This book on Fundamentals of Soil Mechanics: A Competency and Evaluation Approach captures class lecture notes that cover Soil Mechanics as a core course unit at diploma and degree levels for Applied Geology, Mining, and Civil Engineering programs. Lecture notes as a summary of a lesson has been used since time immemorial to aid the learning process. The notes need to cater for both strong and weak learners and should have a logical flow of concepts before application of the concepts and self-evaluation facilitators are provided. Indeed, notes as one of the forms of print media should be simplified to motivate a learner who is curious to know what lies ahead of the topic at hand. This perception was captured while preparing lecture manual notes as contained herein. A competency and evaluation based approach was adopted for this write up covering 6 topics in which selected worked out examples and exercises feature prominently. The questions dealt with were mainly on synthesis and analysis with a bias towards infrastructures. Solutions for the exercises were provided at the end so as to make the print medium self-reliant. Development of lecture material is possible and long-overdue!