April 27th, 2026
EarthSoft Interview with AECOM
Client: AECOM
Interviewee: Damien Arnaud, P.Eng., Senior Digital Engineer
About the Interviewee: Primary implementer of EQuIS Geotech and EnviroInsite at AECOM
[EarthSoft] What drove you to implement a centralized geotechnical data management system? What was the situational analysis or problems you were trying to solve?
[AECOM] We had two parallel issues. The first was simply gINT being sunset and needing to replace the borehole logging functionality. The second was a data quality gap identified with our in-house geotechnical lab.
[EarthSoft]: gINT replacement and lab data quality are common drivers; in addition, EQuIS Geotech supports broader digital transformation by standardizing borehole, laboratory, and data governance workflows within a single platform.
[EarthSoft] How did you choose the solution? Was it functional requirements, market research, references from others? Can you describe the process?
[AECOM]We chose to implement EnviroInsite largely because we already license EQuIS for environmental data and were logging boreholes in EQuIS Collect. Centralizing our datasets from the field, analytical data and the in-house geotechnical laboratory is just cleaner.
[EarthSoft]: EnviroInsite and EQuIS together enable a platform-based approach combining visualization with structured data management and enhancing traceability and auditability.
[EarthSoft] Why did you ultimately select EQuIS?
[AECOM] We ultimately selectedEQuISGeotech because it extends our existingEQuISinvestment into geotechnical workflows, allowing us to manage borehole, laboratory, and analytical data within the same platform. UsingEQuISGeotech enables us to centralize geotechnical data alongside our environmental datasets, resulting in a more streamlined, consistent, and integrated system.
[EarthSoft]: Unifying environmental and geotechnical data within a single system is a core strength of EQuIS.
[EarthSoft] Describe your geotechnical data management program(s), such as the number of geotechnical programs, geographical coverage, number of users, number of sites, other.
[AECOM] So far EQuIS Geotech is just seeing use in one of our Canadian labs, with plans to spread to our other two and maybe to the US labs. EnviroInsite sees broader use across Canada and some of our US groups.
[EarthSoft] Can you provide either quantitative or qualitative improvements in your geotechnical data management workflows post implementation? Gains in quality, efficiency, process, other?
[AECOM] The implementation has streamlined the geotech lab process. I cannot quantify the gains, but our primary concern was on quality, and we are seeing less rework (and would now survive audit and the like).
[EarthSoft] Any lessons learned that you want to share?
[AECOM] I think it’s important to not conflate EQuIS Geotech from borehole logging with EnviroInsite. EQuIS Geotech is really only for cases where there is granular geotechnical lab data, typically from in-house labs since third party geotechnical labs typically aren’t set up to provide EDDs and the final result can be imported as a drill parameter.
This communication has needed repeating quite a lot because the geotechnical modules and trainings often include EnviroInsite portions.
[EarthSoft]: EQuIS Geotech supports end-to-end geotechnical data management, including borehole, field, and analytical data sources. The core strength of EQuIS lies in unifying environmental and geotechnical datasets within a single platform, supporting improved data governance and decision-making at scale.