What I think you are after is some guidance creating a data model that supports the industry-data you're trying to support, mining. I tried searching the internet for "standard mining data model" and that combination tends to turn up lots of pages related to "data mining." I did find some ArcGIS standard data models, but not knowing your business I am not sure if those are relevant. At any rate, finding a data model that does not make use of EAV and does not compel you to write dynamic SQL every time you wish to access data for a given project, yet at the same time flexibly supports your line of business may be worth the effort. If you do not find a standard data model you can immediately pickup and use you may at least get some ideas about how others are modeling their mining data.

As an alternative to EAV you might think about using sparse tables (table per project) or sparse columns (one table for all projects however each column contains data for one data domain) to ease the burden. At least that way you can get back to 1NF and stop re-purposing generically named columns that change meaning depending on the row (i.e. project) being accessed.

I just found this article earlier in the week and it is the second time I have passed it along:

And the EAV winner is .... sparse columns by Bob Beauchemin