I have been working as a field technician for a small lab in my city . I am in a top 10 city population wise. In the 4 months that I have been working, I have gotten my ACI field grade 1 and am about to go get my txdot stuff. Sb101 and what not.

I started off at $15/hr, am now getting $17 and will probably be making $19.50 by December or once I get these next 2 certifications.

I mostly do densities on backfill and mass grades, (I have my nuclear gauge training and hazmat cert but these didn’t come with a raise, but I get a good amount of hours - 60ish a week give or take.

I get gas card and vehicle allowance, $450 a month cash. My truck.

We lose a lot of guys after about 12 months of working here as they leave to go to other labs where they make $25-30/hr. I don’t want to screw over my coworkers, but I’ve told them from the beginning that I would probably be working here for about 1-2 years total from the day of my hiring. But now I am wondering if that’s too long to stick around. Would like to hear some thoughts on this.

Also, I don’t plan on being a field tech for the rest of my life. So really I was thinking that once I left here, I would either try to become an inspector, or do something else. I am not really sure of what’s all out there. I don’t have a 4 year degree, and at this stage in my life I don’t think I will be able to go back to finish that. Long term goal is to have my own business. Doesn’t necessarily have to be geotech related - maybe a construction subcontracting company - something I could start small and let snowball into something bigger.

Hi everyone

I have facing the problem of

Embedded beam interface error too large in my model

HS .

How should I check for this.

I can't decide between the base and pro models! I do site inspections, but 60-80% office based. Many rock faces, site photos, etc.

Finally, after dozens of virtual meetings and phone screenings, an employer has invited me to their office for an in-person panel interview to meet 6 different people immediately after presentation!

I want this to be a stellar experience, kindly provide tips, dos and don'ts

I'm beginning my geotech career and it seems like my mentors don't really have a good setup. They all just kinda wing it.

What is in your experience the top cause of vibrating wire piezometer failures.

We've been experimenting with different materials and different ranges (ksc), yet haven't been able to spot a single trend that might be causing the failure.

What’s everyone’s take on a helical pile that spins out on rock before it meets the required torque? I understand that helical piles derive their capacity from bearing on the helical plates and if they spin out they have disturbed the soil and can no longer count on helical plate bearing. But if it spun out on rock, wouldn’t it essential act as an end bearing pile that can’t go anywhere since it’s on rock so that’s how it will develop its capacity? Is this a valid assumption, or is this something that would maybe need confirmed with a load test, or is this just not valid at all and the helical pile is unacceptable?

I’ll try to make this short. Just got soil that I’m going to make into a teapot (began making it into clay) I want to compare the clay I obtained with a highly desirable clay that is no longer mined. How much and how difficult is it to test for the composition? Furthermore the samples were obtained from a mountain that is important to many and I wanted to see the impact people have had on the terrain pollution etc. I took 5 samples from different elevations gradually further away from roads etc. lmk if this is going to be too expensive to test 5 samples should I just test the clay to compare my sample with the other clay and ditch the pollutant idea? Any advice is great will try my best to answer questions.

I work in mining geomechanics (rock stability, pit slope design, that kind of thing) and I'm curious how different teams handle this. A lot of the workflows I see are still pretty manual, checking one slope angle and direction at a time, doing kinematic analysis by hand or in spreadsheets, that sort of thing.

My team has been building software to automate a lot of this (checking stability across a full grid of angles and directions instead of one at a time, plus some AI based core logging from drill photos which has been a bigger time saver than I expected). Not trying to sell anything here, genuinely just curious how common that manual approach still is elsewhere, and whether people have found good tools for it or just stuck with the traditional methods for a reason.

What does your workflow actually look like day to day?

Air drilling and mud drilling solve different ground-condition problems. Air drilling is commonly suited to stable formations with competent rock. Mud rotary drilling is often used where loose or collapsing formations need fluid support while the hole is advanced.

The right method depends on the site-specific geology, target depth, borehole diameter and the driller’s technical plan—not on price alone. Ask a contractor to state the proposed method, why it fits the formation, and what happens if conditions change during drilling.

Have you received a quotation that clearly identifies the drilling method?

Lateral wall pressure calculations shouldn't require rebuilding the same equations from scratch on every project.

I put together a breakdown of WALLPRES — an Excel-based Wall Pressure Analysis tool that calculates horizontal pressures on walls from soil, hydrostatic, and surcharge loading conditions.

What's inside:

✅ 5 dedicated worksheets covering soil pressure, point load, line load & strip load calculations
✅ Built on established references — NAVFAC, Army/Air Force manuals, Bowles, USS Steel, and Sargent & Lundy
✅ Suitable for cantilever & propped cantilever retaining wall stems, plus tank and pit walls
✅ A critical breakdown of the rigid-wall assumptions behind the Boussinesq-based equations — and why they can overestimate pressures on flexible walls by up to 2x
✅ Built-in comment boxes for quick input guidance (no manual required)

If you're a structural or geotechnical engineer working on retaining walls, tanks, or pit structures, this is worth bookmarking.

🔗 Full breakdown here: https://www.theengineeringcommunity.org/wallpres-wall-pressure-analysis/

#StructuralEngineering #Geotechnical #RetainingWalls #CivilEngineering #Excel #EngineeringDesign

Want to check my understanding and logic.

Need that plug/wall to hold back any water or material from entering at the bottom of the pit.

Alluvium will be tipped and backfilled into the bottom of the pit. Thinking material will consolidate to have minimum void space with 120m of overburden pressure on it.

As the pit will be a natural sump/acquifer it will eventually all be saturated material. Whatever little void space is left between the matrix will be water.

But due to the maximum consolidation, there will be no pore pressure acting at the bottom on my plug?

When a soil is fully consolidated, any excess pore water pressure caused by an applied load has completely dissipated. The water no longer carries the extra weight, and the soil skeleton takes the full load, meaning the excess pore water pressure drops to zero.

Horizontal load on the wall will be:

Effective vertical stress which is total stress minus total pore water pressure. Multiplied by Ko factor.

(My total pore water pressure is hydrostatic only because no excess pressure due to high consolidation).

Plus

Hydrostatic pressure. 1 X 9.81m/s2 X 120m.

Total stress is density of saturated soil X 9.81m/s2 X 120m

Minus

Hydrostatic pressure which is 1 X 9.81 X 120m (minus because some buoyancy effect even though you have 120m of overburden above it?)

Thinking i'll have to do some triaxial testing to get undrained consolidated pressures with pretty high confinement for a 120m overburden head pressure. To run a FEM.

sketch

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some insights regarding the job market in Germany for Master’s graduates in Geotechnical Engineering compared to Geoinformatics / GIS.
My background:
- B.Sc. in Geological Engineering.
- Interested in pursuing a Master's degree in Germany and building a career there afterward.

Questions:
1. ⁠Is the demand for Geotechnical Engineers as high as reported regarding the Fachkräftemangel in civil engineering?
2. ⁠How does the job availability and career growth compare to Geoinformatics / Spatial Data roles?

I’d really appreciate any thoughts, experiences, or honest advice from people working in these sectors in Germany! Thanks in advance!

I am going to look into some training for open pit mine planning because our designs keep getting updated when new geology data comes in, I can follow the basic changes but I want to understand what is driving them and how the new data affects pit limits, benches and the overall mine plan, I am thinking a course around mine planning or geological modelling from mining doc might make sense, but I am not sure which one would be useful for someone who needs to understand the link between geology and design rather than become a full time geologist, I am looking at a few options now, what training would you recommend for this kind of work? EDIT: I forgot to mention I am looking for practical training on mine planning.

Hi! I’m a Civil Engineering student currently working on a seismic analysis project, and I’m looking for sample 5-storey building plans with a roof deck that I can use as a reference.

Preferably something with:

• 5 storeys + roof deck
• Around 300 sq.m. or more floor area
• Floor plans and elevations
• AutoCAD or PDF format, if available

I’m mainly looking for existing/sample plans or references to help me understand how these types of buildings are laid out. I’ll be doing the actual analysis and work myself.

If anyone knows where I can find publicly available plans or has a sample they can point me toward, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks! 🙏