CPT Technology Brings Efficiency and Excitement

Turning his geology degree into a water well drilling job, Jake Bram discovered geotechnical drilling was a better fit both for his education and his lifestyle.

“I was doing a lot of commercial and municipal water wells. It was long 60-70 hour weeks with a lot of traveling,” Bram said. “Transitioning to the environmental/geotechnical side, it’s a little less demanding physically and has more manageable days, which is a better fit for me.”

The Geoprobe^® 7822DT won him over early in his career.

“The 7822DT was track-mounted and had the options to do SPT, hollow stem auger, Macro-Core^®, coring, and mud rotary,” Bram said. “It had everything we needed for the depths and types of borings we were doing — with the ability to add additional stuff as we needed it.”

When Bram joined Rauch Inc, a 41-year-old engineering company, the company bought that 7822DT to come with him. Rauch Inc. manages residential and commercial development — engineering and architectural design, surveying, soil sampling, data analysis, construction planning — all in-house. Bram is part of a five-person environmental/geotechnical fieldwork team whose workload follows the pace of the architects and engineers.

“We’re a small department, so when engineering and architects get busy, we do too on geotechnical drilling projects,” Bram said.

Adding CPT Technology to the Mix

Looking to work smarter, Bram’s team landed a project that justified adding Cone Penetration Testing (CPT) technology.

“We knew CPT could save us weeks of labor in the field,” Bram said. “But all we really knew about it was that it existed. I just knew the theory of CPT, in terms of not requiring rotation to assess soil characteristics.”

Knowing the 7822DT was CPT-ready, they turned to Geoprobe^® for guidance.

“I knew the 7822DT had the CPT switch, and that the 7822DT was strong enough and capable of doing CPT. But I’d never seen it done,” Bram said. “Geoprobe^® had provided great customer service since we bought the rig, so that’s where we started and ended when looking into adding CPT.”

The five-person team all had a college education and brought 30 years of field experience among them, but they were a blank slate when it came to CPT technology.

“Troy came out and did a day-and-half demonstration. Learning the equipment was very simple,” Bram said. “Troy did a great job of teaching us. The fact that four days after he taught us, I took it to the field and taught someone else speaks volumes on the Geoprobe^® ASTRA CPT's simplicity.”

Since training, the team has needed technical support only once.

“We had one instance of needing to get the data report displayed correctly for a particular geotechnical engineer,” Bram said. “We called to get advice on building the report, but that’s the only technical help we’ve needed since our training.”

Weeks Saved and Work Made Easier

Since purchasing their Geoprobe^® ASTRA CPT system, they’ve used it at any opportunity possible.

“We did 30 borings to 20-60 feet as part of preliminary data collection. It took us two weeks less than what we would expect to have taken doing solely SPT,” Bram said. “On another job, we did ¾ of the borings CPT, which saved us more than a week on that job. Plus it’s so much less invasive — not hammering on casing and split spoons or leaving spoil piles from the auger borings. It allows us to have a much cleaner and noise-friendly job site.”

The efficiency boost gives the team breathing room in packed schedules.

“CPT gives us wiggle room in the schedule to deal with the unexpected when we’re booked for months at a time,” Bram said. “We can get the data to 60 feet in 25 minutes by simply adding rods. We’re still doing SPT with the CPT, but it’s nice to do one SPT for every 4-6 borings.”

And it’s added something unexpected: fun.

“It also keeps everyone involved with the drilling portion of the company happier. We’re all still trying to learn and having something new to learn like CPT actually added some fun to it,” Bram said. “I never thought I’d have a laptop sitting on a drill rig while drilling. It’s still kind of shocking, but it’s super easy.”