Studying dirt takes geotechnicians all over the country and to the far
corners of the world.
Argentina was the location of a recent job for Jeffrey Evans. He offered
ways to clean up a residual waste site near Buenos Aires. His years of work
as a geotechnician -- teaching, researching and consulting -- have taken him
to California, New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Virginia, Michigan, Indiana
and Europe.
Evans' duties have included studies for small- and large-discipline
and multi-discipline projects.
Evans is a professor of civil engineering and consults on various projects,
like the one in Argentina. He's co-authored a book on hazardous waste
management and has been published extensively.
Maria Gourevitch says the most gratifying event in her career was coming
to North America to study petroleum engineering. The native of Russia adds
that she sees a lot of opportunities here.
Gourevitch recently translated oil industry material for a group of Russian
students. It gave her the opportunity to improve both her interpersonal skills
and computer skills.
Duane Pankhurst graduated from high school in Texas and earned his bachelor's
degree at the University of Colorado. He started his professional career in
Denver and eventually found his way to work in San Francisco tunnels. Now
he's back in Texas.
"This is a very challenging profession, especially in California," says
Pankhurst. "With all the earthquakes, fault lines and landslides, they're
really pushing development to the limit. Developers are challenging engineers
to find safe places to build and expand."
Pankhurst is a project scientist. He oversees site exploration for geotechnical
investigations. He has day-to-day oversight of several jobs -- or seven or
eight if business is brisk.
Diane McDaniel had three areas of responsibility as a geotech when she
assisted a team of independent geologists in Texas. The most interesting part
of her work involved rock formations.
"I'd plot the depth of various rock formations on seismic cross-sections,"
McDaniel explains. "I did this by using known seismic velocities for the different
formations -- which were supplied to me -- and oil well log data for the depth
of the formations. The vertical axis of seismic lines is a time function,
not a distance function, so the meter-type data of oil well logs has to be
converted to seismic times based on seismic velocity data."
But the bulk of McDaniel's technical work consisted of plotting seismic
lines. "A geophysicist would give me a map of the area she was working on
and a stack of seismic lines. Using the longitude and latitude given on the
seismic profiles, I'd plot those positions on the map, connect the dots
and label the line."
Would you be interested in a special "facial?" Geotech Derrick Watkins
offers this tidbit about bentonite, a clay soil: "Bentonite shrinks and expands
a great amount when it's wetted and dried. In medieval times it was used
as a torture device. A prisoner would have a clay-mud mixture of bentonite
spread on his skin, then he would be sent out in the hot sun. As the sun dried
out the clay, it would shrink and crack causing tremendous stress on the prisoner's
skin.
"How's that for a serious mud facial?"
A more enjoyable project for Watkins was developing a new method for analyzing
soil samples for contaminants. As a result of his research, a much faster
and less expensive method of testing is available for further development.
"Geotech is a challenging job," says Watkins. "You have to
be able to reason through a problem, taking into account all the information
that is known about it in order to find a reasonable solution."