Jan Francke

Background

About Jan Francke

Dare to be different.” Of the countless learnings of my youth, this mantra from my Grade 6 teacher had the most profound impact on my life. The urge to ask “just because everyone else is doing this, why should I?” has guided every action, occasionally with positive results. As a professional duathlete in my early 20’s: “Why ride a bike like everyone else when I could build my own carbon fibre one from scratch?” (failed miserably), through university: “Why earn a degree in physics when I could do geophysics,” to my early career “Why join the oil industry when I could specialise in ground penetrating radar,” and later “Why look for pipes with GPR when I could specialise only in mining exploration?” A career spanning 21 years, purposely doing what no one else does. Even prior to finishing my undergraduate degree in the early 90’s, I knew that I wanted to work with GPR, which was then in its embryonic form. Rather than follow other consultants in using radar to find pipes, tanks or rebar in walls, I focused on far deeper applications. I now develop and apply custom GPR systems for mining, petroleum and geotechnical clients from bases in Canada, Jamaica, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and Australia. From my first international project in Ecuador in the mid-90s to today, my career has spanned 97 countries on six continents. Thankfully, being different has paid off. On average, I visit a new project site somewhere on the planet every two weeks, meaning that I have a rather large frequent flier account (over 7 million points – all from GPR projects!). It also means that after two decades of work solely with deep GPR applications, I am beginning to understand where the technology will and won’t work (believe me, it’s not in the text books).