Jonathan Knappett is Reader and Discipline Lead for Civil Engineering at the University of Dundee in Scotland. His teaching includes courses in advanced soil and rock mechanics and geotechnical design at BEng, MEng and MSc level, in addition to advanced teaching in earthquake and offshore geotechnical engineering. Bob Craig is a retired lecturer from the University of Dundee in Scotland.
'The introduction of the chapter on Geotechnical Design (Chapter 13) is particularly welcome, as the subject is an extremely practical aspect of civil engineering and in my experience students struggle to make sensible decisions in terms of geotechnical design. This is particularly the case regarding decisions on reasonable parameter values to use in design. A particular strength is the inclusion of spreadsheet-based analysis tools. The use of spreadsheets is an extremely useful and indeed relatively powerful way to execute many design calculations in engineering and we are continually encouraging our students to make more use of them. They are particularly useful for parametric studies which are precisely the type of studies which should always be carried out as part of geotechnical design calculations.' – Bill Stewart, Glasgow University, UK 'I have numerous alternate texts on my shelves, but I continue to find Craig superior.' – Amy Rechenmacher, University of Southern California, USA