The reason for this publication was a webinar on the accounting portal “Clerk” on the topic “Agency contract: for which mistakes you will be charged additional taxes, fines, and penalty fees”.

A representative of a Moscow training and consulting center spoke to the audience and motivated them so well (or frightened them?) that a lot of them immediately purchased the paid course, fearing that they might suffer.

An agency contract is the most popular way of tax optimization, and the risks of running into fines are really high there. With the help of agency contracts, owners artificially fragment their businesses, trying to use the simplified taxation system (STS), create new companies, turning them into agents, or even turning simple employees into agents. As a result, the profit of the company sharply decreases, only the agency fee remains, and the deductions to the budget and social funds from the agency fee are small.

But the tax service is not asleep, and companies with agency contracts are under its increased attention. A buisnessman may not even realize that his financial creativity can be easily seen through. The Federal Tax Service and the Ministry of Finance of Russia do not provide explanations on how to reduce taxes, but only tell how to pay them. The arguments of the court and tax authorities can only be heard at a court hearing. That is why private tax experts’ courses and consultations are in great demand.

The editorial staff of the “GeoInfo” journal became interested in this topic and decided to find out the opinions of lawyers and tax consultants regarding agency contracts in relation to engineering services, as engineering survey companies are usually small. Moreover, many specialists in this sphere work as individual entrepreneurs or as self-employed persons. Even if a company positions itself as a large one, its staff, as a rule, is limited; its personnel are recruited for project, temporary, one-time work; and any contracts but not labor ones negotiates.

The asked experts gave examples of cases when entrepreneurs were fined by tax authorities. And they made recommendations on how to avoid punishments in the cases of reducing the tax base with the use of agency contracts.

This year, 150 thousand specialists throughout Russia must undergo an Independent Qualification Assessment (IQA). They are people whose five-year period expires after being included in the National Register of Specialists (NRS): builders, engineering surveyors, designers, chief engineers and chief architects of projects.

The exclusion of specialists from the NRS may lead to the loss of the membership of a employing organization in a self-regulatory organization (SRO), to the reduction in the opportunities of participation in tenders, to the reduction lucrative orders, to the loss of clients and profits.

If previously ordinary engineers and managers improved their qualifications by listening to lectures, after which they received the corresponding documents, now their qualifications must be confirmed, i.e. they must pass an exam. For builders, the exam consists of testing and solving practical problems. Engineering surveyors and designers have to defend their portfolios in addition to passing tests.

The whole thing was started to restore order in the educational services. The Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation is trying to stop the simple distribution of documents on improved qualifications to everyone who wants that.

According to various sources, only a third of participants pass the IQA exam on the first try. The rest ones have to repass the exam and to pay again. Qualification assessment centers (QAC) have seen the benefit of that. And now, they offer paid instructions with a guarantee that the exam will be passed. It turns out that you have to pay both for repassing the test and for the help.

The editorial staff of the “GeoInfo” journal asked some experts how to pass the IQA exam on the first try, what are the advantages of do it by oneself or with assistance.

“Who will be our Dowager Empress now?!” – this is exactly what Yasinskiy, the Derpt police chief, exclaimed when he had learned about the death of Empress Maria Fedorovna. Indeed, in almost 30 years (from 1801 to 1828) the people managed to get used to that strange title and without the widow of Emperor Paul I felt themselves orphaned.

In the same way, domestic regulatory documents for geotechnical design have become «orphaned». More than a year ago, 7 June 2022, Rosstandart created such a technical committee for standardization as TC 506 “Engineering surveys and geotechnics” according to order № 1385. And a month later, such a subcommittee as SC 19 “Geotechnics” was excluded from the structure of TC 465. But there is still no clarity about the procedure for considering draft regulatory documents.

Readers are offered some information on the chronology of relevant events and an assessment of the current situation.

Among Russian software developers who are ready to offer software based on Technologies of Information Modeling (TIM or BIM – Building Information Modeling), the company “Credo-Dialog” is in the leading positions. For more than 30 years, the company has been developing tools for automating the solutions of engineering problems in the fields of engineering surveys, design, construction and operation of buildings and structures.

This article describes the creation history of the software system “TIM CREDO” (“Technologies of Information Modeling CREDO”). An overview of its functional is also provided and its main strengths are noted.

Not so long ago, a number of soil laboratories and survey organizations were approached by people with offers to purchase a software product designed to solve three problems such as: accelerated processing of geological samples data with automatic loading into the EngGeo database; modeling and generation of mechanical tests of the ASIS complex with automatic loading of the results of those tests into the EngGeo software database; generation and processing of the results of those tests and their registration in the form of a protocol. In other words, the laboratories were openly offered software for falsifying test results worth 950 thousand rubles.

Of course, it would be excessive to argue that the spread of those software developments to several laboratories will lead to the collapse of the laboratory test market. Because even without that, falsifications are already present on the market, and it is really impossible to assess the true scale of them. The fact is that not only the laboratories themselves but also the customers are sometimes interested in the “drawn” test results, at that regardless of whether the laboratory is a structural division of an engineering survey company or it is an independent organization.

To try to understand this problem, we turned for comments to Alexander Gavrilov, the chief project engineer and technical director of the OOO “Inzhenernaya Geologiya i Geotekhnika” [“Engineering Geology and Geotechnics” LLC].

In 2024, the 50th anniversary of the construction start of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) will be celebrated. The anniversary is tied to two events out of many ones.

On the 23d of April 1974, at the XVII Komsomol Congress, this railway was declared an All-Union Top-Priority Komsomol Construction Site. On the 8th July of the same year, the decree “On the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline” was adopted.

In connection with the half-century anniversary of this legendary construction, the editorial staff of the “GeoInfo” journal have prepared an article about the past, present and future of the BAM with an emphasis on the site investigations and designing. Moreover, today, this is actually a new BAM, where the previous experience is certainly useful.

The two most important policy directions of various countries related to the ongoing climate change on the planet are slowing the increase in the atmospheric air temperature by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting the society to the changes. In any case, the second direction has or will have to be dealt with, especially in regions where permafrost is widespread.

We present a slightly abridged and adapted translation of the paper “Food and water security in a changing arctic climate” by American researches from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (White et al., 2007). This article was written in the first decade of the XXI century, but has not lost its relevance until now and can be very useful for Russian researchers and managers. It was published in the journal “Environmental Research Letters” by the publishing company of the British scientific society “Institute of Physics” (IOP) that is now virtually international. Articles of this journal are open access ones and distributed under the CC BY license that allows to distribute, translate, adapt and build upon them provided that the types of changes are noted and the original sources are referred to. The full reference to the original paper for the presented translation (White et al., 2007) is given in the end.

In the Arctic, permafrost extends up to 500 m below the ground surface, and it is generally just the top meter that thaws in summer. Lakes, rivers, and wetlands on the arctic landscape are normally not connected with groundwater in the same way that they are in temperate regions. When the surface is frozen in winter, only lakes deeper than 2 m and rivers with significant flow retain liquid water. Surface water is largely abundant in summer, when it serves as a breeding ground for fish, birds, and mammals. In winter, many mammals and birds are forced to migrate out of the Arctic. Fish must seek out lakes or rivers deep enough to provide good overwintering habitat.

Humans in the Arctic rely on surface water in many ways. Surface water meets domestic needs such as drinking, cooking, and cleaning as well as subsistence and industrial demands. Indigenous communities depend on sea ice and waterways for transportation across the landscape and access to traditional country foods. The minerals, mining, and oil and gas industries also use large quantities of surface water during winter to build ice roads and maintain infrastructure. As demand for this limited, but heavily-relied-upon resource continues to increase, it is now more critical than ever to understand the impacts of climate change on food and water security in the Arctic.

Arctic regions have experienced and will continue to experience the greatest rates of warming compared to any other region of the world. The two most important directions of the climate policy for countries with Arctic territories are slowing down the climate change on the planet (by reducing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere) and adapting the society to the changes that do occur. Today, we turn to the second direction.

We would like to present a slightly abridged and adapted translation of the paper “Adaptation strategies to climate change in the Arctic: a global patchwork of reactive community-scale initiatives” by Tatiana Loboda from the University of Maryland (USA) (Loboda, 2014). This small (but very relevant until now in terms of the discussed problems) paper was once published in the journal “Environmental Research Letters” by the publishing company of the British scientific society “Institute of Physics” (IOP) that is now virtually international. This is an open access paper. It is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC BY 3,0) license that allows it to be copied, distributed, translated, adapted, modified, mixed and used for any purposes (even commercial ones) provided that the types of changes are noted and the original source is referred to. In our case, the reference to the original paper (Loboda, 2014) is in the end.

The people living in the Arctic are considered among the most vulnerable to the impacts of environmental change ranging from decline in natural resources to increasing mental health concerns [1]. A meta-analysis study by Ford et al. [2] has assessed the volume, scope and geographic distribution of reported in the English language peer-reviewed literature initiatives for adaptation to climate change in the Arctic. Their analysis highlights the reactive nature of the adopted policies with a strong emphasis on local and community-level policies mostly targeting indigenous population in Canada and Alaska. The results of the study [2] raise concerns about the lack of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to track the success rate of the existing policies and the lack of a long-term strategic planning of the adaption policies spanning international boundaries and including all the groups of the population.

We bring to the attention of the readers a slightly abridged and adapted translation of the paper “Numerical modeling of various support systems to stabilize deep excavations” by Mirvat Abdallah, а Lebanese researcher (Abdallah, 2017). This paper was published in the International Journal of Geological and Environmental Engineering. It is an open access article that is available on the website of the WASET (World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology) publisher under the CC BY 4.0 license that allows it to be copied, distributed, translated, adapted, modified, mixed and used for any purposes (even commercial ones) provided that the types of changes are noted and the original source is referred to. In our case, the reference to the original paper (Abdallah, 2017) is in the end.

Urban development requires deep excavations near buildings and other structures. Deep excavation has become more necessary for better utilization of space as the population of the world has dramatically increased. In Lebanon, some urban areas are very crowded and have lack spaces for new buildings and underground projects, which makes the usage of underground space indispensable. In the presented investigation, a numerical modeling was performed using the finite element method in 2D to study interactions in the system “deep excavation – diaphragm wall – soil – neighboring structure” in the case of nonlinear soil behavior. The study was focused on comparing the results obtained using various support systems (two ones). Furthermore, a parametric study was performed according to the distance between an excavation and a neighboring structure.

The specific features of the equipment for Technical Geophysics are described. The application conditions of the methods and the range of tasks to be solved require apparatus to be compact, multichannel, compatible with various types of recording sensors and signal processing software. A possible approach to the production of the equipment that meets these requirements is shown using the example of the IDS-2 multichannel pile length tester manufactured by «Logicheskiye sistemy» LLC. Some examples of the IDS-2 application for solving a number of common geotechnical problems (low strain impact testing of the length and integrity of piles, acoustic survey of a foundation slab by the impulse response testing, estimation of the shear wave velocity in soils using the MASW technique) are presented. The research results show the capabilities of the equipment in rapid data collection for techniques with various physical specifics. Directions for further development of the device functional are proposed.

We present a slightly abridged and adapted translation of the report “«Doing the wrong things right» site investigations in soft soil” (Jamilus et al., 2016) made at the International Engineering Research and Innovation Symposium (IRIS) in 2016 in Melaka (Malaysia). This report was also published in the conferences information package “Materials Science and Engineering” by the publishing company “IOP Publishing” of the British scientific society “Institute of Physics” (IOP) that is now virtually international. This is an open access paper. It is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC BY 3,0) license which allows it to be copied, distributed, translated, adapted, modified, mixed and used for any purposes (even commercial ones) provided that the types of changes are noted and the original source is referred to. In our case, the reference to the original paper (Jamilus et al., 2016) is in the end. Despite the fact that this report was made 7 years ago, it can be useful, once again reminding of the importance of the correct performance of site investigation for construction.

Site investigation is a very important process by which geotechnical, geological and other relevant information which might affect the construction or performance of a civil engineering or building project is acquired. However, common practice in site investigations is not always in accordance to the standard that has been defined. Reliability of the information obtained depends upon several factors that involves correct procedures, competent workers, and also supervision. Several examples on site investigation methods are discussed in this paper. Explanation on the difference between the site investigation methods used for real practices in the field and how it should be done are discussed in detail. Therefore, it is hoped that site investigation should always be uniquely planned and should be an interactive and flexible process of discovery and changes according to the condition of the soil.