How to Schedule Drilling and Geotech Field Jobs with Less Standby Time

Why Jobs Get Rescheduled or Crews End Up Waiting

Drilling and geotech operations involve multiple moving parts: customer requests, site conditions, equipment availability, and crew assignments. When any of these pieces are unclear or out of sync, someone ends up waiting.

Late or incomplete site access information

A rig arrives and cannot access the site because the customer did not arrange clearance, utility locates are not complete, or the contact person is unavailable. This information should be confirmed before a job is placed on the schedule, but often it is not.

Rigs and crews double-booked

When the schedule lives in Outlook calendars, Excel spreadsheets, or a whiteboard in the dispatch office, it is easy for two jobs to claim the same rig or the same crew for overlapping times. The person entering the booking may not see the conflict until someone shows up at the wrong site.

Office and field working from different versions

The dispatcher updates the schedule in Excel. The field lead checks a printed copy from yesterday. A customer calls to move a job, and the message gets forwarded to someone who is already on site. Each person has a different understanding of what is supposed to happen, and reconciling those versions takes time.

Change requests lost in email

A customer sends an email asking to reschedule. The email lands in someone's inbox, but that person is out of the office. By the time the change is processed, the crew has already been dispatched. Tracking approvals through email threads makes it hard to know who said yes to what and when.

No single record of who approved what

When a job goes wrong, questions arise about what was promised, what was approved, and who made the call. If that information is spread across emails, phone calls, and handwritten notes, reconstructing the record is difficult and sometimes impossible.

A Step-by-Step Process for Better Scheduling

The goal is to get complete information before a job goes on the board, catch conflicts before dispatch, and keep a single record that everyone can trust.

Step 1: Use a standard intake form for every job request

Every job starts with the same form. Required fields include site address, access instructions, customer contact, requested dates, scope of work, and known hazards. If the form is incomplete, the job stays in a review queue until the missing information is provided. This prevents jobs from reaching the schedule without the details needed to execute them.

Step 2: Review before scheduling

Before a job is placed on the dispatch board, someone reviews the intake information and confirms it is complete and accurate. This review step catches problems while there is still time to fix them. Jobs with missing site access details or unclear scope do not proceed until those issues are resolved.

Step 3: Maintain one shared week board for rigs and crews

The schedule should live in one place that everyone can see. Rigs and crews appear as rows; days or time slots appear as columns. When a job is booked, it occupies a block on the board. If someone tries to book the same resource for overlapping times, the system flags the conflict. This eliminates the need to reconcile multiple calendars or spreadsheets.

Step 4: Log slips and their impact

When a job moves, record the change and the reason. If the slip affects other jobs, flag those jobs for replanning. Keeping a log of what changed and why helps identify patterns and makes it easier to explain delays to customers.

Step 5: Attach clear handoff notes to every job

Each job record should include notes for the next person in the process. When a dispatcher hands off to a field lead, the field lead should not need to search through email or call the office for basic information. The job record contains everything: customer contact, site details, scope, and any special instructions.

Common Tools and Where They Fit

Many geotech and drilling teams already use specialized software for parts of their workflow.

• Outlook and Excel often handle the schedule, but they do not prevent double-booking or keep the office and field in sync automatically.
• MetaField and QESTField are good at field forms and work orders, but the intake and scheduling steps often happen outside these systems.
• gINT and OpenGround hold boring logs and lab data, but they do not manage who is available when or which rig is assigned to which job.

The gap is usually in how a job moves from request to the dispatch board. That transition is where information gets lost, double-bookings happen, and the office and field end up working from different versions.

How Stamped Requests Supports This Process

Stamped Requests provides the intake, review, and scheduling layer that sits between customer requests and your existing field software.

• Intake forms capture required site details before a job enters the system. Incomplete requests stay in review until the information is provided.
• A shared week board shows rigs, crews, and equipment in one view. Overlapping bookings are blocked automatically.
• Job records keep the request, review, schedule, and handoff notes together. The next person can see the context without searching through email.
• Change tracking logs who moved what and when, so you have a record for customers and for internal review.

Stamped is not a replacement for MetaField, QESTField, gINT, or your other field tools. It fills the gap where the scheduling and handoff process still depends on Outlook, Excel, and manual coordination.

Learn more about Stamped for field operations →

Frequently Asked Questions