Category Archives: Surveying

Exit Interview

Questions and answers with retiring NSPS Executive Director Curtis Sumner Curtis Sumner has had a venerable career in surveying, starting as an 18-year-old straight out of high school and finishing as the long-time executive director of the National Society of Professional Surveyors (NSPS). Raised in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia, Sumner gained...

Protecting Urban History

Researchers demonstrate how lidar, combined with imagery and hyperspectral data, helps prevent costly damage to historic buildings in urban construction zones. With every new underground urban rail or roadway tunnel, deep foundation shaft for a new building, or even simple streetscape upgrade, historically significant archi­tecture in older city centers can become vulnerable. Earth displacement from...

Tunnelling to a New Approach

A surveyor switches from conventional technology to the Trimble SX12, enabling her to match the frenetic pace at six times the speed of multiple-person crews.

Policing Our Profession

Although my professional practice has been limited to California where we have a governing board of registration, I believe that model exists in every state. The mission and vision statements of the California Board of Registration for professional engineers, land surveyors, and geologists are quite succinct: Mission Statement: We protect the public’s safety and property...

Uncovering History

Cincinnati State students preserve a pre-European Native American historical site in Indiana Some members of the 2021 land surveying class at Cincinnati State have been busy bringing history back to life near the city of Lawrenceburg, Indiana. This team of students had the opportunity to survey the site of a village where indigenous people lived...

Incompetence V. Negligence

Do incompetence and negligence mean the same thing? If you check standard references on torts, it seems that while negligence is a stand-alone tort (a civil wrong), incompetence is not. Incompetence is sometimes referred to as an element of the tort of negligence and incompetents are sometimes put away for their own good and the...