Chapter 7 Stations and Sampling

Stations are used to represent the physical location of where one or more samples are collected. These samples can be collected during a singular event, continuously, of on re-occurring events. Multiple station types are supported and can be customized within the program. In addition, the station's purpose, elevation, construction, survey methodology, and decommissioning can be stored. The sampling defaults for a station can be specified; including the media type, collection method, analysis laboratory, lab analyses to be performed, sampling personnel, and equipment required. These sampling defaults will automatically be populated for any samples created at the station.

Stations can be associated with one or more tasks. If a station is created from a task, the default sample information and access rights will be inherited from the task.

Samples can either be collected at stations or at locations specified within the project. When a sample is not created at a station, no sampling defaults are used and all of the sample information must be entered manually. Samples can either be collected singularly or continuously. Several sample media types are supported depending on the industry; including, soil, rock, concrete, asphalt, groundwater, surface water, solid, fluid, air and biological. A wide variety of information can be stored for a sample, some of this information will depend on the type of media being sampled. In addition, multiple descriptors can be stored and customized within the program. Sample photos can also be stored with the sample.

These samples can either be used for lab analysis, geotechnical tests, or be collected and stored for other purposes. Any lab analyses or geotechnical tests conducted on the sample will be linked to the sample and can be opened from the sample information form, If the industry is Environmental the lab analyses can be added and linked automatically using EDI data or manually added, linked, or imported. And if the industry is Geotechnical the tests can be add and linked manually.

If the sample is collected from a boring or well, the boring or well can be linked to the sample. When the sample is linked to a boring or well any relevant sample data will be displayed as part of the boring or well within the WinLoG module. This includes concentration data, geotechnical test results, water levels, and soil or groundwater sample information.

If the industry is Environmental and the samples are collected at a station, sample labels can be printed or saved to a PDF file. These sample labels can contain barcodes that can be scanned by analysis labs instead of manually entering the sample information.

In addition, for stations a Chain of Custody (COC) can be printed or saved to an Excel file. The COC is in a specific formats for each lab. GAEA will be updating these forms as more labs are added. If your lab or their COC format is not listed please contact GAEA to arrange for them to be added.

In general it is recommended that most samples be collected from stations, so that more information is stored about the sample location and sample labels and a COC can be printed. Samples should be entered manually without stations only if they have been already been collected without the entry of any station information.

The information for stations and samples can either be entered directly or uploaded from EDMS Field. If the data is uploaded from EDMS Field it can be sent by either email or FTP and will be automatically imported the next time the application is started.