On November 18, 2022, Tim Stark visited the offices and factory fabrication facility of the Layfield Group in Lakeside, California. Tim met with Brian Fraser, Vice President, Strategic Business Development; Rob Rempel, Vice President, USA; Mike Da Silva, Director of Sales; Laura Quillen, Account Manager; and Nichelle Noel, Operations Manager (see Figure 1) to discuss current and future Layfield activities in North America. In addition, they discussed current and future FGI activities, including the new Spanish webinar series, which Mike and Laura will participate in, collaboration with IAGI, a new operation and maintenance guideline for water reservoirs, upcoming MQA and CQA training, and current University of Illinois research on EIA geomembranes and a carbon footprint calculator. Nichelle(see Figure 2) and Rob showed Tim their factory fabrication area and some floating cover projects undergoing fabrication. Afterwards, Brian, Tim, and Mike toured the recently completed Mt. Woodson Reservoir floating cover system (see Figure 3), which is featured in an FGI Project Spotlight (https://www.fabricatedgeomembrane.com/project-spotlights/mt-woodson-reservoir-floating-cover-replacement-ramona-california) that illustrates the advantages of factory fabrication and use of flexible geomembranes.

Dr. Stark hopes to visit the facilities of all FGI members to better understand each member’s business and how the FGI can provide additional benefit to them. The FGI is an exciting advancement in the geomembrane industry and allows the Institute to focus on all geomembranes that can be factory fabricated.