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this equipment is seen all over the city
starting
connection it's called a robotic total
station and it helps land surveyors get
the layout of an area through
measurements this does the bulk of the
the work for us that's beau dewitts he
and mike stoops walked us through the
surveying process from start to finish
first
they set nails and stakes at reference
points in the area they want to measure
after establishing coordinates on those
points they set up their total station
on one and a reference backsight on
another usually hundreds of feet away
those two points give them a line on
which the total station can reference
turned angles and distances
then they start collecting data bow
takes a rod with a data collector and a
prism on top that the total station
tracks it's looking right at these line
this line of leds watch as beau walks
around with the rod as the total station
follows he's tracking and recording the
distance from the station to the prism
and the turned angle from the reference
line which gives the exact location of
each point the equipment now
is able to give you a distance out to
up to a half a mile away
we're able to turn angles down to the
one second of one minute of one degree
so very tight accuracy an accuracy that
helps the city plan projects we
do a lot of in-house plan design for
streets for
the plots for developments and we're
able to
use the information that survey obtains
to
come up with
the placement of everything in its
correct location and they're able to
design off the information we send for
example if work needs to be done on the
street surveyors find out exactly where
the curb gutters and sidewalk are and
not just on that street but relative to
everything else so you've got
an entire world you want to break that
down into a country into a state into a
city into a specific point
our job is to come up with a specific
point relative to everything else a job
done by satellites and another piece of
equipment there's an array of satellites
that are constantly orbiting and this
locates approximately 15 of the 20 some
satellites that are constantly orbiting
and through that trigonometry it finds
the exact location at this point but all
this fancy equipment wasn't always here
to help approximately 30 or 40 years ago
none of this was around they used steel
tape and transits and theodolites as
they were called in so there was no
electronic equipment 30 years ago and
that's approximately when i started and
old fashion was time consuming the
measuring tapes would be hundreds and
hundreds of feet long but yes you can do
that it's
the equipment that we have now
simplifies that tremendously because
even though math comes easy for most
land surveyors you'll see more guys with
math backgrounds in surveying than
an art history background
high tech equipment like this creates
efficiency these crews appreciate
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