Articles by Brock Yordy

It’s a new year and a new decade, so let’s welcome 2020 with resolutions to become 21st century drillers and drilling companies.

As another drilling season comes to an end and we travel to the Groundwater Week event Dec. 3-5 in Las Vegas, take time to consider how you want to improve in 2020.

Great drillers are like the heroic test pilots of the 20th century who helped build our modern-day space program. Great drillers and test pilots like Chuck Yeager share a common bond: instincts that allow for instant reaction. Those instincts came from a good foundation of learning, project experience and continued growth throughout a career.

A great mentor can coach and learn from their peer at the same time, creating a bond built on expertise and trust.

A successful project starts by finding common ground — or, better yet, common soil — between driller and scientist.

Recently, I had the excellent opportunity to interview Gary L. Hix, CWD/Pl, RG, CPG, and the 2019 McEllhiney Lecturer.

When it comes to being prepared, the right tool can turn around a bad situation. But specialty tools become useless objects when the operator is incapacitated or dead. Today, I want to drill deeper into how to properly prevent and to be prepared for serious accidents.

When unforeseen problems occur on a drilling project, I imagine myself as a contestant on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire."

Water well production is 100-percent dependent on minimizing impact to the production zone.

Rod handling is one of those elusive innovations attempted and often, after several failures, abandoned for traditional methods. Layne succeeded where many had failed by capitalizing on its strong drilling knowledge to create a solution that would be practical in the field.