I have received quite a bit of correspondence from land surveyors and it appears that more and more are entering the machine control market.

Many understand what machine control means to the construction industry and realize the opportunity for their land surveying business.

Over the last few articles, we have discussed the importance of the construction process. It is clear that the land surveyor possesses the skill set required for successful implementation. But what other industries or groups are likely to also benefit from this emerging technology?

There are many people talking and writing about engineering firms becoming involved with 3D model building.  While civil engineers are also logical candidates for 3D data prep, they may lack exposure to the construction process. This can be a tedious journey of expensive trial and error. I personally have not seen many engineering firms building 3D data. The firms I have seen with some success have PE’s that have construction experience as field engineers or project engineers.  It appears that some engineering firms that are trying to getting involved, usually task the land surveyor on staff to manage these efforts.

Another group is the machine control dealers.  Many dealers have set up data companies as a separate entity and have offered 3D modeling and site calibrations and support as an extended service.  In the beginning, this worked fairly well.  However, I am seeing more and more dealers getting away from this and setting up strategic alliances with separate data companies or individuals with a lot more field experience and model building experience. 

There is one group of people that really seems to taking advantage of the technology and is successfully getting involved with machine control.  The majority of people that are becoming successfully involved are the construction surveyors.  By construction surveyor, I mean the field guys that work for construction companies out on a site by day and in the office doing calculations and building models at night, so their crews could continue on the next day.  These people are usually not the employees of the land surveying firms hired to do construction layout.  I am talking about the guys that live construction all-day, everyday. 

Why is the latter group having so much success? Experience. These are the people that work or have worked for construction companies, so they understand construction.  These are the people that are getting sent to training seminars and classes to learn the equipment and the software.  These are the people that are on site making sure the grades displayed by the machine computers are correct.  These are the people that troubleshoot the equipment when something is not correct.  And many cases, these are the people that are building the 3D models that the machine control is utilizing. 

One aspect that really helps the construction surveyor in this arena is they are also able to help clients with technical support.  Since they have been the ones on site using the equipment and seeing how it works in a day to day situation, they really understand how it works.  They have also seen most of the pitfalls and know what is wrong when it is not working.  Having lived and worked through these failures really gives them an advantage to someone just trying to break into the market that has not actually sat in a dozer and played with the controls to see how machine control really works. Again, it comes down to experience

One of the most important values I bring my clients is troubleshoot the machine control components.  By this I mean the radios, receivers, equipment screens, and the connections making everything work properly.  For example, typical phone calls range from lost radio signal from the base to the machine rover or grades not matching between machines.  In order for you to bring the same value to your clients you need to have a thorough understanding of how the systems are set up and how each component works.  You should be involved with machine control installations, including drilling holes to mount the radio, welding on the mast plates, pulling wiring harnesses through under carriage and doing the machine control measurements and calibrations.  This will prove invaluable in understanding the interworkings of the components. 

Construction surveyors understand that they have the required skill set to be successful in the machine control market.  They are leading the technology charge.  Any time a construction company breaks into the machine control market, their surveyors are the ones at the helm.

The difference between the construction surveyor and the land surveyors comes down to understanding the application. It is an educational process that if persevered, will breed the necessary skill set. The opportunity is there for the taking.