Surveys with a side of Scanning
WestLAND Group used the Leica Nova MS50 to scan the facades of an office building for CGM Development. The scans were used to create models of the building exterior and surrounding topography as a starting point for BIM.
WestLAND Group, Inc. was founded in 2000, in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., and is a mid-size, well-established firm that provides civil engineering, GIS, surveying and mapping and planning to clients in energy, rail, construction, municipal, and development. The firm is always looking to adopt new technology and quickly developed expertise in CAD, GNSS, and reflectorless/robotic total stations, but until late 2013, they hadn’t done much with laser scanning. “We’d tried renting scanners, and subcontracting LiDAR work, but it didn’t work out particularly well,” said WestLAND’s Vice-President of Geomatics Mike Angelo, EIT, PLS. “We also found that purchasing a conventional scanner was just not cost-effective, as we did not have scanning projects lined up and it seemed difficult to market scanning to existing clients without an instrument readily available and a workflow in place.”
Laser scanners are big investments, and WestLAND took its time looking for the right solution. The firm had a definite need; the work they do for railroads often calls for clearance surveys around tunnels and bridges, and point clouds and cloud-based models are ideal for this. But there wasn’t a huge demand; buying a dedicated scanner seemed like too much investment. Also, WestLAND’s topographic and as-built survey workflow is already quite efficient; ideally, scanning would fit into and extend this workflow, not be a separate solution with parallel-but-separate field and office workflows.
So Angelo looked with special interest at the first instruments that combined total stations and scanning into one housing. He wasn’t impressed. “The ones we looked at just didn’t provide the speed, point density and precision that we needed," said Angelo. "On the occasions we needed a
WestLAND Group, Inc. was founded in 2000, in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., and is a mid-size, well-established firm that provides civil engineering, GIS, surveying and mapping and planning to clients in energy, rail, construction, municipal, and development. The firm is always looking to adopt new technology and quickly developed expertise in CAD, GNSS, and reflectorless/robotic total stations, but until late 2013, they hadn’t done much with laser scanning. “We’d tried renting scanners, and subcontracting LiDAR work, but it didn’t work out particularly well,” said WestLAND’s Vice-President of Geomatics Mike Angelo, EIT, PLS. “We also found that purchasing a conventional scanner was just not cost-effective, as we did not have scanning projects lined up and it seemed difficult to market scanning to existing clients without an instrument readily available and a workflow in place.”
Laser scanners are big investments, and WestLAND took its time looking for the right solution. The firm had a definite need; the work they do for railroads often calls for clearance surveys around tunnels and bridges, and point clouds and cloud-based models are ideal for this. But there wasn’t a huge demand; buying a dedicated scanner seemed like too much investment. Also, WestLAND’s topographic and as-built survey workflow is already quite efficient; ideally, scanning would fit into and extend this workflow, not be a separate solution with parallel-but-separate field and office workflows.
So Angelo looked with special interest at the first instruments that combined total stations and scanning into one housing. He wasn’t impressed. “The ones we looked at just didn’t provide the speed, point density and precision that we needed," said Angelo. "On the occasions we needed a