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Geological Technician

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AVG. SALARY

$73,300

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EDUCATION

Associate's degree

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JOB OUTLOOK

Increasing

Interviews

Insider Info

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."

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  • 1-800-GO-TO-XAP (1-800-468-6927)
    From outside the U.S., please call +1 (424) 750-3900

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