Spatial Technologies was started by two partners in Calgary in 2000, and we expanded first to Edmonton, then to Vancouver, BC in 2009.

We are the only full-line Leica distributor in Western Canada, supporting everything from handheld Disto laser distance meters to iCON 3D machine control systems, robotic total stations, and GNSS equipment. We also sell and support products from Microsurvey, Carlson, Seafloor Systems, and Seco, and more.

Originally I had no aspirations to enter a sales role. I went to BCIT for a geomatics diploma because it combined my strength in math and desire to work in the outdoors. Because I was coming out of school in a recession, there were few jobs available, and I decided to give sales a try when a job was posted at Butler Survey Equipment. It was then that I realized how much new technology there is and how much ongoing education is available.

The most rewarding part of my job is gaining the trust of people who need equipment. When someone tells me to just bring out what I think will work best for what they need, I feel good knowing they trust that I’ll find the best option for them at a fair price.

A recent annual general meeting of the Association of BC Land Surveyors sponsored a bull riding competition in which I came in second!

It’s hard to know what someone is physically doing while giving tech support over the phone. I remember one time when I was trying to help a new customer over the phone to solve why they were seeing 4-5cm misclosures on a traverse around a block with a 1” motorized instrument. We went over the settings, prism constants, site conditions, etc. and couldn’t get it resolved.

I drove to the site the next day to see it for myself, and the instrument person was taking the distance using the instrument’s automatic target recognition (ATR), and then he looked through the scope and manually re-aimed it because he didn’t trust the ATR. It turned out he was adding back the error that the instrument was compensating for! Problem solved.

You can read more about Keith’s work in our recent article, Full Tilt.