Eco3dusa was 3d scanning company from Arizona working in my area (central NY) to provide scanning services. I ran into them a year ago. Noticed they were scanning with Leica P30 and Faro S120 or similar. They never asked for any control points or BM's. I never saw them use an instrument or a level. So I was suspicious of how well their end product could be on a six-story / 150,000 s.f. building. Appears they no longer exist and have since changed the company name to ZELUS. They are coming back. Now the project coordinator is asking me to hand over all my survey information. I told him that is too broad a request. I have progressively provided survey as-builts and control reports as requested, and by the clients who paid for them. After 2 years of construction, nearly all of the control is either disturbed or destroyed. I told them the scanner company will need to contract with me to verify and re-establish control as needed.?ÿ
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This is starting to be a problem with scanner and drone company's that do not have a licensed surveyor on staff.
I very rarely share my control with anybody and have never issued a control report excepting out a single control report for the NJDOT in which I was named.?ÿ I have, on occasion, set some control for blade control grading but always was paid for doing so.
The million dollar question is, if they don't have a PLS on staff and can't establish their own control via GPS or terrestrial methods, what good is the data? Who is going to sign off on any potential use of it??ÿ Who is going to QA/QC it??ÿ
If these people were walking onto one of my projects and wanting to use my control points,?ÿ I would be asking questions as to what they are doing and why they can't establish their own control.?ÿ Who is going to orient their work to your boundary??ÿ You should check into this further and be sure they don't have a PLS in your state.?ÿ If they don't, I would file a complaint with the State Board for practicing without a license.?ÿ
The million dollar question is, if they don't have a PLS on staff and can't establish their own control via GPS or terrestrial methods, what good is the data? Who is going to sign off on any potential use of it??ÿ Who is going to QA/QC it?
My guess is that those firms would answer: "$$$$$ > QA/QC"
They don't care. They're not professional surveyors, or photogrammetrists or geomatics engineers. They ram data through a cookie-cutter routine, send it out and get paid.
Our engineers have recently had a couple of pre-design/planning projects where the clients (large realty firms) hired some random drone company to get aerials and wanted to drop them into CAD. Of course, the geomatics department had no idea until we get an email saying, "hey survey, could you guys drop these into our drawing files? they don't look like they fit anything"
Surprise, surprise, those orthos came without any metadata and were on some totally bogus coordinate systems. No way to relate to anything. The infamous Web Mercator projection made an appearance...
If these people were walking onto one of my projects and wanting to use my control points,?ÿ I would be asking questions as to what they are doing and why they can't establish their own control.?ÿ Who is going to orient their work to your boundary?
Not your problem. If CPs are included in your work submissions then provide them to the CLIENT. If not then tell your client that those are not included in the work contract as part of the final output. Show your contract. By asking questions, you are placing yourself into their work without the proper contract.?ÿ
They don't care. They're not professional surveyors, or photogrammetrists or geomatics engineers. They ram data through a cookie-cutter routine, send it out and get paid.
Again not true. Data processing for as-built Lidar is intensive. It's not a cookie cutter machine. You need to orient and align overlapping data to make a seamless 3D cloud. They really do not need your control. They can align the 3D data to existing structures like fence lines, utilities, roads etc that are shown in your survey plans.
