Career Progression?

[dirtgirlhawaii]

Aloha fellow geotechs...

I am an EIT transplant to Hawaii for 18 months. I do not know any other geotechs other than very seasoned professionals. I would like some highly objective opinions on my situation as an EIT.

I started logging after 3 months after spending time in a laboratory running Attaberg Limits, Sieve Analysis, and Modified Proctor testing. I have only a few different types of geotechnical analysis in the last year, and only one type (drilled shaft design) repeatedly. At just over a year of experience (and only a BSCE), I feel I often cannot meet boss-man's expectations. He is very particular on how he likes me to scribe logs. I expect that, but every time I log for him, I can never get it right. If you were at my experience level, or you manage someone who is, what are your expectations for them as far as logging, design, managing the lab, and drafting?

 

[IRstuff]

I'm not sure that's all that relevant. Someone else's expectations would only coincidentally line up with your boss'

Seems to me that you need to manage your boss by asking for a specific template to follow. Or, he could simply be power-tripping by keepping you hopping.

TTFN
faq731-376

 

[FixedEarth]

What you are doing now is the backbone of our profession. It will serve you well into your career. It took me 5 years to learn how to classify soils properly. Ask to get a copy of the redlined logs so that you can see the types of edits. Soon you will see repeated errors which you will catch and correct. Also you will see few new ones that pop up every now and then. It takes a while not only to log but to watch the soils coming out of the hole and their influence on design.

Hang in there and on weeknights read "Essentials of Soil Mechanics and Foundations by David McCarthy".

 

[fattdad]

phooey on the template! Learn soil classification as an intuition. If you are not getting it right figure out what the issue seems to be. Is it the order of descriptive terms? Are you continuously calling stuff, "silty clay" even though ASTM D2488 (visual description of soil) doesn't recognize the term? Do you use colors like purple, green, and pink even though they rarely show up in nature? The boss needs to give you some "style" guidance so you can avoid making systematic mistakes.

It does take many years to get soil classification right though. . .

f-d

¡papá gordo ain’t no madre flaca!

 

[reyv]

Soil classification is one of the most important things that a Geotechnical Engineer should be able to do properly. There are many geotechs who don't know how to properly distinguish soil from rock (silly right?) or do research to find existing soil data to know the types of soil aor formations at a project site.

What you can do is to ask him to leave the samples behind after he reviews them and go through his revised log. Also, performing a lot of laboratory testing yourself and observe your "guess" classification to the "correct" classification and you'll eventually learn. It's not easy to properly classify soils.

Rey Villa

http://geotech-apps.com