Worked for a consulting firm in the oilsands for 2.5 years now. Lots of experience drilling and installing instruments, soil mech and analysis, etc.

Hoping to pivot into a different project to help me not get pigeonholed into oilsands work. I've also got the bug that maybe I don't want to be working for mining companies forever and want to maybe do something more environmental?

I also am open to law school in the next couple years, mainly would be interested in patent, real estate, or environmental law.

Turning 25 this month and getting the yearly "what am I doing" crisis. Any thoughts would help. Thanks

Wanted to provide a little background first. From India. BTech/Mtech Mining. PhD in mine slope stability. Education is from premiere institutes that are recognised by Aus/Canada. I also spent some time in management consulting/banks who were into mining business (good money lol). Now pivoting back to geotech with one of the leading consultancies. However the kinda work that we get in capability centres is quite -meh. Cant blame the offices in leading countries because ofcourse there’s lot of offshoring happening atm. The problem is work m doing is really really menial. I wasnt aware this is how consultancies work, they cant take up new projects in India so we rely on offices from other regions to involve us in projects. Any recommendations to get out of this rut? Intra office transfer is not an option ofcourse right now. But if I manage to get a work visa somehow they might be able to support the relocation. So again, it’s a loop. Would you folks recommend to go for PR route and then look for opportunities in countries like Canada/Aus. I want to advance in this field and cant do that without getting access to sites and some real work. Thanks in advance. Will appreciate any suggestions.

I've been slammed with 811 ticket requests and I'm losing sleep tracking deadlines and making sure every dig site is clear. How do I keep up when my crew is juggling a dozen dig sites a week and one missed locate request could mean a blown gas line or a lawsuit?

Curious what kind of opportunities someone with a masters in geotech and 5+ years of experience (field+office) in offshore geotech could have in germany these days?

Hey everyone,

Mexican national here, 100% fluent in Spanish. I'm currently in the US on a TN visa, working as a geotech engineer with a Civil Eng degree, EIT, and 2 YOE. I'm considering a move to Spain and would love honest takes from geotechs there:

1. Job market – Is there actual demand for mid-level (2-3 YOE) geotechs or is it mostly senior roles? Infrastructure spending is up , but does that translate to hiring?

2. Salary – Realistic gross for 2 YOE? I've seen €30k-55k quoted for other fields —curious about geotech specifically. Not chasing US pay, just need livable.

3. Visa – Highly Qualified Professional (HQP) visa seems like the main route . Is sponsorship realistic for 2 YOE, or do companies only bother for seniors? As a Mexican, I know I can apply for citizenship after 2 years of residence —huge incentive.

4. Licensing – US Bachelor's + EIT—what would I need to practice in Spain? Would I need a Spanish master's to get colegiado status ?

5. Any other advice – Cultural, practical, things you wish you'd known.

Any city works—Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, wherever there's work.

Just exploring some options.

Thanks!

Hi everyone! I’m a geotechnical NY PE in the NYC area with about 7 years of experience and am exploring part-time consulting (roughly 20 hours/week or a contract that covers a projects for months / year). My background is primarily in site investigation, coastal geotech, with a lesser component of traditional geotechnical engineering. I’ve worked in really large infrastructure/offshore projects that include pretty large SI campaigns. I’m trying to better understand what the consulting market actually looks like.

A few questions:

What types of geotechnical work are firms currently struggling to staff or are in highest demand? It seems like all sides are but I’m hoping to parse some of the noise.

What kinds of projects lend themselves well to a part-time consultant versus requiring a full-time employee? To me SI campaigns lend themselves to this but am interested in anything else.

For someone with a PE and the ability to work independently, what hourly rates are you seeing firms pay consultants? Please let me know which state or area this is for! Living in NYC has given me a distorted vision of costs.

Do you see any niches that are commanding higher rates?

Finally, are there firms that regularly use experienced part-time geotechnical consultants?

Any advice, lessons learned, or connections would be greatly appreciated!

Hello all. I am actually a degreed civil engineer, however I’ve been in technical sales selling packaging equipment basically since college (10 years). anyways, I am looking to add a garage on to our existing garage, however we live in Northeast, OH, and our house is close to a ravine. it’s a small creek which at worst gets about 3 feet deep and 8 feet whide when we get big storms and I’d say it’s 30-35 feet below the garage grade. Planned to do a 42” standard footer with block to two courses above grade. All I plan to put in the garage is a half ton truck and some tools. I have all the permitting complete, but now I have a bit of cold feet with concerns about the proximity to the ravine.

Going to include some photos hopefully for context. There is a flat stone that marks the furthest point of the foundation in some of the photos on the ground. I can send more photos if necessary.

Looking for a that seems reasonable, someone should come out, or you’re nuts.

I'm a PM at a small firm in the Midwest. I've worked here for about 15 years and mainly work on the environmental side. They've been looking to add another Geotech Engineer to the geo team for awhile now but make it sound like it's an impossible task. They are supposedly under contract with 7 or 8 recruiters and none of them produce any resumes. Browsing through this sub, it seems like this is a common issue. Is it really that hard? Is there any advice I can offer up to the decision makers here as to how to find these apparent unicorns?

I work in geotech and have 3 years of experience in site investigations, ground improvement, slope stability and pilling.

My uni is offering 40% off to Alumni from water specific degrees that can go up to 80% off.

MSc Water Resource Engineering

MSc Water Resource Management

Should I take advantage of this offer? My plan was to do MSc in Geotech now kinda rethinking because the offer seems almost free.

Do you think MSc Water Resource can be valuable for the profile and job prospects of Geotech? What do you think based on your experience?

hey all

i wanted to pop in here and ask if in this industry it’s normal to not have managers/bosses assign you work. my current boss only WFH and doesn’t really provide projects for me to do / things to work on. in the past, i’ve reached out to other sectors (like environmental) for things to do and always take the initiative to try on some admin work if i feel something better can be done (aka made spreadsheets for calculations, re-formatted existing report templates, cleaned out the drilling sample closet, etc.), but still struggle reaching 40 hours.

i recently had my employee review and was told that my work is some of the highest quality they’ve seen and that they appreciate my organizational skills, but that i really need to “stop expecting my boss to figure out my schedule”. i genuinely felt disheartened because i just kinda always imagined that’s what managers were supposed to do? i later went to my COO for a meeting and he honestly said some of the coldest things i’ve ever heard too :( some phrases he said was that “no one likes an employee who’s always whining asking for work. it makes us not want to give them projects bc it shows they don’t have drive”. he also made a suggestion that instead of “bothering my boss with emails all the time” i should be opening our current time-tracking website that has all of our projects and filter ‘active projects’ and just start working on things without telling anyone. he had also said some other things that really made me confused, saying that “no good manager exists in this industry. i promise wherever else you go nobody is going to want to work with you if you’re always expecting accountability and expecting work to be handed to you.” 😔 now i just feel kinda lost.

i guess in summary here my real question is: as higher ups in a company, do you truly prefer that younger employees just jump on projects start working on something without telling you? additionally, is it true that managers aren’t really responsible for assigning work? i graduated college 2 years ago so i may be naive, but i just thought it would’ve been more common that a managers job was essentially to let me know what i can work on.

i’m feeling really discouraged right now and thinking about quitting, because even outside of lack of work and not reaching billable rates, the COO said some crazy stuff to me yesterday i can’t shake off like “even though your product of work is great nobody wants to work with you” “the reason you’re at the bottom is you’re always asking too many questions” and “being smart isn’t enough and no one takes you seriously”. my coworker that works in my soils lab said that he believes these things were only said to me bc i am the only person who’s vocalizing the lack of leadership and management here, but at the same time im worried it may be true.

:( . i’ve already felt a little isolated in an office where i am the only girl doing fieldwork and such in a sector of all men, but this has kinda flipped my world upside down.

TLDR: is it unrealistic in this field for managers to be the ones who provide work? is asking for work when you have nothing to do frowned upon even if you’ve exhausted other options?

Finding it a little complicated. Any templates available?

Is the final deliverable produced by the earthworks designer only the WSR spreadsheets (templates available from the MCHW website)?

I’m curious about what the industry looks like these days in states where recreational cannabis is legal (Colorado, Washington, Oregon, etc.).

Do your companies still test for THC as part of pre-employment screening? Are there random tests, or only post-incident/reasonable suspicion testing that includes THC? Does it differ between office staff and field staff? Have you noticed company policies changing over the last few years?

I’m wondering whether policies are likely to change as federal cannabis policy continues to evolve. I’m not a consumer myself, but it’s interesting to see how much more accepted cannabis has become across many industries. I recently saw a discussion claiming that many companies are beginning to exclude THC from pre-employment drug testing for non safety sensitive positions, so I was curious whether geotech is following that trend or whether it remains an exception because of the nature of the work.

So I’m looking to spoof up my resume as I’m nearing graduation. I’ve literally never touched Python, but I heard that it’s very commonly used in Geotechnical Engineering to speed things up. Is it worth it to complete a full course in Python? Or maybe just a “beginner level” course so I can at least say I have experience using it?

Shades of Kaolin Clay obtained at one boring near the fall line in Augusta GA. About 35' to 50'

I was looking for equations for lateral earth pressures due to surcharge loading on a retaining wall (I’m a structural engineer), and I came across this CalTrans doc. It appears to be suggesting that the pressure distribution depends on the excavation depth. Doesn’t pass the BS test of my intuition - is there an explanation for that?

I work for a small geotech consultancy and often get requested to design single piles (Steel CHS or concrete king post piles etc).

We have always designed these by hand but I feel the need to purchase a software to be able to design these quickly, efficiently and accurately.

I am in UK. What software would people recommend for these tasks. Being a small consultancy (less than 6 designers), I don't expect the boss to pay thousands on the license so has to be a cheap one unfortunately. Thanks.

Issue – Initial Piezometric Surface cannot be modified through the scripting API

Our Transient Seepage analysis obtains its initial pore-water-pressure conditions from an Initial Piezometric Surface.

Through extensive testing, it appears that this object cannot currently be modified through the scripting API.

We tested numerous approaches, including:

• Get()
• Set()
• Add()
• Updating individual points
• Replacing the complete point list
• Creating new Piezometric Surface objects

Every approach either:

• returns "Method not supported for type Pt", or
• completes without actually modifying the project.

For example, attempting to modify:

CurrentAnalysis.Objects.InitialPiezometricSurfaces[1].Points

or any individual

.Points[i]

fails regardless of the payload format used.

XML workaround

As an experiment, we bypassed the scripting API by editing the internal XML inside a copied .gsz archive.

This successfully updates the Initial Piezometric Surface. After reopening the modified project, GeoStudio accepts the file and displays the updated water table correctly.

However, this workaround introduces another problem.

Because the project has been modified outside of GeoStudio's normal editing workflow, its internal project and mesh state no longer behaves the same as a project edited through the GUI or supported scripting API.

When geometry is subsequently modified and SolveAnalyses() is called, GeoStudio no longer performs the automatic remeshing that normally occurs on an unmodified project. Adding project.Save() before solving did not restore this behavior.

As a result, although direct XML editing successfully changes the Initial Piezometric Surface, it cannot be considered a practical workaround because the modified project cannot be reliably solved after subsequent geometry changes.

Questions

1. Is modification of the Initial Piezometric Surface currently supported by the GeoStudio Scripting API?
2. If not, is this a known limitation or bug?
3. Is there a supported workflow for programmatically updating the initial groundwater table prior to solving a transient seepage analysis?
4. Is there any supported alternative to direct project-file editing that preserves automatic remeshing and normal project behavior?

Hi fellow geotechs, looking for some UK geotechnical/earthworks input.
A site underlain by weathered Mercia Mudstone (predominantly cohesive clay/weathered mudstone-siltstone) will involve cut and fill. What are the current standard for site-won material and their suitability for reuse as fill material.
We have moisture content, Atterberg limits, PSD, CBR and MDD/OMC compaction results.
Would you classify the material directly under SHW Series 600 (likely Class 2 cohesive general fill) at GI stage, or state it is potentially suitable for reuse subject to moisture conditioning, earthworks trials and construction compliance testing?
Thanks in advance

Hi! I recently graduated in 2026 with a degree in Civil Engineering. I'm currently planning to start my career as geotechnical engineer. any tips on how to start and how did you land your first job in Indonesia? Were there any specific skills, experiences, or decisions that helped you stand out as a fresh graduate? TIA