When the rig stops at the end of a shift, the geo's day isn't over. There's one more job to do before heading back to camp, and on a lot of programs it still happens in a spreadsheet.
Back when I was working as a geologist in the field, that job was the daily field report. I'd open the template and fill in what we'd drilled against plan and where logging and sampling were up to. It also carried the crew on site and any safety incidents, and then it went out by email. After the logging itself, it was one of the most important records of the day.
It still happens on a lot of programs today, and it's worth understanding why, because the reasons point straight to how to fix it.
What goes into a daily field report Templates vary between companies, but most cover the same ground:
The holes drilled that day, with the depth reached and the planned end-of-hole depth Where each hole is up to in logging and sampling Who was on site, from the drill crew to the field team Any safety incidents or near misses Notes on anything that didn't go to plan For the geo, it's a record of the shift. For the exploration manager back in the office, it's often the only same-day view of the program.
Why it still exists when you already have Plods Plods are the driller's record of the shift, and in theory they answer the same question. In practice they don't arrive fast enough. They need to be completed and approved before they reach the client, and on a lot of programs that takes two or three days.
That lag matters more than it sounds. Say an aircore rig is drilling 500 metres a day. By the time the Plods land three days later, the program has put around 1,500 metres into the ground that the manager is only just seeing. That's budget being spent without anyone checking it against the plan, and progress that can't be reported up the line.
So the geo's report fills the gap. It comes from someone who was standing at the rig, and it lands the same evening.
The trouble is that a report built to fill a gap ends up creating a few of its own.
Every geo sends a different spreadsheet On a program with several rigs and a few geos, the manager gets a handful of emails each night, often in slightly different formats. Someone has to collate them by hand before they're useful, and managers end up building their own reports on top. Over a season, that turns into a pile of spreadsheets that nobody quite trusts.
Half of it is already known The hole ID and planned depth exist before the rig starts, so retyping them every night adds time without adding any information. It also adds room for typos, which someone has to chase down later.
It lands on the geo at the worst time Good geos fill it in as the holes go down. The ones who are a bit lazier, shall we say, leave it for the evening, after a long day in the heat. That's a rough way to finish a shift, and the evening version is where details get forgotten. It's also a big part of why geologists spend so little of their time on actual geology .
"If you're organised, you'll fill that template out as you drill the holes. The last thing you want is to be filling it out in the evening after the rig has stopped." Victor Cha
It never meets the Plod The geo's report and the driller's Plod describe the same shift, but they usually live in different places. Nobody lines them up, so a difference between the two only shows up at invoice time , if it shows up at all.
What to change this week, whatever tools you use None of this needs new software to start improving.
Pre-fill what's known before the shift. Load the hole IDs and planned depths into the template at the start of the program, so the geo only enters what changed.Use one template across the whole program. Agree the format and the send time up front, so the reports can be combined without rework.Fill it in at the rig. Capturing status as each hole finishes is faster and more accurate than reconstructing the day at night.Put the geo's numbers next to the Plod. When the Plods arrive, compare them with the daily reports. Where they differ, treat it as a prompt for a conversation with the driller rather than a dispute. It gives you another gate in your reconciliation before the figures reach a report.Keep every report in one place. A single running record shows metres against plan and any logging backlog building up, without rebuilding it each week.What a manager gets back When yesterday's drilling sits alongside the full program timeline , the manager can act while there's still time. A fast-moving budget or a slow lab shows up within days instead of at the end of the month. The next program can start planning earlier too, because the numbers it needs are already there.
It's the same idea behind the 30 to 120 day gap in your exploration schedule , just at the scale of a single day. If you want a quick check on how visible your program is right now, try the Tuesday morning test .
Where CorePlan fits CorePlan's Mining Hub already holds a lot of what goes into the daily report, including each hole's planned depth and the Plods coming through for approval. The Field Activity Timing report shows how long field activities are taking on your program, based on the times your team records.
If you'd like to see how exploration teams use the Mining Hub to keep track of their programs, book a demo .
.png)
.svg){kind=small}
