Category Archives: Construction/BIM
“I did not know that!” – Topcon Roadshow 2018
A visit to one of Topcon’s nationwide Roadshow 2018 stops showed why these events are popular among customers and local dealers and how they provide valuable feedback for product teams. “The thing I hear most from our customers at the roadshows is, ‘I did not know that,’” said Collin McCoy, equipment sales manager at the...
Tunnel Monitoring from Above
UAV digital monitoring delivers significant benefits as part of a major German tunneling construction project. The German city of Karlsruhe plays a decisive role in transport planning in the southwest of that country, with more than 300,000 inhabitants, 160,000 vehicles in the main part of the city, and 190 million train passengers every year. Highway...
Improving GNSS in the Urban Canyon
To prepare you for the this blog post, I wish to point out that I am a geospatial expert and can hold my own around the ins and outs of survey, so going to an event at the Ordnance Survey on “3D mapping for the improvement of GNSS in urban areas” was an eye-opener. You...
Taxi!
Major work on JFK airport’s system of taxiways gets a boost from a contractor’s 3D milling capability. Ranked #16 on the list of the world’s busiest airports, New York’s JFK airport handles nearly 59 million passengers and 1.4 million tons of cargo annually. The area designated for warehouse and storage facilities to accommodate all that...
Professional Service or Commodity?
A Surveyor’s Thoughts on the QBS Process Editor’s Note: This month’s installment of Field Notes was submitted by James Nicolau IV, PLS, on the merits of using the quality-based selection (QBS) process to select surveyors for construction-staking services beyond where it is required under the Brooks Act (Public Law 95-582). When the QBS process is...
Mexico City’s Transportation Revolution
Using drones, lidar, and BIM, enterprising surveyors and geospatial engineers designed and constructed the city’s first high-speed train system. Editor’s Note: Lessons learned from a problematic rail project in Mexico City prompted an initiative to pull out all technological stops for a subsequent new rail line. An innovative, tech-savvy firm that had demonstrated its capabilities...