ASTM Award for Wes McCall

Wes McCall, PG, Geoprobe® Environmental Geologist, will receive the Richard S. Ladd D18 Standards Development Award for “the time and extensive effort you spent in the development of ASTM Standard Designation D8037,” as stated on his award notification. The Executive Subcommittee of D18 unanimously approved the award which will be presented to Wes in June in Toronto, Canada.

The Committee D18 on Soil and Rock appreciated his efforts for his work on “Standard Practice for Direct Push Hydraulic Logging for Profiling Variations of Permeability in Soils.”

Wes worked within the ASTM D18 Subcommittee to write and ballot a new ASTM Practice for Injection Logging (know around here as HPT logging ... Hydraulic Profiling Tool). This new Standard Practice was published last December under designation D8037. The referenced Practice outlines the methods and procedures that should be used to conduct logging with the HPT to define the lithology and permeability of unconsolidated formations, and provides a standard procedure to use HPT and other types of injection logging across the industry.  Consultants and regulators can simply cite this standard in project specifications or requests for proposals to assure that the correct methods and procedures are used to perform HPT logging so that good quality data is obtained.

Wes started working on Direct Push standards with ASTM almost 20 years ago. “It can sometimes take five years to get a Standard through the balloting process,” Wes said, “ so this is tedious work.” The HPT Standard was in the works for about two years.

“This is not just Geoprobe® specifying a method for using HPT, as an example,” he said. “It’s many independent specialists, regulators and experts across the country and around the world getting to provide input and recommend modifications to the draft standard to improve it.”

ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) provides ‘consensus’ standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems, and services, so after these Standards are published, they have been reviewed, commented and voted on by professionals and experts involved in many aspects of industry. “We often learn things from the review and comment process that helps us make tooling and methods better for our customers around the country,” Wes added.

You can purchase and download a pdf of the D8037 Practice for Injection logging on the ASTM website (www.astm.org).

If you have questions about HPT logging, HPT data interpretation, or any of the HPT logging tools, contact Wes or any of our other Direct Image® specialists at Geoprobe®.