Geotechnical data management – Client perspective for industry improvement

This paper presents a study of geotechnical data management in Inland Rail, a 1600km freight rail line from Melbourne to Brisbane. Substantial geotechnical investigations are required to address the geotechnical risks in the project which include earthworks strategy, rail formation design, piling in deep alluvial areas, large stretches of highly reactive soils, and tunnelling in Queensland. Managing the data that comes from all these geotechnical investigations is an important task. The data has cost the project (i.e. taxpayers) a substantial amount and there is a reasonable expectation that engineering professionals, in this era of modern computing and software, can maintain the information for future use and use the information to its full extent. The key to this is ensuring the data from the geotechnical investigation is received in a complete, error-free digital format that can be imported to a Geotechnical Data Management system. This reduces human errors, reduces data loss/corruption and enables powerful data analysis and integration to other software. However, there is a lack of awareness, skills and software capabilities in the industry that make the process less satisfactory than it should be. There needs to be a more data-centric approach regarding geotechnical investigations; the key deliverable needs to shift from the written report to the digital data. This paper identifies some of the shortcomings from a client perspective and provides some suggestions for improvement which would benefit those embracing digital engineering.