Blog
TaunusTurm: High-level Surveying
Plumb, level, and precise: Surveyors maintain the highest level of positional integrity throughout the surveying and construction of Europe’s unique and striking new skyscraper. Until quite recently, you might not have seen a lot of European city skylines dominated by shining glass towers, but this is changing. New skyscrapers are rising in such cities as...
U.S. Steel and the Business of Surveying
Years ago, when I was managing editor of a magazine serving the steel industry, I learned an important lesson in business from one of the greatest leaders in the steel-making profession, the chairman of the board of U.S. Steel Corporation. Ed Speer was not an MBA from Harvard. He was a steel worker who rose through the...
Where Theory Meets Practice: Defining Surfaces
The Earth is composed of several physical and mathematical surfaces that play important roles in surveying. As shown in green in Figure 1, the surface that we are most familiar with is the topographic surface. This is the top layer of the Earth that most people spend their entire life on. It is the surface on...
American Surveyors in Jolly Olde England
Five American surveyors tour England for a week, visiting historical spots significant to surveyors, meeting with the RICS, and sampling some well-deserved pints. This past March Steven Letchford and I organized a surveyor’s business/tourism trip to visit Jolly Olde England. Three surveyors from Virginia, one from Tennessee, and one from Iowa opted for what became...
Feature: Never Too Steep for a UAV
A surveying company in the South Pacific significantly improves crew safety and their deliverables by mapping an open pit nickel mine using a UAV. For 140 years, nickel mining has played a critical role in the economy of New Caledonia, an archipelago nation in the South Pacific Ocean. With nearly one quarter of the world’s known...
Feature: Rockfall Mitigation
A potential market for surveyors is collecting data for rapid hazard analysis, using 3D photogrammetric techniques. Every state with mountains has to deal with rockfall hazards. Helping proactively manage these hazards, i.e. rockfall mitigation, can be an opportunity for service diversification for land surveyors, especially in the mapping and analysis of suspected areas of rockfall...
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