The supplemental problem
A common Phase II scenario: a site closed five years ago reopens because the buyer's due diligence turned up a concern, or the regulator updated cleanup standards, or a new owner wants more borings before construction. The original investigation produced thirty boring logs. They live in the project folder as PDFs.
The new program will add another ten borings. The deliverable the client expects is one cross section across the full site - the 2018 borings, the supplemental, and any 2022 work in between, in one figure.
Until recently, getting there meant one of two routes. Either retype the historical logs into whatever logging tool you're using now, which is a multi-day data-entry project that nobody budgeted. Or pay a drafter to assemble the figure manually in AutoCAD, other 3D modelling tool, or MS EXCEL treating "historical data" and "current data" as separate layers, hoping the lithology terminology lines up across consultants and years.
Both options burn time on work that produces no new information. The data has been collected. It's just not in a usable place.
What PDF import does differently
LOGitEASY's PDF boring log import reads lithology, blow counts, USCS classifications, sample depths, and water elevations out of a PDF and writes them into a structured record - the same format LOGitEASY uses for a boring logged in the field this morning.
From that point forward, the imported record behaves exactly like a native log. It joins the project dataset. The cross-section tool can pull from it. The 3D modeling export - to C Tech Earth Volumetric Studio - treats it as ordinary structured input.
The composite project
This is the workflow:
- Upload the legacy PDFs - scanned field logs from 2018, one boring log per file
- LOGitEASY extracts the structured log data - lithology intervals, samples, water levels, well construction where present.
- Each record joins the active project dataset - same format as borings logged this week on the same site.
- New borings logged this week sit alongside the imported ones - no separate "historical" layer.
- The cross section regenerates with both historical and current borings included - one figure, one dataset.
- Export to EVS or CAD from a single dataset - no merge step, no manual layer reconciliation.
What this unlocks for firms running supplementals
For firms whose Phase II work concentrates on long-tail projects - sites that close and reopen as new questions or new owners surface - the composite is the work. The figure doesn't show "new data" and "legacy data" as separate things. It shows the site as the data currently describes it.
That changes what the supplemental program is allowed to look like. Ten new borings can be sited specifically against the 2018 data, not against a memory of the 2018 data. The interpretive call on lithology continuity between the original program and the supplemental happens in the cross-section view, with both datasets visible, not in a back-and-forth between PDFs and a draft figure.
It also changes the proposal math. A client asking for a supplemental investigation on a prior site no longer needs to budget separately for "re-digitizing the historical work." That line item disappears.
The trade-off worth naming
Extracted data needs review. PDF boring logs from twenty years of different consultants, on different templates, with different USCS conventions, are not a clean dataset. The platform reads what it can; the consultant validates against the source. The first time you import a 2003 log with hand-written lithology notes, expect to spend ten minutes confirming the calls.
That ten minutes per legacy log is the cost. The alternative is the multi-day retype, or paying a drafter to assemble a figure from images that nobody can interrogate later.
Where to start
If your firm has a Phase II site that recently reopened, the cleanest first test is to import the three or four most relevant historical borings from the original program. Generate a cross section with those plus a placeholder for the new borings you're about to log. The output will tell you, before the rig moves, whether the historical data is going to constrain the supplemental program or open it up.
2026-06-26
