About Francesco Basile
Dr Francesco
Basile, PhD MEng
Director
Civil engineer with over 25 years’ international experience in the field of geotechnical engineering design, analysis and research. Dr. Basile received his PhD from the University of Glasgow (UK) in 1999 and, after a five-year experience with Halcrow (now Jacobs) in London (UK), he established his own geotechnical consultancy, Geomarc. He has worked on a variety of major international projects, and his consulting experience ranges from site investigation to shallow foundations, piling, ground improvement, retaining structures, and slope stability. Dr. Basile is a recognised expert on numerical modelling and design of pile foundations (particularly pile groups and piled rafts) and is the author of the boundary element code for Repute, one of the world's leading software for pile design. He has published two theses and over 30 technical papers on pile behaviour. He is a UK member of ISSMGE committee TC212 "Deep Foundations" and an Italian delegate on Eurocode 7 TC250 committees "Pile foundations" and "Numerical methods".
Research and teaching
Francesco Basile has specialist expertise in numerical modelling of soil-structure interaction, particularly in the behaviour of piled foundations. He has designed and written PGroupN, the calculation engine of Repute by Geocentrix, the UK's leading pile-design software used by over 400 major companies worldwide. He has published two theses and over 30 technical papers, including the book chapter “Analysis and design of pile groups” by Taylor & Francis (Oxford, UK).
Dr Basile is frequently invited to give lectures and presentations on various aspects of pile behaviour at leading educational establishments, international conferences, engineering consultants and contractors, including University of Catania (1994), University of Oxford (1996), Politecnico di Torino (1997), University of Glasgow (1997), Imperial College (London, 1997), University of Leeds (1997), Halcrow Group Ltd (Swindon, 2000 and 2002; London, 2003 and 2009), Cementation Foundations Skanska Ltd (London, 2000), Underground Construction Int. Symp. (London, 2001), University of Dundee (2003), "Master in Ingegneri di Impresa" (Catania, 2004), Soil Srl (Milan, 2005), Italferr SpA (Rome, 2006), 14th Danube-European Conference on Geotechnical Engineering (Bratislava, 2010), 7th Int. Symp. on Geotechnical Aspects of Underground Construction in Soft Ground (Rome, 2011), 2nd Int. Conf. on Performance-Based Design in Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering (Taormina, 2012), Trevi SpA (2016), DFI-EFFC Int. Conf. on Deep Foundations (Rome, 2018), XVII European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (Reykjavik, 2019).
Contract Professor in Foundation Engineering at the University of Catania in Italy (2001-2002). Supervisor of undergraduate and postgraduate students at the universities of Glasgow (UK, 1996-1997) and Messina (Italy, 2001-2002). Scientific referee for leading international journals including Géotechnique, Soils and Foundations, Canadian Geotechnical Journal, and Geotechnical Engineering (ICE Proceedings, UK). Since 2015, Dr Basile is a UK corresponding member for the ISSMGE technical committee TC212 "Deep Foundations". Since 2016, Francesco Basile is an Italian delegate on the Eurocode 7 committee CEN TC250/SC7/WG3/TG3 "Pile foundations", the committee responsible for developing the second generation of Eurocode 7, expected to be ready in 202x.
Chronology
Francesco Basile studied Civil Engineering at Messina and Catania universities in Italy where he obtained an MEng degree with first class honours (110/110 cum laude) in 1993. His thesis, entitled “Modellazione numerica con curve p-y di pali soggetti a forze orizzontali in testa”, was nominated for the IRFIS Award for the best MEng thesis.
From 1993 to 1994, Dr Basile carried out post-graduate research into numerical analysis of shallow and deep foundations at the Faculty of Engineering of Catania University, in association with Professors Michele Maugeri and Ernesto Motta. This work resulted in the development of Strip, a computer program for the non-linear analysis of piled strip foundations using the load-transfer method.
In 1994, Francesco Basile started a PhD programme in Geotechnical Engineering at Glasgow University (UK), where he studied pile group behaviour under the supervision of Professor Simon Wheeler and the assistance of Dr. Ken Fleming (Cementation Foundations Skanska Ltd). Dr Basile temporarily worked for the Special Structures team of Halcrow Group Ltd in 1997, where he was involved in the dynamic soil-structure interaction analysis and design to upgrade the existing dock structures at Devenport Royal Dockyard (UK). He was awarded a PhD from Glasgow University in 1999 following submission of a thesis entitled “Non-linear analysis of pile groups under general loading conditions”.
From 1999 to 2003, Dr Basile worked for the Geotechnics team of Halcrow Group Ltd (now Jacobs) in London (UK), where he was involved in all aspects of geotechnical consultancy, including interpretation of factual data and preparation of site investigation reports, analysis and design of shallow and deep foundations, retaining walls, cut and cover structures, slopes, and reinforced earth structures. His major projects include Docklands Light Railway Extension to London City Airport, the Submarine Refit Complex at Devonport Royal Dockyard, and RLE Channel Tunnel Rail Link, the new high-speed railway line which is being built to link the Channel Tunnel with London.
Since 2003, Francesco Basile is a Director and a geotechnical consultant for Geomarc Ltd where he is involved on a variety of major international projects. In 2004, Dr Basile has provided specialist geotechnical advice to Geodata SpA (Turin, Italy) for the design of the Milan-Naples A1 motorway and the design of the alternative route to the S.S. 23 road near Sestriere (Turin, Italy). From 2005 to 2007, he acted as a full-time geotechnical consultant for Italferr SpA (the engineering company of the Italian rail operator "Ferrovie dello Stato") where he was responsible for the design and supervision of construction of the Tracoccia tunnel for the new Palermo-Messina (Italy) railway line. Francesco Basile regularly provides specialist advice on pile design and analysis for major international projects such as the Opera Grand Tower (Dubai), the £100m biomass plant in Cheshire (UK), the Revolving Orchid Tower (Bahrain), etc. Dr Basile is heavily involved in the technical development of Repute in collaboration with Geocentrix.
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