Nepal Geotechnical Society is a non-profit scientific organization based in Nepal. It was established in 1994, and currently has about 150 members.
As of May 2022, Nepal Geotechnical Society (NGS) has completed 28 years of its establishment. In these nearly three decades, it has come through several ups and downs, mainly in institutionalizing its regular activities and increasing the membership strength. In terms of enhancing geotechnical activities and strengthening national geotechnial investigation and design guidelines, the society is still far behind what it could have achieved so far, mainly because of lack of participation and commitment of the geotechnical professionals working with governmental as well as non-governmental organizations in the country. Up until 2003, the strong will of some of overseas-based NGS members, especially from Japan to develop the society as an internationally recognized organization helped it survive a great risk of extinction. Most of its active members were residing in Japan while because of extremely high cost of participating in international activities, the Nepal-based members had little or no interest in ISSMGE-related or any international meetings or activities. This very misunderstanding, and slightly because of less frequent email communications, led to a poor coordination of interest among the overseas- and Nepal-based members, which has somehow influenced the development of NGS so far. The organizational development difficulties can also be attributed to less frequent communication and information exchange forums, largely distributed work places, lack of geotechnical professionals in the government sector, and affiliations of all NGS members with other major or similar organizations, such as Nepal Engineers Association.
NGS was recognized as a national member society of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) in 1995, and also of the International Society for Rock Mechanics (ISRM) in 1999. Several NGS members have already participated in various international activities organized by ISSMGE or in collaboration with the ISSMGE, e.g. Asian Regional Conferences, Young Geotechnical Engineers Conferences and ICSMGE. With the passage of time, the NGS members can exploit the national member society status of the ISRM and the ISSMGE. The affiliation with these two international organizations is expected to boost the participation of Nepalese geo-professionals in NGS activities.
