Essential Step 2: CREATING MEANINGFUL SOIL BORING LOGS
Learning to Analyze and Correlate Sedimentary Relationships
Taking the Mystery Out of the Subsurface® is the single most important factor for:
- Meaningful well screen design and placement
- Reliable potentiometric-surface maps
- Ground-water-monitoring system design
- Optimum remediation-system design
- Excavation and foundation design
- Field management of unanticipated subsurface conditions
The most costly struggle for staff is lack of training in basic field procedures and subsurface analysis skills. This comprehensive online course series provides the training and identifies the key steps essential for Taking the Mystery Out of the Subsurface®.
Step 2 Synopsis
Learn to unravel subsurface complexities and improve your efficiency for creating meaningful boring logs.
Learn the essential steps to analyze sedimentary relationships and continue with how to create soil boring logs that are:
- Complete,
- Accurate,
- and Effective
By the end of this module, you will gain key insights for managing subsurface information that will make your work easier, your documentation clearer, and your field efforts and project more profitable.
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Everyone benefits when field staff have up-to-date skills coupled with the ability to recognize and manage geologic uncertainties as they arise in the field, rather than waiting to evaluate site conditions in the office once the field work is complete. |
Key Points
- Develop insight for understanding sedimentary relationships.
- How to create boring logs that are: Complete, Accurate and Effective.
- Avoid common mistakes and demystify confusing terms.
- Tips for defining and identifying subsurface units.
- Avoid the "sample to sample" syndrome.
- Ways to manage an overloaded list of field duties.
- Ideas for helping your drilling subcontractor help you.
- Strategies for managing out-of-scope issues.
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The biggest struggle staff encounter is basic field procedures and subsurface analysis skills...partly because they require training to do more than interpret - or guess at - sedimentary relationships.
It's not always simple to correlate sediments according to their depositional and stratigraphic context.
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"With so much riding on our understanding of the subsurface, it's critical that we get it right. Every project design depends on good soil borings and this course is unmatched for discovering the process for creating good soil boring logs. This training experience confirmed my suspicion that lithology is not the same thing as stratigraphy. All my future projects will include site stratigraphy. Now I know with confidence that I'm taking the mystery out of the subsurface."
- William Silveri, New York State PG, CHMM, LEED, Principal, William Silveri, LLC.
"Every company should make this training mandatory"
- Katie Smith, PG, Senior Consultant
"I benefited greatly from the content and perspective offered by the Midwest GeoScience Group Taking the Mystery out of the Subsurface course. The course teaches USCS from a geologic perspective and focuses on understanding the geologic foundations and associated depositional environments to bring full circle the training of geologists to the applied environmental and engineering geology that necessitates accurate borehole logging."
- Matthew W. Pendleton, PG, QSD/QSP, Project Geologist, EKI Environment & Water, Inc.
"The course is far more than just a review."
- Scott F. Martin LEP, CHMM, Senior Project Manager, Environmental Engineering and Technology, AECOM
"The webinar instructors are knowledgeable and teach real-world examples to put things in perspective. Great to hear passionate geoscientists teaching what they know best. Overall, great (online) courses!"
- Andrew Canali, Jacobs Engineering, Inc.
"It was an excellent webinar! Tim does a very good job of explaining the necessary components of a soil boring log and how to quickly describe each of them. This is very useful to me. I have been wanting to improve my logs and I believe the knowledge I've gained from these webinars will certainly help me achieve my goal."
- Aaron Hottenstein, MS, PG, Senior Consultant, Ramboll
"Fantastic seminar series, I really enjoyed it."
- Mike Harol, Geo-Tech Environmental, Inc.
"Working with the soil kit was by far the most useful training we have had in years. This is such a fundamental skill, but most of us haven't actually studied soil texture since college. It was great to get our hands on known standards and refresh our memories on proper soil characterization methods. Now I know our soil logs will be accurate and reproducible. Worth every penny!"
- Betsy Schamberger, President/Owner. Moonstone Environmental.
Instructors Bio
Tim Kemmis, PhD, PG is a Senior Hydrogeology Consultant and Project Manager for large-scale subsurface investigations. His unique experience as both an applied researcher and consultant has enabled Tim to effectively teach staff at all levels how unravel sedimentary complexities by making fundamentally sound observations, preparing complete and accurate boring logs and confidently correlating geologic units.
Tim worked 14 years for the Iowa Geological Survey, during which he received his Ph.D., and where he:
- Carried out glacial sedimentologic investigations
- Remapped the Des Moines Glacial lobe
- Established the formal glacial stratigraphy for the lobe based on depositional environments
- Discovered a new type of hummocky glacial topography
- Determined the geometry and origin of jointing in glacial tills
- Developed a lithofacies code to decipher the history of glacial outwash and alluvial sequences
Tim worked 15 years for Earth Tech, on a variety of hydrgeologic and geotechnical projects, where he:
- Created project standards for soil boring logging and subsurface characterizations
- Provided technical and expert witness support
- Managed hydrogeologic and geotechnical projects around the world
- Mentored and trained staff
- Helped clients achieve their financial objectives when faced with technical challenges
Tim is a co-founder of Midwest GeoSciences Group and has successfully taught many courses and webinars dedicated to improving boring logs and helping geologists think on their feet.
Tim received his bachelor's degree in agricultural soil science from the University of Illinois and his master's degree in glacial geology while working as a graduate assistant at the Illinois State Geological Survey.
Dan Kelleher, PG, CIPM is a hydrogeologist and co-founder of Midwest GeoSciences Group which was formed to simply help consultants do a better job preparing accurate and complete soil boring logs.
Dan is recognized for his technical expertise in quantitative hydrogeology (in porous and fractured media), geotechnical analysis of sedimentary sequences, aquifer testing, fractured rock hydrogeology, and predictive ground water modeling. Course participants will benefit from Dan's experience with field analysis from boring to boring in order to utilize QA/QC and help identify unexpected conditions as soon as they arise.
Dan received his bachelor's degree in Geology from Monmouth College and his master's degree in Hydrogeology from Northern Illinois University.
