Page 48 - Danish Offshore Industry 2015

infuencing young people. Fortunately, via my contact to DTU (Denmark’s Technical University) I can have a talk to students I assess having a fair and an interest in soil- me- chanics. In that way we can often infuence their choice of study and fnal examination paper, and then we can IT IS DEPLORABLE complete their training here at GEO. At the moment we have several staff members having been recruited THAT SO FEW STU- that way, but many other companies do not have this opportunity,” explains Helle Christensen, seeing another DENTS ARE TAKING signifcant reason, too, for too few geo-technicians being A DEGREE IN SOIL- graduated. MECHANICS WHEN SO AN UNPOPULAR TYPE OF ENERGY In addition to the lack of attractive studying environ- MANY COMPANIES ARE ments Helle Christensen considers the public debate of YEARNING FOR THEM the latest couple of years as a major problem. The image of the oil industry has been tarnished quite a bit, and that cannot help giving young people the impression that soil-mechanics is a study without a future. “That is actually what annoys me most of all. “Green energy” does not exclude the so-called “black energy”, a professional point of view it is wrong to take focus off as many, many decades will pass before the world has soil-mechanics. switched totally to sustainable energy. Naturally, society “Many of our future sources of energy are situated has to focus on sustainable energy like for instance wind in the underground. Today, we only make use of a small power. We do that at GEO, where a major part of our fraction of them. We must not close our eyes to them. activities consist of soil-mechanic surveys prior to estab- In the future we shall be better at exploiting them, lishing offshore windfarms,” states Helle Christensen. and for that reason there is a need for a lot more geo- But to her the debate is most one-eyed, and seen from technicians here in Denmark.” ■ 48 / LACK OF GEO-TECHNICIANSIS A PARADOX