GeoLayer / Borehole Log Digitiser
At tender, a contractor prices ground risk from the owner's geotechnical data report — often hundreds of pages of borehole logs — with no time and no budget to investigate the site themselves. GeoLayer reads the whole pack into structured, checkable ground data in hours rather than weeks, so the investigation reaches the estimator while the bid is still open.
The geotechnical data report usually arrives as one large PDF: a borehole log per page, scanned, sometimes handwritten, in whatever template the investigation contractor used. Reviewing it by hand inside a bid window means reading a handful of holes near the alignment and skimming the rest — and whatever nobody read is priced at zero, or padded with contingency.
Where the contract includes a geotechnical baseline report, ground conditions outside the baseline are commonly allocated to the contractor. That makes the tender-stage read of the ground data the moment the risk is actually taken on — not construction.
| Reading the PDF pack by hand | GeoLayer | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to usable data | Days to weeks of engineer time | Hours — roughly thirty seconds of processing per log page, then review |
| Coverage | A handful of holes near the alignment | Every borehole in the pack |
| Traceability | Notes and spreadsheets, re-keyed by hand | Each value links to the exact spot on the source log |
| Ground picture | Mental model from skimmed logs | Cross-sections, 3D ground model and coverage gaps |
GeoLayer is used at tender for tunnelling, trenchless and microtunnelling drives, shafts, and deep foundation and piling work — anywhere the price rests on what the ground turns out to be. The same extraction also serves geotechnical consultancies and drillers digitising their own borehole log archives.
A geotechnical data report (GDR) is the factual record of a site investigation — borehole logs, in-situ test results such as SPT, and laboratory data — issued to bidders so they can price ground conditions. It usually arrives as a single large PDF with one borehole log per page.
A geotechnical baseline report (GBR) sets contractual baselines for the ground conditions a contractor is deemed to have allowed for. Conditions outside the baseline are commonly the contractor’s risk, which makes the tender-stage reading of the ground data the point where that risk is actually priced.
Roughly thirty seconds of processing per log page, then an engineer reviews the extracted values on screen against the original page. A pack that would take weeks to re-key by hand becomes structured data in hours.
Yes. Every borehole is plotted at its real coordinates, and you can slice a geological cross-section between any two boreholes on demand — useful for seeing the profile along a tunnel drive, or at shaft and foundation depth.
Book a demo and we'll run GeoLayer on your borehole logs — scanned, handwritten or digital. Book a demo call.
Related: 3D ground models · SPT & RQD extraction · Data plotting
Privacy · Terms · GeoLayer — borehole log digitisation for geotechnical engineers, and ground-risk data for underground contractors at tender.