, waste disposal (domestic and toxic), and the subsurface emplacement of chemical and radioactive waste Geo-risk is the process of mitigating geological hazards (e.g earthquakes, slope instabilities, collapsible ground, gas) in land-use planning Ground engineering is of considerable economic importance and benefit to society because it provides a means of building efficient structures and facilitating the sustainable use of resources and space This is often not fully appreciated by the general public In stark contrast to other engineered structures, most geoengineered solutions are hidden in the ground and so are not visible Nevertheless, ground-engineered structures can present a major challenge to engineering design and construction and, if successfully completed, are testament to substantial technological and intellectual achievements The execution of such projects requires input from a range of scientific and engineering specialties, and the relevant specialists must be able to communicate with each other in order to agree on conceptual models and parameters to apply to the design and must leave an audit trail to ensure quality and safety In addition, and perhaps even more importantly, there is a need to communicate with other interested parties, not least the owner of the project and the general public Subjects on which efficient communication is required include observations of the condition of the ground in and around the works and the quality of that ground as revealed by physical records, the logging of cores or exposures, and parameters measured in field and laboratory tests In order for such communication to be possible, an internationally agreed library of linguistic and scientific terminology, test procedures, and overall investigation processes needs to be available What are Codes in Engineering Geology? Before considering the trends and requirements in the codification of the practice of engineering geology, it is important to remind ourselves of the role of the practitioner in this field The fundamental role of an engineering geologist is to observe and record evidence of geological conditions at the site of proposed or current engineering works and to communicate these observations to other (non-geological) members of the team The evidence for the ground conditions may be in the form of exposures, such as cliff or quarry faces, or may be in the form of cores or samples recovered from boreholes It is almost universally the case that this geological information comes from the proximity, but not the actual location, of the proposed works There may also be indirect information, such as the results of geological mapping or geophysical surveys or evidence from previous engineering works in the same area or geological setting The engineering geologist therefore has to develop an understanding of the geology of the area and make predictions about the geology that will be encountered by, or will affect or be affected by, the engineering works It is rare for the geologist to have sufficient information to understand the ground conditions fully, and there is always a point beyond which further investigation cannot be justified by a further reduction in uncertainty It is therefore not uncommon for the geologist to have less information than might be obtained from a small number of boreholes For instance, road and rail tunnels driven at low level through mountains cannot sensibly be investigated: borehole locations may not be available, and the cost of drilling hundreds of metres before reaching the zone of interest can be prohibitive Notwithstanding the source and detail of the information available, the engineering geologist has to collate and interpret the geological information in order to produce a realistic geological model that includes realistic assessments of the degree of uncertainty The first stage is to create an essentially factual model, before moving on to the interpretation phase The key aspect of the engineering geologist’s role then comes into play: the communication of all aspects of this conceptual model to other members of the design team, the project owner or client, and, increasingly, the public To some extent this communication of information can be carried out using existing geological nomenclature in a qualitative sense However, such an approach by geologists has often left listeners confused Usually, standard geological nomenclature