Mount Rushmore is an iconic symbol of the United States, featuring four great leaders of this country. But did you know that three of them- George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln- were surveyors?
The surveying profession has helped make American what it is today. We may not always get the most glory, but surveyors know that their job plays a critical role in gathering the data needed to design and build this country’s infrastructure. They also retrace the footsteps of early American surveyors while gathering property corner evidence to determine property boundaries. No piece of property gets sold in America, and nothing gets built without the critical work of a surveyor.
Here at TRC, we are proud to be celebrating National Surveyors Week March 19- 25. It is a chance to educate the public, businesses, and government officials about the critical work surveyors do and how we do it. We also hope to inspire young people to consider pursuing a career in this intellectually challenging, engaging work that involves time in the field as well as in the office. This week TRC surveyors will be among hundreds sharing photos of #MyDaySurveying #SurveyorsRule on social media. Look for us on Twitter @trc_companies.
Surveying is a critical expertise for TRC as a national leader in the engineering, construction and environmental industries, particularly large linear projects like oil and gas pipelines, electric transmission lines, and interconnections for wind, solar, and other renewables. Identifying and marking out the right-of-way for these projects and keeping clear of adjacent landowners’ property is mission-critical work.
Unlike firms that bring in surveyors as subcontractors or consultants, TRC surveyors are integral members of our project teams that include engineers, environmental consultants, and right-of-way specialists. Having surveyors involved from the first step of a project to the last, and every step in between, offers significant dividends to clients in terms of quicker project completion, faster identification and resolution of potential land-use conflicts, and keeping projects on budget.
TRC’s deep surveying expertise is a key building block of two of our most powerful, industry-leading project-management technologies: IntegraLinkTMand InSite PRO. IntegraLink, which is built on Google Maps, enables teams to get access to a full suite of surveying data, project site information, and compliance documentation via desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. With data developed by surveyors and others stored securely in the cloud, IntegraLink supports projects not just through routing, engineering, and construction, but long afterwards through operations and maintenance. Integrating closely with IntegraLink, InSite PRO enables project developers to identify, within hours, the optimal route for any kind of linear construction project – pipelines, electric transmission lines, railroads, and more – and can also be used to analyze wind and solar arrays. As a powerful tool for analyzing information surveyors and others develop, InSite PRO has frequently helped project proponents save millions of dollars, and months of delays, in just hours or days of analysis.
Surveying is a profession that is honored to trace its roots back to George Washington charting out tracts in the backcountry of colonial Virginia–and excited to be adapting cutting-edge technology like unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) to meeting the surveying needs of 2017. We look forward to sharing #MyDaySurveying and #SurveyorsRule as we celebrate National Surveyors Week.
