The practice of surveying has changed tremendously in the last two decades. It is almost impossible to imagine undertaking even the most elementary survey work without some sort of artificial computational device. In fact, surveying software now almost defines the way that many surveyors work.
The single most significant characteristic of the survey industry, both in Australia and overseas, is the shortage of skilled labour, especially professional graduate surveyors. It is also, without doubt, the biggest driver of trends in software.
Whether this is good or bad depends on which side of the pay packet you sit. What is objectively true is that today a professional surveyor’s wages are at least as good as that of other engineers, and probably better than most professionals.
The shortage of labour would have driven up labour costs anyway, but in Australia, the effect is being exacerbated by a decade long boom in the economy. Moreover, the sectors that are booming most are the ones that employ a high percentage of graduate surveyors.
The interesting thing is that the boom and the skills shortage have both hit the industry at the same time. Phil O’Neil, the chief executive of Sydney software vendor Listech, says: ‘In some cases this has resulted in semi skilled staff being involved in survey work and processing of survey data.
‘It is therefore imperative that surveying businesses begin to improve productivity by using the latest innovative systems that are easy to learn and use. These products should also provide enhanced quality assurance features to allow easy verification by supervisors.’
Put another way, none of this is a problem, as long as productivity from labour can be increased. At one level this is trivial: computerise and automate. It’s been done in a dozen industries before. Indeed, its been done to surveyors themselves over the last few decades.
The problem, though, is that the software and equipment required to do this is distinctly non-trivial. It requires huge outlays and corresponding prices for clients. For survey businesses, the implication is that they need to be of a size that can command that sort of money – say, a million or so dollars on a new scanner – and also to buy a suite of software to exploit its data. They also need to be big enough to keep such devices fully employed.
It the latest gear is beyond the capability of a single man practice, it’s small beer for a company with, say, ten professionals. Hence, we are seeing a rash of amalgamations as big fish gobble up smaller fish. It’s occurring in all parts of the marketplace – manufacturers, suppliers and survey contractors.
The survey industry is changing. Andrew English is the managing director of CADApps Australia. He predicts that survey companies will continue to merge with other survey and civil engineering companies to form larger entities. CADApps is the master distributor for Autodesk’s Civil and Survey software in ANZ.
‘This will lead to consolidation and standardisation of their surveying software in an effort to reduce IT, software support and training costs.
‘Due to the shortage of qualified surveyors, they will need to review workflows to identify bottlenecks’, he says. ‘They will implement new software and training to improve the flow and quality of land data. It really will be a case of “work smarter not harder”.’
This need, to suck the last drop of productivity out of professionals, is leading to some interesting developments. Organisations increasingly need to share data, not only between applications in the office, but across organisational boundaries. It is equally important with data shared between contractors on a job site and between survey companies and government departments.
For people with a GIS bent, this sounds familiar, but its strange territory for many survey practices.
Without doubt, the development of Land XML has been signficant. LandXML is a vendor neutral standard and file format, which enables land survey data to be exchanged in a standard, structured digital form.
English says, ‘The growing acceptance of LandXML means that most modern survey equipment can import and export LandXML-based data. Because of its basic structure, it can be used with supporting IT systems to reduce the time and effort required to process land title lodgements.
‘It also significantly reduces the chance of errors and ambiguity in these lodgements. For example, LINZ’s Landonline in New Zealand is using LandXML for digital lodgement of land title dealings using the e-plan system. Various jurisdictions in Australia will commence something very similar shortly.’
Data sharing is not only confined to organisations. O’Neil points out that as surveying equipment is becoming more powerful, there is growing demand to generate and transfer data in more sophisticated ways, including various design formats, to and from the field equipment.
Moreover, he says survey companies are now able to use the technology more effectively and make further efficiency gains in processing time. This is a result of the ever increasing complexity and security aspects of computer operating systems, and of hardware advances such as 64 bit processing and multi-core processors.
A second noteworthy trend, English says, is the integration of survey calculation and drafting software. This integration reduces the amount of software and training that an organisation requires, and speeds up the field to finish process. At the same time, the quality of survey data improves.
Another trend worth thinking about is the penetration of surveying and surveyors into new applications. This has profound implications for the industry.
English notes that asset surveying has been added to the regular work – such as cadastral and topographic surveys – carried out by surveyors. Asset surveys require that the software is able to link to external databases so the attributes of the surveyed asset can be stored or updated. This is in response to the growing recognition of the importance of the management of any asset and the costs associated with it over time.
Similarly, machine automation is increasing the surveyor’s role as a data manager who is charged with ensuring that the correct data is provided in the required format.
In fact, in some companies machine automation is rapidly becoming a central driver for the whole business.
Witness the interview with Ray O’Connor from Topcon Positioning Systems.
From a software point of view, O’Connor observes that one of the key issues is that it involves stakeless surveying. In this situation workers on site can no longer see a physical mark on the ground. As a consequence, it puts a premium on systems that can ingest data from survey equipment and display it in real time.
It seems rather ironic that just as productivity has become the critical issue driving the industry, the number of potential sources of work has increased dramatically. Once again, software can help to match supply and demand.
To see how far and how fast this trend has gone, just consider the survey software vendor Carlson Software. It now lists separate applications for surveying, construction, data collection, mining, machine guidance, GIS, agriculture and accident investigation on its website.
‘In summary’, O Neil says, ‘surveyors in the coming years will need to achieve more productivity gains, even in the face of personnel shortages. They will use more sophisticated field equipment, machine automation and data formats, and increase their roles in data management and quality assurance. Also, they will exchange more data in more sophisticated formats with government and other industry players, and use more secure and more powerful computer operating and hardware systems.’
William Gates is an IT writer based in Melbourne.
