American Surveyor recently reposted an article from the September 2023 issue of PepTalks by the Mississippi Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers and Surveyors titled, “Has Technology Made the Professional Surveyor Obsolete?” In the article, the author opines on the rapid expansion of technology in the profession of land surveying and lays out the nuances surrounding the accuracy of the equipment, the data it provides, some of the legal quandary pertaining to land law and land surveying, and who is accountable for proper or improper outputs from the use of the technology.
Reading the article, one couldn’t help but contrast the concerns proposed by the author with the situations in which many AEC/Os and contractors find themselves today as competing technologies are rapidly permeating the industry and increasingly blurring the line between land surveying and GIS in modern construction. It’s no secret that as the industry faces massive challenges around workforce and “brain-drain” issues that technology must play a larger role in filling the gap. However, as the author points out toward the end of the article, we all have a duty to understand the limitations of the technology, the trusted standards to which the new products must conform, and the potential liabilities of implementing unestablished technology.
Take a stroll through your smartphone’s app store and you’ll find no less than 25 applications designed to fit “surveying” or “GIS”. Within that field is everything from industry stalwarts like Esri, Trimble, and Leica to a brigade of potential disruptors typically geared toward one-off applications such as measuring area, scanning surfaces and the like. In assessing these options, we must consider that most location-based hardware built into smartphones only allows for accuracy to within 16 feet. Accuracy down to a half inch or less isn’t possible without further augmentation, usually via a subscription service for correction which includes post-processing. But the questions remain: “Is it really that precise? What is the precision? What is the richness of the data?” and perhaps more importantly, “Have all of the proper legal requirements and best practices been followed in collecting this data?”
This is where two phrases come to mind: “begin with the end in mind” and deploy “the right tool for the right job.” As the construction industry evolves beyond paper and PDFs –- and approaches ever closer to the Digital Project Delivery and Model As a Legal Deliverable utopias that leverage the digital representation of construction to better collect, federate, and centralize data for current and future use and streamlining –- one must consider that within those two quoted buzz phrases is unstated yet critical nuance that can carry considerable liability. For example, if a construction inspector needs to measure a stockpile of material, they might opt for a smartphone app that uses a built-in LiDAR sensor over a total station or multistation scanner. But is that the right call? Or how about a surveyor using a GNSS receiver to measure line striping? What about a GIS technician locating signs and curbing that will be used to modify a model and create a digital twin? There are numerous examples of application, but without a keen understanding of what you are trying to achieve and the requirements or requisite best practices that govern them, adoption of tech can quickly become a slippery slope.
Therefore, when it comes to selecting which technology to use, the desired output must guide the assessment in order to appropriately categorize which technologies meet the requirements and best practices, and which do not. A common question we start with is, “Will a licensed land surveyor be required to seal a plan, model or other legal deliverable at the end?” If so, GIS-intended hardware and software running on iOS or Android likely fall well short of the data set requirements and collection practices established in most states by which surveyors must adhere. Whereas a survey grade software on a data collector will provide robust and rich data on signal-to-noise ratios, observations and observation averaging, least squares calculations, correction data, dilution of precision, and other statistically important data as it relates to accuracy and precision, GIS applications like Esri’s FieldMaps and others do not.
Similarly, if a particular local public agency has a GIS department and is simply locating its assets for cataloging and management and doesn’t necessarily need all the richness of data and statistical quality thereof for the purpose of generating highly accurate and precise as-builts, a survey-grade software/hardware combo might be unwarranted, versus an iOS or Android-based tool with or without a piece of GIS hardware to augment the signal and provide more precise location. Ask yourself the question, “When is good… enough?”
In this very fast-paced and quickly changing environment of construction technology adoption and the deployment of digital tools for more efficient field work, it’s imperative that time and care is taken to understand what the output needs are, and the requirements that go with them, in order to successfully prevent unintended consequences from improper technology adoption. Many digital tools appear to function the same on the surface. But look under the hood and you’ll find vastly different approaches to how the ends are achieved. And to answer the original question in the PepTalks article: no, the traditional land surveyor isn’t going anywhere thanks to technology. However, the job is changing. And for the better.
Authors
Adam F. Dawidowicz, CCM
Senior Solutions Engineering Manager
Adam is a Senior Account Manager with a proven track record of growth, boasting 24+ years experience in construction and 15+ years specific to construction inspection. Adam is a subject matter expert in the fields of construction, project management, land surveying, and utilization of technology to further streamline and bring meaningful and valuable savings and results to owners and end-users of data.
Brian Curran
Senior Enterprise Sales Manager
A creative problem solver with a background in marketing and writing before finding the world of civil design and construction technology in 2008, Brian has dedicated his career to helping large public agencies do right by their taxpayers by focusing on desired outcomes and how they can most efficiently be achieved. An enthusiastic explorer, Brian has worked directly with large project owners in 45 U.S. States, four Canadian provinces, and states and cities throughout South America and Western Europe.