Hexagon’s GeoCloud Drive is smoothing the data connection between surveyors and the office like never before.

PARTNER FEATURE

Stacey Surveying was founded as a sole trader business in 2011 by Ash Stacey, but over the last seven or eight years has grown to have a workforce of 11. The company concentrates mainly on cadastral surveying, dealing with subdivisions, boundary realignments, title re-establishments, feature surveys and so on.

Like many cadastral surveying companies, some of the jobs Stacey Surveying takes on can be challenging, particularly when dealing with buildings in some of Melbourne’s older suburbs.

“We’re sometimes dealing with plans from the 1920s and ’30s,” says Robert Lo Pizzo, the company’s Survey Manager. “I would say the oldest survey information I’ve had to use myself, has probably been from around 1880 in South Melbourne, using the old brick corners from houses that were built back in the late 1800s as our datum.”

“There plans have been digitised, although you do get unlucky and find some that are missing; but I’d say at least 90% have been digitised,” he adds. “A lot of them aren’t easy to read, but you get around it. And it’s mostly in links and feet and inches.”

Stacey Surveying also does quite a bit of work in the mountains, “which is where it gets really tricky,” says Lo Pizzo. “You have to deal with narrow roads and steep cliffs.”

The need for reliability is why Stacey Surveying uses exclusively Leica Geosystems equipment — TS16 robotic total stations, CS20 field controllers and GS07 GNSS smart antennae. They even have a BLK360 3D imaging laser scanner for indoor surveys.

“I’ve used some other equipment in the past when I was starting out, and it’s not exactly up to the standard of Leica,” says Robert Lo Pizzo, the company’s Survey Manager.

Over the past six months, the firm’s field crews and office staff have been able to take advantage of the latest innovation from Leica Geosystems’ parent company, Hexagon — the GeoCloud Drive service, supplied by the Australian distributor, C.R. Kennedy.

GeoCloud Drive is powered by HxDR, Hexagon’s cloud-native platform for geospatial solutions at any scale. According to Hexagon, the service is integrated in Leica Captivate and Leica iCON field software to enable the download and upload of data within the field. The Desktop Synchronisation App ensures instant access to the cloud data via local storage for use with surveying office software such as Leica Infinity.

“Digital data flow is a hot topic, and many of our customers already recognise the value of integrating cloud services into their workflows,” says Brett Connolly, C.R. Kennedy’s National Geomatics Business Manager. “GeoCloud Drive delivers value on three key fronts: Productivity and efficiency, reliability and peace of mind, and collaboration.”

Essentially, GeoCloud Drive operates as a cloud-based collaboration portal that connects surveyors in the field and their colleagues back in the office, enabling them to exchange data with the click of a software button. The data is hosted on Hexagon’s own secure cloud servers, and is always available for anyone, anywhere, with secure sign-in.

It’s revolutionising the way in which data is exchanged between the field and headquarters and bringing with it a substantial increase in efficiency.

“I can send data out to the guys in the field and they can download that straight into the equipment,” says Lo Pizzo. “And vice versa they can send it straight to me in the office and I can have a look at it and tweak it if I need to and send it straight back out to them.”

“It’s all pretty much done and available back out in the field within 5 or 10 minutes.”

Taking the example of using house bricks used as datums from surveys from the late 1800s, “I can get the crews to go out there and locate those bricks. With a plan already in place, the field crew can send me the data, and I’ll have a look at it and rejig the titles to suit, and I can send it straight back to them and they can mark the titles on the same day. This saves heaps of time avoiding extra site visits.”

The data is communicated to the CS20 controllers via a SIM card-based internet connection, which the company uses for the GPS as well.

Compare this to the old way of exchanging data. “You’d have to have a laptop on site and use a USB. You’d have to transfer it, then email it and wait for me to receive it, and then I’d email it back to them,” says Lo Pizzo.

“But with GeoCloud Drive it is all just live, so it certainly does speed things up,” he adds. “It’s fantastic. I would say it saves me at least half an hour per day. And when I’m already worked off my feet, half an hour is a big saving.”

Implementing GeoCloud Drive could not have been simpler. “It was just an update to the CS20 software that added a button, and we downloaded GeoCloud Drive onto the PC in the office,” he says.

“C.R. Kennedy has made it very easy to integrate GeoCloud Drive into our systems,” adds Lo Pizzo. “Peter Barstow from the Melbourne office comes out and does out updates for us; we don’t have to worry about going all the way into C.R. Kennedy’s offices and losing hours of driving and having to worry about having the equipment out of the office for too long.”

“From my own surveying experience, the peace of mind it offers stands out,” says C.R. Kennedy’s Connolly. “Leaving a remote site can be stressful: Did we measure everything? Were all points staked correctly? GeoCloud Drive lets the office verify fieldwork in real time, ensuring tasks are completed before the crew departs. It’s one less thing to worry about.”

Hexagon GeoCloud Drive at a glance

• Easy collaboration thanks to centrally stored data that’s accessible to all authorised GeoCloud users.
• Full overview of ongoing and past projects thanks to the intuitive file and project management interface in Web App.
• Data is available via the Windows file system in office software thanks to the Desktop Synchronisation App.
• Time is no longer lost in manual data transfer between field and office thanks to GeoCloud Drive’s integration into Leica Captivate and Leica iCON field software.
• Rework is minimised thanks to immediate feedback from the office, so field crews can leave the site.
• Surety that data sets are complete when leaving the site thanks to instant availability for check in the office.

For more information, contact C.R. Kennedy Geospatial Solutions.