• 1955 1st African Regional Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering
  (ARCSMFE), Pretoria
• 1956 first Dynamic Compaction carried out and documented in South Africa. Documented in issue 5 of the newsletter “Down to Earth” noted that N B Hobbs has recently used a 5 ton concrete block dropped from a height or 12ft for compacting the loose sand on the site for a large oil tank in Durban. The average settlement of the site was 7 inches and the maximum 13 inches. Deep soundings before and after the treatment indicated that the effect penetrated to a depth of 40 ft and that considerable improvement was made to the cone resistance of the sand.
• 1959 2nd ARCSMFE held in Lourenzo Marques, Mozambique