The World of - c.ymcdn.com · Immediate Past President 727.461.6113 ... 15 Reappointment to Florida...

November 2011

The World of

GIS

http://www.lengemann.us/

NORTHWEST – DISTRICT 1 Lanier Mathews

850.519.7466 [email protected]

David Glaze 850.434.6666

[email protected]

NORTHEAST – DISTRICT 2 Joseph Lek


Chris Howson 352.622.3133

[email protected]

EAST CENTRAL – DISTRICT 3 Pat Meeds


Bill Rowe

407.292.8580 browe@southeasternsurveying

.com

WEST CENTRAL – DISTRICT 4 Joel McGee 813.435.2633

[email protected]

Craig Emrick 863.533.9095

[email protected]

SOUTHWEST – DISTRICT 5 Rick Ritz


Bob Strayer 941.496.9488

[email protected]

SOUTHEAST – DISTRICT 6 Richard Pryce 954.739.6400

[email protected]

Kevin Beck 561.842.7001

[email protected]

SOUTH – DISTRICT 7 John Liptak 305.597.9701

[email protected]

Lou Campanile, Jr. 954.980.8888

[email protected]

NSPS GOVERNOR Mike Maxwell 239.649.4040

[email protected]

2011-2012 Committee Chairs

STANDING COMMITTEES Nominating Committee Ken Glass Membership Committee Dale Bradshaw Finance Committee Dan Ferrans Ethics and Professional Practice Committee Pat Meeds Education Committee Mike Maxwell Resolution and Laws Committee Mike Maxwell Annual Meeting Committee Russell Hyatt Legal Committee Jack Breed Florida Surveying and Mapping Council Terry Wilkinson Strategic Planning Committee Ken Glass Executive Committee Jeremiah Slaymaker

SPECIAL COMMITTEES Legislative Committee Lanier Mathews Awards Committee Dan Ferrans Community Foundation Endowment Committee Ray Niles Recruiting and Promoting Committee David Glaze Equipment Thefts Committee Kevin Beck Chapters Committee Rick Ritz Tellers Committee TBD LIAISONS CST Program Celeste Vangelder DOACS BPSM Ray Niles FES Jack Breed Surveyors in Government Joe Stokes UF Geomatics Advisory Russell Hyatt FAU Engineering Geomatics Advisory Kevin Beck GIS Users Committee Rick Pryce USER GROUPS GPS Users Group Allen Nobles

2011-2012 DIRECTORS

Editor: Marilyn Evers Assistant Editor: Beth Embleton PSM Technical Assistant: David Glaze COVER PHOTO: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usoceangov/3750090364—NOAA’s National Ocean Service’s

photostream The Florida Surveyor is an official publication of the Florida Surveying and Mapping Society, Inc. (FSMS) and is published for the purpose of communicating with the membership. The newsletter is financed primarily by the dues of the membership al-though advertisements are welcome from service and product industries relating to the needs and activities of the profession. Articles and advertising appearing in this publication are not necessarily the official policy of this Society unless specifically stated. FSMS assumes no responsibility for statements expressed in this publication. The Florida Surveyor welcomes contributions from members. Mail correspondence to Administrative Office. Copy all quoted material as it appears in the original. Give credit to the source from which you are quoting. Emailed ads are acceptable. Please send Adobe files, eps, pdf or tif files. Advertising and article copy deadline is the 1st of the month.

The Florida Surveyor November 2011 3

mailto:[email protected]














http://www.flickr.com/photos/usoceangov/3750090364%E2%80%94NOAA%E2%80%99s

Ken Glass President-Elect 863.646.4771

[email protected]

Dan Ferrans Immediate Past President


Russell Hyatt Vice President 941.748.4693

[email protected]

Dale Bradshaw Secretary

904.829.2591 dbradshaw@bradshaw-

niles.com

Bon Dewitt Treasurer


2011-2012 OFFICERS

Jeremiah Slaymaker, PSM

B y the time this article is published, the first quarter of my term as President will

have quickly elapsed. During this time, I’ve had the pleasure of attending a Central Florida Chapter Meeting, along with a Tri-Chapter Meeting involving the Chipola, Northwest Flor-ida, and Gulf Coast Chapters. During these meetings and other Society events, I’ve en-joyed speaking to many members. Everyone is busy. Some with work, some with chasing work, some with personal events, but no one has enough time. I wish we had the option to push the “pause button” on the game of life.

The holidays are right around the corner and the situation I described above will not get any better. As many of us are striving to stay alive financially in the final quarter of 2011, the preparation of a Thanksgiv-ing dinner or Christmas shopping may slip to the elusive back burner. Other tasks that may also fall further down on the to-do list include the following: responding back to your local Senator to ex-press your concern on legislative activity that will water down CCNA; attending your upcoming Chapter meeting; and becoming familiar with the negative impact LightSquared will have on our profes-sion. This list goes on and on and can be quite overwhelming! I encourage everyone to find a happy balance. It will be different for each and every one of you, but regardless, do not let your family fall off the radar screen. And that family includes FSMS! Whether it’s between finalizing the big proposal for an ALTA survey and attending your son’s football game, squeeze in some time for your Society. As most of you already realize, you truly get what you give.

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Jeremiah Slaymaker President











3 2011-2012 Directors and Committee Chairs

4 President’s Message

6 Executive Director’s Message

7 Sustaining Firms

9 Tech Bit: Your Computer as the Cloud

11 Surveyors & Mappers in Government

12 Snapshots of Our Family

13 Surveyors & GIS Professions Reach Accord

15 Reappointment to Florida Board of Professional Surveyors and Mappers

16 Leveraging Your Investment in GIS

18 GIS & Video: A Growing Courtship

20 The Consultant’s Competitive Negotiation Act

22 Stuff You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know

23 Bench Marks, Part 1 of 4

27 What’s New in Education?

30 Seminars at Sea

33 LightSquared

36 If You Ever Wondered Why . . . Ask Mike!

37 Press Releases

TABLE OF CONTENTS

2010-2011 Chapter Presidents DISTRICT 1

PANHANDLE Lee Empie


EMERALD COAST Bobby Johnson 850.689.5772

[email protected] GULF COAST

Scott Rosenheim 850.835.2950

[email protected] CHIPOLA AREA

Tony Syfrett 850.638.0790

[email protected] NORTHWEST FLORIDA

Earl Soeder 850.727.0604

[email protected] DISTRICT 2

FLORIDA CROWN Tom Smith


NORTH CENTRAL FL Nicholas DiGruttolo


GEOMATICS STUDENT ASSOCIATION Tonia Menard 904.735.2137


CENTRAL FLORIDA Danny Williams 407.581.1221

[email protected] VOLUSIA COUNTY

David McMillen 386.677.2411

[email protected] INDIAN RIVER

Stephen Brickley 772.464.3537

[email protected] SPACE COAST

Robert Grassman 321.255.5434


RIDGE Bart Comeaux 863.533.9095

[email protected] TAMPA BAY & WEST CENTRAL

Dianne Collins 863.937.9052


CHARLOTTE-HARBOR Derek Miller


COLLIER-LEE Scott Rhodes 239.405.8166

[email protected] MANASOTA

Richard Abernathy 941.341.9935


BROWARD COUNTY Sam Hall


PALM BEACH Kevin Beck


FAU GEOMATICS ENGINEERING STUDENTS CHAPTER Clyde Mason 954.562.0271


MIAMI-DADE COUNTY Alfonso Tello 954.435.7010

[email protected]

GIS Articles see pages: 13, 16 & 18






















EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE Administrative Office

1689-A Mahan Center Blvd. Tallahassee, Florida 32308

800.237.4384 850.942.1900

Fax: 85.877.4852 fsms.org

Beth Embleton Programs Coordinator [email protected]

Rachel Simpkins Education Coordinator [email protected]

Marilyn Evers Executive Director [email protected]

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE Administrative

Office 1689-A Mahan Center Blvd. Tallahassee, Florida 32308

800.237.4384 850.942.1900

Fax: 85.877.4852 fsms.org

Beth Embleton Programs Coordinator [email protected]

Sharon Neal Membership Coordinator [email protected]

Rachel Simpkins Education Coordinator [email protected]

Amazing – it’s November and the beginning of the holidays – specifically Thanksgiving - a time of reflection is on the horizon. It’s not espe-cially easy to be what we term “happy” when we read the newspaper or hear the evening news cast. All that is wrong seems to dominate our thoughts these days, but the awesome fact is – we have a choice – Happiness is a Choice – you may be familiar with the book. Consider a piece by Ralph Marston – an NFL professional football player in the 1920’s and later, well known motivator. Goodness in What You Have

Happiness is being where you want to be and doing what you want to be doing. As such, happiness requires nothing more than an adjustment in your attitude. Wherever you may be, can quickly and easily be where you want to be. Whatever you’re doing, can immediately be what you want to be doing. You’ll never be happy by wishing for what you don’t have. You can always be happy by accepting and seeing the goodness in what you do have. It’s essential to have dreams and goals for the future, yet your dreams will not make you happy in the present. In fact, it is your happiness that will bring the reality of your dreams into the present. What you have is what you have, so make the very most of it. Be happy, be thankful, and you’ll be living at your highest level of effectiveness. See the goodness and the value in your very own experience of here and now. Be happy now, and in your happiness you’ll find and fulfill the best of who you are.

On our education front – be aware that more than one third of the current education biennium has already passed us by. We are bringing Walt Ro-billard back to Florida where he will be instructing on the east coast, De-cember 3rd. We are also proud to bring Knud Hermanson – another li-censed surveyor and attorney - to you in Tampa in March.

What seminar would you like in your city? It’s as easy as giving us a call

(800.237.4384) and we will make it happen. That’s FSMS working for you.

Marilyn Evers Executive Director [email protected]









Thank You 2011 Sustaining Firms 3TCI, Inc. (305) 316-8474 A. M. Engineering, Inc. (941) 377-9178 A. T. Survey, Inc. (850) 763-6471 Accuright Surveys Of Orlando (407) 894-6314 Advanced Surveying Technology, Inc. (407) 365-1595 Advanced Technologies Solutions, Inc. (904) 363-2223 Aerial Cartographics of America, Inc. (407) 851-7880 Aero-Metric, Inc. (727) 446-6831 Agnoli, Barber & Brundage, Inc. (239) 597-3111 AIM Engineering & Surveying (239) 332-4569 Allen Engineering, Inc. (321) 783-7443 Allen Precision Equipment (770) 279-7171 Alvarez, Aiguesvives & Associates, Inc. (305) 220-2424 American Consulting Engineers (813) 435-2633 American Government Services Corporation (813) 933-3322 Arc Surveying & Mapping, Inc. (904) 384-8377 Associated Land Surveying (407) 869-5002 Avirom & Associates Inc. (561) 392-2594 B. H. Total Service Solutions, Inc. (904) 703-8799 Banks Engineering (239) 939-5490 Bannerman Surveyors, Inc. (850) 526-4460 Barraco & Associates, Inc. (239) 461-3170 Bartram Trail Surveying, Inc. (904) 284-2224 Baseline Engineering & Land Surveying, Inc. (561) 417-0700 Baskerville-Donovan Inc. (850) 438-9661 Bay Area Sinkhole Investigation & Civil (813) 885-4144 Engineering, LLC Bayside Surveying Company (850) 835-2950 Bean, Whitaker, Lutz & Kareh, Inc. (239) 481-1331 Benchmark Land Services, Inc. (239) 591-0778 Berntsen International, Inc. (608) 249-8549 Beta Company Surveying, Inc. (941) 751-6016 Betsy Lindsay, Inc. (772) 286-5753 Biscayne Engineering Company (305) 324-7671 Bock & Clark Corporation (330) 665-4821 Bradshaw-Niles & Associates, Inc. (904) 829-2591 Brevard County Public Works/Surveying (321) 633-2080 Britt Surveying, Inc. (941) 493-1396 Brown & Phillips, Inc. (561) 615-3988 Bruce Carter & Associates (561) 265-1910 Bruner-Mongoven Land Surveying, Inc. (850) 235-2293 BSE Consultants, Inc. (321) 725-3674 Buchanan & Harper, Inc. (850) 763-7427 Buchheit Associates, Inc. (407) 331-0505 Bussen-Mayer Engineering Group, Inc. (321) 453-0010 C.H. FENSTERMAKER & Associates, Inc. (337) 237-2200 Calvin, Giordano & Associates (954) 921-7781 Cardno TBE (727) 531-3505 Carter Associates, Inc. (772) 562-4191 Caulfield & Wheeler, Inc. (561) 392-1991 Causseaux, Hewett & Walpole, Inc. (352) 331-1976 Chastain-Skillman, Inc. (863) 646-1402 Choctaw Engineering, Inc. (850) 862-6611 CivilSurv Design Group, Inc. (863) 646-4771 Clary & Associates, Inc. (904) 260-2703 Clements Surveying, Inc. (941) 729-6690

Coastal Instrument, Inc. (321) 952-2547 Coastal Planning and Engineering, Inc. (561) 391-8102 Collins Survey Consulting, LLC (863) 937-9052 Compass Point Surveyors (727) 230-9606 Continental Aerial Surveys, Inc. (865) 970-3115 Cooner & Associates, Inc. (239) 277-0722 Cousins Surveyors & Associates, Inc. (954) 689-7766 CPH Engineers (407) 322-6841 Craven-Thompson & Associates (954) 739-6400 Creech Engineers, Inc. (772) 283-1413 Croy Engineering, LLC (770) 971-5407 Dagostino & Wood, Inc. (239) 352-6085 Darrell E. Gerken PSM, Inc. (941) 924-7465 DeGrove Surveyors, Inc. (904) 722-0400 Dennis J. Leavy & Associates (561) 753-0650 Deuel & Associates (727) 822-4151 Digital Aerial Solutions, LLC (813) 628-0788 Diversified Design & Drafting Services, Inc. (850) 385-1133 DMK Associates, Inc. (941) 475-6596 Donald F. Lee & Associates (386) 755-6166 Donald W. McIntosh Associates, Inc. (407) 644-4068 Douglass, Leavy & Associates, Inc. (954) 344-7994 Durden Surveying & Mapping, Inc. (904) 724-5588 Dyer, Riddle, Mills & Precourt (407) 896-0594 Echezabal & Associates, Inc. (813) 933-2505 Econ South, LLC (863) 686-0544 Edwin G. Brown & Associates (850) 926-3016 eGPS Solutions, Inc. (770) 695-3361 Eiland & Associates, Inc. (904) 272-1000 Element Engineering Group, LLC (813) 386-2101 Emerald Coast Associates, Inc. (850) 837-8242 EMK Consultants of Florida, Inc. (813) 931-8900 Eng, Denman & Associates, Inc. (352) 373-3541 England, Thims & Miller, Inc. (904) 642-8990 Envisors, LLC (863) 324-1112 Erdman Anthony of Florida, Inc. (561) 753-9723 ESP Associates, PA (704) 583-4949 Exacta Land Surveyors, Inc. (305) 668-6169 F. R. Aleman and Associates, Inc. (305) 591-8777 Farner, Barley & Associates (352) 748-3126 First Coast Land Surveying (904) 779-2062 Florida Design Consultant, Inc. (727) 849-7588 Florida Training Services, Inc. (877) 898-7246 FLT Geosystems (954) 763-5300 Ford, Armenteros & Manucy (305) 477-6472 Fortin, Leavy, Skiles, Inc. (305) 653- 4493 Foster & Associates, Inc. (205) 345-5057 Franklin, Hart & Reid (407) 846-1216 Frazier Engineering, Inc. (321) 253-8131 FRS & Associates, Inc. (561) 687-1600 Fugro EarthData, Inc. (301) 948-8550 Ganung-Belton Associates, Inc. (407) 894-6656 Gary G. Allen Registered Land Surveyor, Inc. (850) 878-0541 GCY, Inc. (772) 286-8083 Geodata Consultants, Inc. (407) 660-2322 Geoline Surveying, Inc. (386) 418-0500


Thank You 2011 Sustaining Firms Geomatics Corporation (904) 824-3086 Geomatics Services, Inc. (772) 349-4476 GeoPoint Surveying, Inc. (813) 248-8888 George F. Young, Inc. (727) 822-4317 GeoShack Direct (972) 918-5300 GEOSURV, LLC (877) 407-3734 Ghiotto & Associates, Inc. (904) 886-0071 Global One Survey, LLC (786) 486-8088 GMR Aerial Surveys, Inc. (859) 277-8700 GPI Southeast, Inc. (352) 368-5055 GPServ (407) 601-5816 Grusenmeyer-Scott & Associates (407) 277-3232 Gustin, Cothern & Tucker, Inc. (850) 678-5141 Hall, Farner & Associates, Inc. (352) 787-5115 Hamilton Engineering & Surveying, Inc. (813) 250-3535 Hanson, Walter & Associates, Inc. (407) 847-9433 Harrison Surveying & Mapping, Inc. (352) 735-1263 Hatch Mott MacDonald Florida, LLC (850) 484-6011 Honeycutt & Associates, Inc. (321) 267-6233 HSA Consulting Group, Inc. (850) 934-0828 Hutchinson, Moor & Rauch, LLC (251) 626-2626 Hyatt Survey Services, Inc. (941) 748-4693 I. F. Rooks & Associates, Inc. (813) 752-2113 I. R., Incorporated (800) 251-1013 Indian River Survey, Inc. (772) 569-7880 Inframap Corporation (561) 586-0790 J.F. Lopez and Associates, Inc. (305) 828-2725 Jehle-Halstead, Inc. (850) 994-9503 John A Grant, Jr., Inc. (561) 395-3333 Johnston's Surveying, Inc. (407) 847-2179 Jones, Wood & Gentry, Inc. (407) 898-7780 Keith & Associates, Inc. (954) 788-3400 Kendrick Land Surveying (863) 533-4874 King Engineering Associates, Inc. (813) 880-8881 Kucera International, Inc. (813) 754-9247 Leiter, Perez & Associates, Inc. (305) 652-5133 Lengemann Corporation (352) 669-2111 LM2 Consulting, Inc. (850) 656-3350 Lochrane Engineering, Inc. (407) 896-3317 Ludovici & Orange Consulting Engineers, Inc. (305) 488-1600 Manuel G. Vera & Associates, Inc. (305) 221-6210 Maptech, Inc. (601) 664-1666 Marco Surveying & Mapping (239) 389-0026 McKim & Creed, PA (386) 274-2828 McLaughlin Engineering Company (954) 763-7611 Mehta & Associates, Inc. (407) 657-6662 Melton Surveying, Inc. (850) 234-5447 Merrick & Company (303) 751-0741 Merrill, Parker, Shaw, Inc. (850) 478-4923 Metron Surveying and Mapping, LLC (239) 275-8575 Mills & Associates, Inc. (813) 876-5869 Minder & Associates Engineering Corporation (941) 926-2700 Mock, Roos & Associates, Inc. (561) 683-3113 Moorhead Engineering Company (352) 732-4406 Morgan & Associates Consulting Engineers, Inc. (321) 751-6088 Morgan & Eklund, Inc. (772) 388-5364

Morris-Depew Associates, Inc. (239) 337-3993 Murphy's Land Surveying, Inc. (727) 347-8740 Navigation Electronics, Inc. (850) 228-2070 Nobles Consulting Group, Inc. (850) 385-1179 NorthStar Geomatics, Inc. (772) 781-6400 Northwest Engineering, Inc. (813) 889-9236 Oceanside Solutions (407) 362-1522 O'Neal Surveying & Mapping, Inc. (850) 270-2138 Patrick B. Welch & Associates Inc. (904) 964-8292 Peavey & Associates Surveying & Mapping, PA (863) 738-4960 PEC - Survey & Mapping, LLC (407) 542-4967 Photo Science, Inc. (727) 576-9500 Pickett & Associates, Inc. (863) 533-9095 Pictometry International Corporation (585) 486-0093 Pinnacle Consulting Enterprises, Inc. (786) 351-8059 Pittman, Glaze & Associates, Inc. (850) 434-6666 Point Break Surveying, LLC (941) 378-4797 Polaris Associates, Inc. (727) 461-6113 Polyengineering, Inc. (334) 793-4700 Porter Geographical Positioning & Surveying, (863) 853-1496 Inc. PowerComm Engineering, Inc. (813) 287-8008 Preble-Rish, Inc. (850) 522-0644 Precision Surveying & Mapping, Inc. (727) 841-8414 Privett & Associates, Inc. (912) 882-3738 Pro-Line Survey Supply, Inc. (904) 620-0500 Q. Grady Minor & Associates, PA (239) 947-1144 R. M. Barrineau & Associates, Inc. (352) 622-3133 Reece & White Land Surveying, Inc. (305) 872-1348 Rhodes & Rhodes Land Surveying, Inc. (239) 405-8166 Richard L. Shephard & Associates, Inc. (561) 391-4388 Ritchie-Jenkins & Associates, Inc. (850) 914-2774 Robayna and Associates, Inc. (305) 823-9316 Robert M. Angas Associates, Inc. (904) 470-3804 RWA, Inc. (239) 597-0575 Sanborn Map Company, Inc. (888) 811-7015 Schappacher Engineering, LLC (941) 748-8340 Schwebke-Shiskin & Associates, Inc. (954) 435-7010 SCR & Associates of Northwest Florida, Inc. (850) 265-6979 Sea Level Surveying & Mapping, Inc. (850) 265-4800 Sergio Redondo and Associates, Inc. (305) 378-4443 Shah, Drotos and Associates, PA (954) 943-9433 Sherco, Inc. (863) 453-4113 Shremshock Surveying, Inc. (941) 423-8875 Sliger & Associates, Inc. (386) 761-5385 Snelgrove Surveying & Mapping, Inc. (850) 526-3991 Southeastern Surveying & Mapping Corporation (407) 292-8580 Southeastern Surveying, Inc. (229) 259-9455 Southern Resource Mapping, Inc. (386) 439-4848 Springstead Engineering, Inc. (352) 787-1414 Stephen J. Brown, Inc. (772) 288-7176 Stephenson, Wilcox & Associates, Inc. (386) 437-2363 Stoner & Associates, Inc. (954) 585-0997 Suarez Surveying & Mapping (305) 596-1799 Suncoast Land Surveying, Inc. (813) 854-1342 Sunrise Surveying & Mapping Services, LLC (727) 631-9754


Thank You 2011 Sustaining Firms Survey Supplies, Inc. (305) 477-1555 SURV-KAP, LLC (520) 622-6011 Survtech Solutions Inc. (813) 621-4929 Tetra Tech, Inc. (407) 839-3955 Thurman Roddenberry & Associates, Inc. (850) 962-2538 TKW Consulting Engineers, Inc. (239) 278-1992 Triangle Surveying & Mapping, Inc. (305) 597-9701 Tri-County Engineering, Inc. (305) 823-3737 Upham, Inc. (386) 672-9515

Velcon Group, Inc. (772) 879-0477 Wade Surveying, Inc. (352) 753-6511 Wade Trim, Inc. (386) 274-1600 Wallace Surveying Corporation (561) 640-4551 Wantman Group, Inc. (561) 687-2220 Winningham & Fradley, Inc. (954) 771-7440 Woolpert, Inc. (305) 418-9370 ZNS Engineering, LC (941) 748-8080 Zurwelle-Whittaker, Inc. (305) 534-4668

PogoPlug is a small, inexpensive (under $100) device that turns an external USB hard disk into cloud storage you can access from any computer, either via a web browser or a small software download that turns your Po-goPlug cloud into a drive on your computer (usually the P: drive).

PogoPlug recently introduced a video version of the PogoPlug that can share video and take care of converting it to the format the receiver needs in real time. Other than the internal changes, it still looks the same, albeit a bit more expensive.

Just this past month I got an email from Po-goPlug with a really exciting new option for PogoPlug cloud storage. A software version for Windows PC’s that can turn your computer into a PogoPlug cloud storage server, no ex-ternal hardware required.

One disadvantage of the PogoPlug hardware versions is they use external USB disk drives. My experience with external drives is they don’t turn the hard drive off, ever. So leaving the hard drive spinning 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to be accessible via the PogoPlug can cause the hard drive to fail faster. But Win-dows can power a drive down when it’s not

being used, set up in your power profile set-ting.

Before this PogoPlug software, I used Micro-soft’s Live Mesh to let me access my com-puter in my home office, mostly to be able to copy any file from the computer to the Po-goPlug where I can access it remotely. But with the PogoPlug software, I can add directo-ries (or entire drives) to my PogoPlug cloud. So my home computer is not only part of my cloud now, but the two main drives on the net-work server which are mapped to drives on that computer.

What is perfect is the basic software to allow sharing is free. Just go to www.pogoplug.com and download the software. Installing it is easy. And configuring it is as easy as the hardware version. For a modest charge (under $30), you can upgrade the software to include the video sharing of the upgraded Po-goPlug hardware.

Gregg Marshall, CPMR, CSP, is a speaker, author and consultant. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected], or visit his website at www.repconnection.com


http://www.pogoplug.com


http://www.repconnection.com


http://www.trimble.com/

SURVEYORS & MAPPERS IN GOVERNMENT

by Joe Stokes

As Surveyors in Government we are very familiar with surveying the infrastructure that pro-vides the conveniences we’ve come to assume in the United States of America. I’m talking about paved roads, water, electric, communication lines, storm drainage and sanitary sewer disposal. All of these infrastructures have limited service life. Some of them may be repaired to extend that ser-vice life and some must be replaced. Surveyors and Mappers provide the topographic surveys that are used to design plans. I would like to share a new surveying and mapping technology (new to me) with you this month. Many memories of climbing in and out of storm and sanitary manholes are still fresh in my mind due to difficulty, dangerous, humorous and less than sanitary conditions! Such as climbing down iron steps built into the brick walls of sani-tary manholes. The paste squeezed out between your fingers as you grabbed the metal wrongs on your way down. The roaches never bothered me much as we used to catch the biggest ones we could get for fish bait while growing up. However some surveyors nearly danced into cars trying to avoid the little bugs as they scattered across the street after being dislodged by removing the sewer manhole lid. Alright, I’ll stop. Years went by, attitudes and principles changed and climbing into sewers became unac-ceptable! Tools were invented to measure pipe sizes and manhole diameters from the surface. Safety has become the rule and when climbing into sanitary sewers must take place we are re-quired to use retrieval devices, oxygen sensors, wear special suits and wear respirators. We must be trained and certified in order to perform these tasks. The equipment necessary to meet OSHA safety guidelines is very expensive and the oxy-gen sensing units must be frequently serviced and calibrated. The equipment is cumbersome to store and transport. Using all of the required equipment and following the procedures is very time con-sumptive and adds tremendously to the labor

costs. These are some of the reasons we are trying a different approach regarding the infrastructure data collection on this survey project. The project being surveyed is a sanitary sewer system and two lanes of the four lane road-way above it. The roadway mapping must take place but that mapping isn’t part of the subject I’m talking about. The technology is laser scan-ning. The new to me application is scanning sani-tary sewer manholes and structures. “Necessity Is the Mother of Invention” (I love proverbial ex-pressions). The roadway over the manholes in the failing sewer system had been widened many years ago. Some of the manholes were moved laterally without moving the pipe and main struc-ture. The cones were reconstructed making enter-ing the structures extremely difficult. Our consult-ant is using a small sized laser scanner combined with and a reversed polarity tripod system to col-lect detailed spatial data inside the sanitary sewer structures. We believe using this methodology will be a win-win situation for us. The amount of data collected will far surpass manual measurements. The man-hours necessary to collect the data are expected to be far less than those required to make manual measurements. By not requiring staffs to enter these structures we’ve avoided retrieval gear, haz-ardous suits and most of all avoided most of the life threatening risks incurred performing the manual measurements. The only reason I use the word most is surveyors must still work in a busy roadway and a good MOT plan must be in place. I am excited as we wait for the results of this survey and if successful we look forward to using this mapping technology in storm sewer in-frastructure data collection in the future. Possibly changing the way that routine infrastructure map-ping as well as As-Built surveys is performed in the future. If you’re interested in the results of this survey or would like to share your common ex-periences please feel free to contact me. [email protected]



Send us your photos! Send them to [email protected].

The Bosco Twins: Ben’s & Alex’s first solids! Sons of Catherine Pollack Bosco.

Cramer & Cramer! Their next album comes out in 2012:

Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better

Pam & Russell Hyatt

“Five Surveyors and some other guy . . .”

Lanier Mathews’ grandkids. Proud Grandpa!


After 13 months of negotiation, representatives from five Surveyor professional organizations and two GIS organizations have reached agreement on changing the NCEES Model Law that defines the practice of surveying for which licensure is required. The NCEES (National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying) is comprised of representatives from each state’s Board of Registration, and provides guidelines for state laws concerning professional licen-sure. The representatives to the Task Force met 32 times by teleconfer-ence in a conscious effort by all members to understand and ap-preciate the varying perspectives on issues and practices among the

represented disciplines. Over 650 professional hours were invested. The result of these negotiations is a broad-based consensus on a series of recommendations for NCEES concerning the legal re-sponsibilities of professional sur-veyors with respect to the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Land Information Sys-tems (LIS). The GIS-related concerns included a general perception that the lan-guage of the current NCEES Model Law on Surveying can be interpreted to over-reach the legiti-mate professional jurisdiction of the practice of surveying with re-gard to the creation and mainte-nance of maps and databases in Geographic Information Systems. Surveyors’ concerns, recognized by all the Task Force members, were that GIS/LIS tools are poten-tially being used by non-registered practitioners in areas of practice

that clearly fall within the long-established responsibility of the licensed surveyor. The goal was to recommend modi-fications to the Model Law that would clearly identify those activi-ties requiring the services of a reg-istered professional, in order to safeguard the public health, safety and welfare. The resulting recom-mendations have gained the sup-port of each of the seven organiza-tions. All of the 50 states have profes-sional licensing laws that define the “Practice of Survey.” Their defi-nitions vary, but generally, they include the creation, preparation, and modification of certain types of data, which, therefore, requires

licensure of the person in responsi-ble charge. The data referred to include the contour of the earth’s surface, the position of fixed ob-jects thereon, the elevation of fixed works embraced within the practice of civil engineering, the location of property lines or boundaries of any parcel of land, right-of-way, ease-ment or alignment, and the position of any monument or reference point which marks a property line boundary. Such data exist in most public agency GIS “framework” layers. A literal interpretation of many such laws would conclude that agencies with GIS basemaps that are not supervised by licensed sur-veyors are in violation of the law. GIS Professionals regard these laws as exclusionary—prohibiting them from doing the work, they have historically been conducting. Traditional survey map products such as subdivision plats, legal

records of parcel boundaries, or construction grading plans are clearly the surveyors’ purview. But what about commercially available road maps that show the location of “fixed works” (streets, bridges, etc.), Assessor’s tax maps that show the boundaries of parcels, or watershed drainage maps showing contours of the earth’s surface? These maps, and the many other similar maps, are being created and used in GIS for inventory and analysis. They are not used to de-fine the authoritative location of boundaries or fixed works. Many surveyors concede that the law ought to only apply to “survey products” (which these examples are not), nevertheless the wording of many state laws, and in the na-

tional model law, do not indicate such flexibility of interpretation. This is the reason for the Task Force’s recommendations. GIS basemaps are referential. They are not the legal record of original survey measurements. They are representations or repro-ductions of information taken from original documents. As such, GIS maps do not carry legal authority to determine a boundary or the loca-tion of fixed works, and therefore, they should not need to be super-vised or regulated as survey prod-ucts. The task force debated at great length the difference between the licensure of practice and the arbi-trary control of the use of tools util-ized in a practice. As is true with many sophisticated techniques and technologies, a layperson and a licensed practitioner may be able to accomplish what appear to be similar functions utilizing a com-

Surveyors & GIS Professions Reach Accord By Bruce A. Joffe, AICP

Surveyors’ concerns were that GIS/LIS tools are potentially being used by non-registered practitioners in areas of practice that fall within the responsibility of the licensed surveyor.


mon tool-set, and often the pur-poses for those activities may ap-pear to parallel each other at a high level. Historically the guiding princi-ple as to when an activity or func-tion must be restricted to a licensed practice is when the public health, safety or welfare is at stake. Thus, the GIS/LIS – related functions were carefully analyzed to deter-mine whether practice restrictions should apply, not based simply upon the tool or technique used but rather based upon the service, product, or advice delivered. Among the criteria, the task force used to distinguish between the use of GIS technology for survey pur-poses versus uses of GIS-based techniques and technologies for other lay purposes were the follow-ing: 1. A distinction must be made in the use of electronic systems between making or documenting original measurements in the creation of survey products, versus the copy-ing, interpretation, or representation of those measurements in such systems. 2. A distinction must be made ac-cording to the intent, use, or pur-pose of measurement products in electronic systems to determine a definitive location versus the use of those products as a vocational ref-erence for planning, infrastructure management, and general informa-tion. 3. GIS databases and maps pre-pared to be simply referential, rep-resentational, or diagrammatic por-trayals of existing source docu-ments (many of which were com-piled by licensed professionals and are a matter of public record) should not automatically fall under the requirement for supervision by licensed professionals, unless the use of the databases and/or maps are intended to serve as authorita-tive public records for geographic location. 4. GIS-based databases and maps that are intended to be used as the authoritative document for the loca-tion of parcels, fixed works, survey

monuments, elevation measure-ments, etc., must be compiled un-der the responsible charge of a Pro-fessional Surveyor or Land Sur-veyor. 5. Because geospatial technologies are changing very rapidly, refer-ences to specific technologies should be removed from the Model Law and State professional codes. The language of the Model Law should concentrate on the practices to be covered regardless of the technologies employed. Neither Surveyors nor GIS Profes-sionals have yet developed a sys-tematic and consistent methodology for creating and maintaining area-wide basemaps. Surveyor Lee Hen-nes calls this “macro surveying,” and acknowledges that it is very different from traditional surveying of individual parcels or tracts. Apoc-ryphal stories abound in the Sur-veyor community recounting dam-age that resulted from the inappro-priate use of maps. How can the public be protected from such a threat? GIS Professionals offer a number of recommendations: GIS mapped features should explic-itly refer to the source documents from which they were compiled. Such linkage could be achieved by carrying a source document identi-fier in the database record of each mapped feature, or linking to scanned images of those source documents. GIS mapped features should con-tain explicit and easy-to-understand metadata. The public can be rea-sonably assumed to be protected if they are informed about the loca-tional accuracy, currency, and method of compilation (lineage) of the data in a GIS. GIS maps and data should contain an explicit statement of intended use and disclaimer from other uses. Specifically, a disclaimer should say, “This is not a survey product.” GIS maps that have been adjusted (rubbersheeted) to create consis-tent, coherent display maps should

retain the original mapped coordi-nates as feature attributes, as well as metadata describing the trans-formation adjustments that were made. While chewing on basemap certifi-cation, one must consider the impli-cations of a “certified basemap.” Would such certification usurp some of the legal authority for de-termining land ownership that cur-rently resides with subdivision plats, deeds, and similar source docu-ments? If so, a government-controlled GIS basemap could change the legal basis of boundary determination in this country. Such a change should be decided upon by explicit political expression, not by technical consequence. Certification of GIS Professionals raises the implication of liability and responsibility. What liability would a Licensed Surveyor or licensed GIS Practitioner be willing to accept for potential “damages” caused by GIS data errors, or by the inappropriate use of GIS data? Readers are encouraged to download the entire report from the ASPRS web site. The file name is “GIS/LIS Addendum to the Report of the Task Force on the NCEES Model Law for Surveying.” Bruce Joffe, founding Principal of GJS Con-sultants, provides organizational therapy along with GIS planning and implementation services to cities, counties and utility compa-nies, bringing over 24 years of experience applying computer-mapping systems to the management of civil infrastructure and to GIS public policy issues. He recently served as Chair of California’s Geographic Informa-tion Coordinating Council, and is President of the BAAMA chapter of URISA. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of Geospatial Solutions magazine and a mem-ber of URISA ‘s Board of Directors. He holds two Masters Degrees in City Planning and Architecture from MIT and a Bachelor of Architecture from the Berkeley. He is regis-tered with the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). He can be reached at: GIS Consultants, 1615 Broadway, Suite 415, Oakland, CA 94612 Phone: (510) 238-9771, Fax: 510/654-0196 E-mail: [email protected] Reprinted with changes from Georgia Land Surveyor January/February 2009.



In Memory of . . .

Fred S. Cardwell, PSM 2236, passed away September 19th.

Samuel L. Martsolf, PSM 1888, passed away October 3rd.

FSMS offers condolences to the families.

Arthur Mastronicola Reappointed for Second Term to the Florida Board of Professional

Surveyors and Mappers

Adam Putnam, Agriculture Commis-sioner of the State of Florida, has re-appointed Arthur ‘Art” Mastronicola, Jr. to the Florida Board of Profes-sional Surveyors and Mappers for a term ending 10/31/2015. He was first appointed to the Board in early 2008 by then Governor Charlie Crist. Art is currently serving as the Chair of the Board. He looks forward to serving on the Board for a second term. The FBPSM regulates and licenses the Professional Surveyors and Mappers of the State of Florida. Art is a multi-state licensed surveyor, and is cur-rently the survey manager for CPH in their Jacksonville, FL and Hartford, CT. offices. CPH is a multi-disciplinary engineering, architectural, and survey-ing firm with offices in Florida, Con-necticut, Maryland and Puerto Rico.

Need political information?

Check out these websites:

www.election.dos.state.fl.us

www.myflorida.com

www.edr.state.fl.us/

www.ethics.state.fl.us/

www.dlis.dos.state.fl.us/index_researchers.cfm


http://www.election.dos.state.fl.us

http://www.myflorida.com

http://www.edr.state.fl.us

http://www.ethics.state.fl.us

http://www.dlis.dos.state.fl.us/index_researchers.cfm

Three questions typically arise from a surveyor wanting to become involved in Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The first question that you should ask is “Why adopt GIS into my daily work”? My response to this fundamental question would be why not? Currently, nearly every local, state and federal government agency is either using GIS or implementing GIS . . . at least to some degree. In fact, ESRI, a leading provider of GIS Software is becoming a “software standard” used by state and local governments nationwide and is used by more than 24,000 state and local governments around the world including world-class cities such as Paris, Beijing, and Kuwait City. For additional information on cutting edge deployment of GIS in markets around t h e w o r l d , v i s i t www.esri.com/company/about.facts.html. Given the state of our current eco-nomic situation, now is the perfect time for surveyors to explore how GIS technol-ogy creates an opportunity to complete their work ac-curately, efficiently, and positions end users to do their jobs better on all lev-els. While many surveyors already have long standing rela-tionships with multiple local governmental departments in their region of the United States, the next question to consider is how to move forward with GIS technology? It should be noted that not all surveyors have a back-ground in GIS, and are often reluctant to “jump in with both feet wet” expecting GIS to work like magic. Instead, individuals must first understand what GIS is and what adopting GIS entails. “One of the best ways to do that is to dip your toe in first – take some classes, attend some conferences, and look for other resources to learn about GIS” says Joseph V.R. Paiva, PhD, PS, PE, a contributing editor to Point of Be-ginning Magazine. Where do I begin and how do I learn more? While adopting a state-of-the-art GIS program, I highly

recommend future users of GIS to do a number of things – all aimed at achieving greater success. First, get involved! Ohio has many great organizations to learn more about GIS and offer the opportunity to net-work with others who have successfully utilized GIS tech-nology. Some of these organizations include: the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA), the Ohio chapter which meets on the last Monday of every month at 11 a.m. at the ODOT headquarters lo-cated in Columbus, OH. You can find URISA online at www.ohurisa.org. Also investigate attending a future

Ohio Geographically Refer-enced Information Program (OGRIP) meeting which convenes immediately after the URISA Ohio Chapter meeting at the ODOT headquarters in Columbus, OH. ogrip.oit.ohio.gov And another active group in this arena includes the North-ern Ohio GIS Users Group. To learn more about the NOGISUG contact Chair-man Dick Kotapish via email at Dick.Kotapish @lakecountyohio.gov. Lastly, when is the right time to invest in GIS? En-tering the GIS Solution in-

dustry takes time, planning, resources, training and fund-ing. Nearly all data has a spatial component, including an address, coordinate, mile marker number, section num-ber, x,y,z coordinate etc. Surveyors are already familiar with this type of data in their daily workflow. In addition, GIS is an excellent planning tool for a surveyor. Combin-ing aerial photos, boundaries, topographic maps, con-tours, LiDAR data, soils and wetlands, benchmark loca-tions a surveyor can be prepared like never before ever stepping foot on the survey site. A surveyor can be a source for many milestones during data creation includ-ing setting up control for aerial photography, survey-mapping for precise elevations as well as creating layers which can be used for engineering decisions. Getting involved in GIS is beneficial to any surveyor who wants to diversify his or her services at all industry levels includ-ing, Federal, state, local agencies and private sector. Reprinted with changes from Ohio Surveying News Spring 2010.

Leveraging Your Investment in GIS By Joshua Appleman, GISP

Three Questions raised: 1. Why Adopt GIS into my

daily work?

2. How do I move forward with GIS technology?

3. Where do I begin and how do I learn more?


http://www.esri.com/company

http://www.ohurisa.org

mailto:@lakecountyohio.gov

http://fltgeosystems.com/

Years ago, one of my favorite TV programs was on the Discovery Channel, a British program called “Connections” hosted by James Burke. The program was a fascinating combination of science and history that showed how seemingly unrelated events in history re-sulted in the modern inventions and systems of today. One example, I remember was how coffee’s popularity in the 1300s resulted in modern digital computers. Seems like a stretch, doesn’t it? Well, in the 1300s importing cof-fee and cocoa was very profitable for Dutch merchants. However the occasional loss of a ship and cargo could be a catastrophic financial loss for some merchant families. So sitting in the coffee houses of Amsterdam, merchants came up with the idea of pooling their risks and profits so any loss would be spread among many merchants and thus was born the insurance industry. As the industry grew and expanded into life and casualty insurance, so did the need for actuaries, calculators, and ultimately computers. Most believe that it was the insur-ance industry of the ‘50s and ‘60s that funded major work in mainframe digital computers. It’s fun to see the same kind of evolution and connections occurring today in seemingly unrelated current technologies. GIS and CAD are merging in the complex but elegant 3D BIM models. (See my August 2008 column “BIM, Son of CAD and GIS” and Eric Gakstatter’s column March 2011.) I now see that same merging of GIS and video, especially in military ap-plications. I recently attended a full-motion video (FMV) conference put on by the Institute for Defense & Government Ad-vancement (IDGA). The Washington, D.C., conference

was geared mostly toward military users and developers. It was only a few short years ago that most in-theater video was low-quality black and white “gun camera” video not much better than WWII battle footage. Everyone was clamoring for more imagery and better video. Video is

now being captured by almost every air platform found in-theater with quality moving toward HDTV and better. The array of capture hardware is growing exponentially from large, wide area persistent surveillance systems such as the pending football-field-size high-altitude dirigible the Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicles (LEMV) by Northrop Grumman to the extremely small nano Hum-

ming Bird by AeroVironment, Inc. With a wingspan of 6.5 inches it weighs just 19 grams, has a motor, video cam-era, network communications, and a battery which looks like a hummingbird. A Flood of Video So now there is a flood of video, and as the old saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for ” because users are literally drown- i n g in video content. The new problem i s how to catalog and index the video t o gain actionable intelligence from t h e deluge of content. Many people are working on the issue such as this e x -ample from RAM Systems, LLC of Canada, but several solutions were pre-sented at the FMV conference with a GIS-based approach. A technique that seemed promising was geo-referencing video to base maps. David Kirk, principal engineer for Information Systems Laboratories (ISL), talked about “Automatically Producing Geo-registered Full Motion Video (FMV) in Real Time.” There have been crude single Lat/Long links that tied video clips to base maps but this new method was an attempt to orient and pin the video to several points on the ground and could be a first step to-

GeoIntelligence GIS and Video: A Growing Courtship April12, 2011

By: Art Kalinski

low quality black and white, ‘gun camera’

Video is now being captured by almost every air platform fund in-theater with quality moving toward HDTB and better.

Hummingbird video camera


ward a more robust cataloging of video to ac-curate geography. Another presentation, “Automated Road Sign Reading and Real-Time Vision Systems for Ground Vehicles” Dr. Mitchell Rohde, Chief Operating Officer of Quantum Signal, LLC, had an interesting twist. I thought that this was just going to be a simple sign recognition effort, but the twist was using signs and other physical features as an alternative to GPS, sort of a vis-ual feature odometer. We humans do this in-stinctively as we walk down a hall or down a street. We judge our speed and distance by the passing of features. Dr. Rohde’s system reads mile post markers, exit signs, etc., and does a comparison to the GIS data. I had an interesting thought that this technique might be a possible solution to track firefighters in a building by combining GPS, inertial guidance, and this “visual odometer.” The best capability I’ve seen to track people inside buildings was the NaviSeer device, which was good but not perfect. (See my September 2010 col-umn.) I asked Dr. Rohde if he had considered this tech-nique inside buildings. He hadn’t, but one of the atten-dees indicated that the Naval Research Lab had been testing something similar. Cracking the personnel track-ing issue would be a big breakthrough. Other techniques that were discussed were not directly GIS related but will be familiar to us in the GIS commu-nity, that painful word “metadata.” With more than 24 million minutes of video collected by Predators alone, military video libraries are of limited use because ana-lysts often have no way of knowing exactly what they have, or any way to search for information that they need. The military is learning a solution from a surpris-ing source: NFL broadcasters. They showed military analysts how they can quickly find and show replays

and even key plays years before for comparison. This is done by meta-tagging video segments as they are cap-tured that identify the key players, events, etc., for a very rapid data search even years later. The Vision for the Near Future Picture a collection system that automatically captures and catalogs key visual events as they occur for auto-mated comparison and correlation. As an example, an analyst may have video clips of IED explosions that correlate to previous activity, such as a vehicle that stops at a particular farm then drives down a road that later has a detonation. Viewing and linking these geo-graphic and temporal events to create “connections” may be the critical predictor of future activity and pro-vide for a safer environment for our troops. Reprinted from Geospatial Solutions online publication www.geospatial-solutions.com

Example of cataloging video to gain actionable intelligence from RAM Systems, LLC


http://www.geospatial-solutions.com

http://www.pickett-inc.com/site/

THE CONSULTANT’S COMPETITIVE NEGOTIATIONS ACT What Problem Are We Solving?

FSMS Interviews Joe Working Surveyor Qualifications Based Selection (QBS) has been a guiding principle in the procurement of services in the Design Professions (the A/E Industry) for nearly 4 decades. At the Federal level, the Brooks Act is the process that implements QBS Principles, and in Florida, we have the Consultant’s Com-petitive Negotiations Act (CCNA — FS 287.055). FSMS has long been a champion of QBS and CCNA and has worked closely with our allied Associations comprising the A/E Professions. In re-cent years, a group of Florida procurement staff have been aggressively attacking the foundational principles of CCNA, by seeking to add a price component at an inappropriate point in the process. (One must wonder why compliance with existing Statutes is not their goal?). While they have framed their arguments under the umbrella of “Best Value Procurement”, their basic goal is the elimination of CCNA so that A/E services can be procured by simple bid, in the same way that a pallet load of toilet paper is procured. Senator Bennett and Representative Costello have filed SB246 and HB155. These bills have been referenced to three Committees in the Senate, and will be a major action item for the FSMS Legal and Legislative teams in the upcoming 2012 Florida Legislative Session. Many of our members have been confused by the various “talking points” that are distributed, and have failed to under-stand that the changes to FS287.055 outlined in these bills, while seemingly minor in scope, are the Proverbial “slippery slope” that will dramatically undermine the PRINCIPLES of Qualifications-Based-Selection. If you’ve read our Legal and Legislative Committee reports, then you have been hearing of this attack for the past three years. Unfortunately, with this latest legislation, we are hearing a lot of questions, and to help inform our members we interviewed Joe Working Surveyor, (PSM #No$Ieft). We’ve repeated Joe’s questions and responses, as follows:

My last email from FES calls this a “Seven Alarm Fire”. Nationally, I hear that MAPPS and NSPS are “circling the wagons’ FSMS has been warning of this attack for years. I’m just a local practice guy, working for a few Realtors and Contractors, and some local Architects and Engineers. I rarely do a lot of Public-Sector work. So, Why all the fuss? Is this really a crisis? Isn’t this just the new way of doing business in this miserable economy?

Joe, thanks for talking with us about these bills. We understand that the proposed legislation only appears to make a few minor changes. But, you must look at the bigger picture. This bill is a first-step in chipping away at the founding principles of CCNA, which is QBS. The backers of this bill have a bigger agenda. I hear that some of our firms have indicated support for these bills? - Make no mistake, FSMS unilaterally opposes these bills. If you query any supporters of these bills, they will clearly indicate their total support for QBS, which means they have misunderstood the current legislation and fallen for the ruse and clever packaging of “Best Value”. The media is filled with stories of corruption and cronyism in Public Procurement! Look at the recent Reservoir and Expressway project disasters, the system is broken, isn’t it time to fix this process? — Great question, and excellent examples. But.... CCNA is not the source of


those problems! What problem are you trying to fix? Cronyism? Corruption? Yes, let’s fix them, but that is NOT an issue in the principles or processes of Florida’s CCNA. This Recession is killing our profession. I’m a small firm. How can I compete with these huge national firms and their glossy marketing departments? — Joe, first of all, this Great Recession has really humbled us all. Are there any “big boys” left in the S&M profession? Aren’t we all a lot smaller than we used to be? Even the huge firms have dramatically down-sized. Secondly, CCNA is the friend of the small Surveyor. Yes, you read that right. CCNA is the friend of the small Survey firm. The very principles of QBS ensure that your reputation, experience, expertise and resources as a Professional are the key components of selection. Not a low-bid driven formula. CCNA actually requires preferential ranking for Small Businesses, and requires that Agencies spread the work around, ensuring that you can get your share of the local market (the Statute specifically requires “an equitable distribution of contracts among qualified firms”). I’m really tired of FSMS ranting about CCNA. The real issue that hurts my business is Unli-censed Practice. Why doesn’t the Society do more to stop that? - Joe, thank you for asking this question. Unlicensed Practice is a real threat to our Profession, and we are pleased to note that the move of our Regulatory Board over to FDOACS has resulted in more aggressive and responsive enforcement on this issue. But, this directly ties to CCNA, as the requirement for a QBS process in Florida is the primary way that we have discovered and defeated unlicensed contractors. CCNA has become the gate-keeper for the profession on this issue. How can you oppose a “Best Value” concept? Isn’t saving taxpayer dollars a worthy goal? — The correct answer to this question is to point Out that EVERY study proves that CCNA saves money. Low-cost driven procurement of design professionals leads to bad designs and increased life-cycle costs, which dramatically wastes our taxpayers dollars. But, I really want to give you a more thought-provoking, personal answer: Joe, have your really thought this one all the way through? Do you REALLY want every business decision you make to be driven by LOW COST BID? As a licensed Florida Professional, your Practice Act requires you to have the proper supervision and QA/QC procedures in your daily practice. If your business model is solely driven by price, then won’t most of your work be outsourced to overseas firms? Is that a desired solution for your firm? Talk to your local Agency Surveyor and ask them if they want to be forced to use the lowest-cost consultant, and remove QBS from their decision making process. Come on Joe, you know the an-swer. So, what’s causing the problem? - CCNA is NOT the problem. It has worked successfully for nearly 4 decades throughout the nation (47 States support QBS Principles and have QBS proc-esses). Here in Florida, our talented Public Procurement Professionals work within the principles and successfully execute the process on a daily basis. This is not a consensus-driven change; it is a small group of Procurement staff that don’t agree with the Principles of Qualifications Based Selec-tion. Bottom line, it’s not CCNA. Like the old political bumper sticker says: “IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!” The terrible pressures of the economic morass is causing problems for everyone, and his-tory proves that economic pressures drive BAD decisions. Countless studies and years of experi-ence prove that CCNA controls costs on construction projects and encourages competition, creativ-ity and innovation, while affording all professionals an opportunity to compete. OK, you’ve convinced me. We need to defeat SB246 and HB155. What can I do to help? — First, help us get the message out. Encourage our members to STOP, THINK, and DEFEAT THESE BILLS. Download the “Talking Points” and contact your legislators. Respond quickly when the Legis-lative Committee sends out their calls to action. Support the Principles of QBS, and specifically, sup-port NO CHANCES TO CCNA! The Author is J.N. “Jack’ Breed, PLS, a Joe Working Surveyor.


Get Well!

Our thoughts and prayers are with John Gargis as he

continues to recover.

4489 Bowstring Ct. Titusville, FL 32796

Stuff you didn’t know you didn’t know . . .

• Tourists visiting Iceland should know that tipping at restau-rants is considered an insult.

• The University of Alaska spans four time zones.

• The state with the highest percentage of people who walk to work is Alaska.

• 28 percent of Africa is wilderness.

• 38 percent of North America is wilderness.

‘Job opportunities in geomatics are expected to grow nationally due to increased geographic information,

land-based activity and an increasing rate of retirement of existing profes-

sionals. To meet the demand for geomatics professionals, the

University of Florida is offering an online Certificate in Geomatics.’

Visit http://geomatics.dce.ufl.edu/

to learn more about the Online Certificate Courses in

Geomatics.


http://geomatics.dce.ufl.edu

Part 1 of 4 John Gargis, PSM

ABSTRACT: One of the prime functions of a surveyor and mapper is the setting of bench marks and topographic sur-veys. Normally this function is the first thing that is done on a project. This article discusses the source for bench marks, how they are run, how they are adjusted, and how they are referenced over time. This article also reviews the author’s past efforts.

The author ran level loops all over the beaches area of my county before he was registered. We started and closed on existing bench marks that were set by either the USC&GS (now known as the National Geodetic Survey) or the United States Army, Corps of Engineers (USA-COE). We found some errors in the existing bench marks but notified no one since we were in such a huffy (differences as much as 0.159’ within a mile and a half of another stronger bench mark). It is much easier to notify the agencies now for attention of their bench marks. Source Information:

As a fixed, more or less permanent reference point or object of known elevation, the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Sur-vey (USC&GS), United States Army, Corps of Engineers (USA-COE) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) sets brass caps in bridge abutments or otherwise permanently sets bench marks at convenient locations nation-wide. The elevations on these marks are referenced to the National Geo-detic Vertical Datum (NGVD) also com-monly known earlier as mean sea level (MSL) or the North American Vertical Datum (NAVD). Locations of these bench marks on USGS topographic maps are shown as small triangles. Since the marks are sometimes de-stroyed by construction or vandalism, the existence of any bench mark should be field verified during planning work. The federal agencies of NGS, USA-COE, USGS or a state surveyor’s office can provide information on the existence, exact location and exact elevation of bench marks.3

The primary source for bench marks in the United States is the Na-tional Geodetic Survey (NGS). The next lower source is the United States Army, Corps of Engineers (USA-COE) but its source for Bench Marks is the NGS. Somewhere in the mix of source agencies is the United States Geodetic Survey (USGS). What the author does is to lump all three of these agencies as his top source although the USGS Bench Marks are not as good as the other two. While the NGS is the pri-mary source as all the other “sources” use them as their primary source, all are lumped together as the primary source in the author’s database. These “primary source” markers can not be changed by the author’s retrieval pro-

Exhibit C

Bench Marks


gram except by special procedures. They can only be added.

What the USGS did was get an elevation from one NGS Bench Mark, run miles of levels and then try into another NGS Bench Mark, maybe. Sometimes, they just looped back to their starting bench mark. Sometimes, they just “open-looped” the run. Their accuracy was good considering, but they didn’t have to be that accu-rate do to the type of work they were performing — get-ting contour information (in Florida) to the nearest five feet and to locate various objects (see Exhibit C). Some-times, a surveyor and mapper must use their information because other better bench marks are not available within a reasonable level loop distance.

Later the author started to use the bench marks cre-ated by the county governments. Most of them are ac-ceptable as source marks. Some counties really try. The author will not accept them unless the author can double check their bench marks against (at the least) several other state agency’s (or higher) bench marks. The au-thor even uses city bench marks if necessary and if available. Normally, in the author’s experience, they are too far spread apart to be useful. Sometimes, the author will accept other firm’s bench marks if the expected good level loop was too long to be reasonable or the author just wanted to be close to something that was near a NGVD/NAVD elevation. The source setup was basically (set up in priority order) as follows:

Federal Bench Marks: NGS Reference Bench Marks (datasheets); USA-COE Reference Bench Marks; USGS Bench Marks; State Agency Bench Marks: Florida Department of Environmental Protection; Florida Department of Transportation (not all are good bench marks); Regional Water Management District Bench Marks (sometimes, these are not that good); County Level Bench Marks: County Bench Marks (see comments above); City Bench Marks (see comments above and be-low); and Other Firm’s Bench Marks (see comments above). City Levels do not seem to be done with the same

care as other higher bench marks. We have all heard of cases where the city bench marks are nowhere near the actual elevation. Because of that concern, the author does not use city bench marks that much. If the city wants me to, the author will, but with a not included in the certification statement note.

The author had a construction survey to be done in a city. We used a city bench mark because the run to an NGS Bench Mark was too long to be included within our surveying quote. After the contractor brought fill unto the site, he asked us if we were sure about the grade eleva-tions we set on the site. We told him that we were, but would go back to double check the grades. When we went back to double check the bench mark, we decided

to check everything just to be sure. We ran in a bench mark from an NGS based bench mark and found the bench mark we had used was two feet too high. After calling the city, we found out what had happened. Between the time the original surveyor and mapper had run in the bench (he used the same bench mark and it was shown on the construction plans together with its OLD elevation) and when we staked out the grades, the city had rebuilt the roadway and raised the bench mark with a 2 foot ex-tension onto the fire hydrant. This proved two things to us! One: never ever use a fire hydrant as a bench mark and two: always double check your bench marks with an-other one, no matter where you get the elevation. It seemed that the city’s survey-ing and mapping department knew about the shift in the bench mark, but never went back to adjust the elevation.

We had an area in my working county that didn’t have NGVD bench marks in it. It was way down at the southern limits of a peninsula. The only thing down there was a tidal elevation site which wasn’t referenced to any-thing besides the tidal staff and some reference tidal sta-tion marks, none of which had NGVD elevations on them. The firm the author worked for ran a bench mark from a northerly existing bench mark to the tidal station and back to the same mark. Later the Florida Depart-ment of Natural Resources (later known as Florida De-partment of Environmental Protection) ran a second-order bench run to the tidal staff site and back up the other side of the peninsula to another NGS Bench Mark. We never did find anything wrong with their run. Neither did NGS. They published the run information. Because of this effort, the author raised his personal rating of their bench marks to just below the federal ones.

Everyone makes mistakes. Even one of the best sur-veyor and mappers that the author knows of made a big one. The bench mark level run he ran to a proposed de-velopment out in the boonies was out by 0.35 feet. He had run it both ways, (out and back, closing on one bench mark) and it closed with a minor adjustment. When the same bench mark loop was run with the elec-tronic level, it was found to be off. We found the turn that created the problem and proved it to him.

Vertical Datums and Their Relationship to Tidal Da-tums:

In addition to tidal datums, other vertical datums are determined and employed for various applications. Ex-

“City Levels do not seem to be done with the same care as other higher bench marks.”


amples are fixed datums of the National Geodetic Refer-ence System, or the National Geodetic Vertical Datum (NGVD 1929) (previously referred to as the Sea Level Da-tum of 1929), or the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88). NGVD 1929 is a fixed datum adopted as a stan-dard geodetic reference for heights and was derived from a general adjustment of the first order leveling nets of the US and Canada, in which MSL was held fixed as observed at 26 stations in the US and Canada [none in Central or Southern Florida]. Numerous adjustments have been made to these leveling networks since originally established in 1929. The North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88) involved a simultaneous least-squares, minimum con-straint adjustment of the Canadian-Mexican-U.S. leveling observations. Local MSL was held fixed at Father Point, Pimouski, Quebec, Canada, as the single constraint. The North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88) and In-ternational Great Lakes Datum of 1985 (IGLD 85) are both based upon this simultaneous, least-squares, minimum con-straint adjustment of Canada, Mexico, and U.S. leveling observations. These fixed geodetic datums (e.g., NGVD 1929 and NAVD 88) do not reflect the changes in sea level and because they represent a “best” fit over a broad area, their relationship to local mean sea level differs from one location to another. MSL is a tidal datum often confused with NGVD 1929 and they are not equivalent. NGVD 1929 was replaced by NAVD 88 and the National Geodetic Sur-vey no longer supports the NGVD 1929 system. 5

In my area of Florida, an adjustment of about 1.3 feet was between the NGVD and the NAVD.

References: 3. USGS, Web Site Explanation of Bench Marks, www.usgs.gov, 2009. 5. Unknown: Computational Techniques for Tidal Datums Handbook, U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oce-anic and Atmospheric Administration, National Ocean Ser-vices, Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services, NOAA Special Publication NOS CO-OPS 2, 2003 Author: John R. Gargis, Vice President, Consulting Survey-ors, Inc., P0 Box 0786, Titusville, Florida, 32781-0786, eMail: [email protected]. Copyright© 2010 John R. Gargis, All Rights Reserved.

The copyright owner hereby gives this consent that allows copies of the article to be made for personal or internal use or the personal or internal use of specific clients. This con-sent is given on the condition, however, that the copier pay the per copy fee of $10.00 through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, Massachusetts 01923, for copying beyond that permitted by Sections 107 or 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (basically, the allowance for quoting small portions for inclusion in reviews, reports, etc. provided the source is also noted is granted). This con-sent does not extend to other kinds of copying such as copying for general distribution, for advertising or promo-tional purposes, for creating new collective works, or for resale. For this information, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

http://www.usgs.gov


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And All The Courts Did Shrink

Walter G. Robillard, Esq., PSM to be held in Melbourne

FSMS Live Seminar Registration

Saturday, December 3rd 8:00 am – 3:00 pm

6 General CECs – Course #8058

g his course will examine the legal and practical theories of boundary creation, definition and litigation. International boundaries, national boundaries and boundaries between two land

owners will be discussed and examined using actual legal decisions from various states as well as the U.S. Supreme Court and the world courts. Actual decisions, supported by maps depicting the problems, will be presented and discussed in open forum.

Instructor Walter G. Robillard, Esq., PSM is a Professional Land Surveyor registered in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. He is a member of the Georgia Bar. He has worked and taught continuing education courses internationally in the areas of real property, law, surveying and forestry. Walter G. Robillard, Esquire is an honorary Member of the Florida Surveying and Mapping Society and a member of the numerous state societies. He is a past president of the American Congress on Survey-ing and Mapping and is the recipient of the Earl Fennell Award for Education. He was an original member of the Advisory Commit-tee for the University of Florida Surveying program. Walter G. Robillard, Esquire is the co-author of the college textbooks Evi-dence and Procedures for Boundary Location, Boundary Control and Legal Principles and the legal reference book Clark on Sur-veying & Boundaries.

Meeting Location: Brevard County-Viera Government Complex Building C 2725 Judge Fran Jamieson Way

Melbourne, FL 32940 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

MEMBER: ______ $150 NON-MEMBER: ______ $175

NON-LICENSED: ______ $ 80

We reserve the right to cancel a seminar for reasons beyond our control. Due to the cost incurred for preparation of the seminar, you will receive a voucher for a Correspondence Course in exchange for the seminar if it is cancelled. No refunds will be given.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Name: ------ __________________________________________________ PSM#: _____________________ FSMS Member: _____ YES _____ NO Emergency Contact: ________________________________________ Emergency Phone: ____________________________________________ Print Name Firm: _________________________________________ Sustaining Firm: _____ YES _____ NO Work Phone: ___________________________ Address: _________________________________________________ City/State: ________________________ Zip Code: _________________ Email Address: ______________________________________________________ Fax: _____________________________________________ Payment Information: ____ Check Enclosed (Payable to FSMS) ____ VISA/MasterCard/American Express ____ Government PO Card #: ________________________________________________ Exp. Date: _______________________ Billing Address of Credit Card: ______________________________________________ Signature: ______________________________________

IF PAYING BY CHECK, MAIL FORM TO: FSMS, P.O. Box 850001-243, Orlando, Florida 32885-0243 IF PAYING BY CREDIT CARD, FAX OR EMAIL FORM TO: 850.877.4852 [email protected]

Cancellation Policy: 30 days – Full Refund • 14–29 days – 50% Refund • 0-13 days – No Refund Provider No. CE11 www.fsms.org


http://www.fsms.org

Don't Miss Your Chance to

Sail Away Seminars at Sea

Eastern Caribbean Cruise 7 nights

May 19th - 26th Departs from Ft. Lauderdale

Earn 12 CECs in Paradise!

Instructor: Gail Oliver, PSM

Registration Deadline Extended:

November 14th

A small deposit of $250 per person holds your cabin until final payment is due

February 1st.

See Following Pages for More Information


September 15th This is the first of a series of special Email Bulletins we are sending to keep you apprised of the Light-Squared/GPS issue. LightSquared 4G Network or GPS Nightmare Last year FSMS stopped the attempt by the State of Florida to deregulate our profession and FSMS is expecting to fight it again this year. FSMS now needs your backing to stop LightSquared on a Na-tional Level from making all your GPS systems use-less. If you have not heard about this serious issue, check this out. As a Surveyor and Mapper concerned about the fu-ture of GPS, what can you do? • Become educated on the LightSquared issue and

how it will affect you and your business before it's too late.

• Go to www.saveourgps.org and join the Coalition for news, updates and support.

• Go to www.fsms.org and join your State Society because they will keep you informed and fight for your interests.

Contact your Senators and Representatives and ask them to join in and support the Legislators already fighting this issue. Click here to read the Senate and House Letters. September 26th

LightSquared Fix - "Trust Us?"

LightSquared has said they have a fix with the Javad GPS, "trust me they say"! This does not change the facts: They are still break-ing the law based on the National Space Pol-icy signed by the President June 27th, 2010 and vio-lating the National Space Security Strategy, January 2011 which is directed by the National Space Policy. This also violates the 2010 Federal Radionavigation Plan published by the DoD, DHS, and DoT. Below are links to the Federal Statutes on GPS from

the Armed Forces, the National and Commercial Space Programs, and National Transportation. Please take the time to review and become familiar with the real issues that are affecting us as a profes-sion. LightSquared has stated that we (the GPS Community) are the problem. We need to be the so-lution! United States Code The U.S. Code is a compilation of permanent federal statutes, organized into various titles. GPS is ad-dressed in three of those titles: Title 10 (Armed Forces) and Title 51 (National and Commercial Space Programs). Title 49 (Transportation) The Nationwide Differential GPS Augmentation System October 4th

LightSquared: Man-made Solar Flare Surveying and GIS are intricately connected in many ways and the Spatial Roundtable discussion authored by Brent Jones, PLS, PE from ESRI goes into detail about how GIS meets today's challenges. With recent comments from some of the leaders in the Surveying, GPS and GIS industries within the last month and multiple links to articles and videos on the LightSquared issue, you'd be hard pressed to find a more comprehensive discussion on the threats we all face in the near future. Please take some time out of your busy schedule to review this discussion and add your own comments and views and let your voices be heard. We are all in this together and we need to keep abreast of the events as they happen. Thank you for your support! October 11th

Coalition to Save Our GPS Update

In case you missed it... C-SPAN's The Communicators focused on Light-Squared this week, with interviews with Rep. Paul Broun of the House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee; Jim Kirkland, founding member of the

LightSquared – As Seen in Your Email Bulletins

Richard D. Pryce, PSM

GIS Committee Chair


http://www.saveourgps.org

http://www.fsms.org

Coalition to Save our GPS; and Fred Schulte, senior reporter of iWatch News. A video clip of the show is available on CSPAN's website here. News from Capitol Hill... The House Small Business Committee will hold a hearing on "LightSquared: The Impact to Small Busi-ness GPS Users" on Wednesday, October 12 at 1pm Eastern. Scheduled witnesses include: • Dennis B. Boykin IV, Chairman, Leesburg Execu-

tive Airport Commission, Leesburg, VA – Testify-ing on behalf of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association;

• Rick Greene, Precision Agronomy Manager, MFA Incorporated, Columbia, MO – Testifying on be-half of the Agriculture Retailers Association;

• Jeff Carlisle, Executive Vice President, Light-Squared, Reston, VA;

• Tim Taylor, President & CEO, FreeFlight Sys-tems, Irving, TX – Testifying on behalf of the Air-craft Electronics Association

In a letter dated September 29th, Sen. Charles Grassley questioned whether the FCC's initial ap-proval of the LightSquared network could lead to bil-lions of dollars of costs for taxpayers. "At no point has the FCC addressed who will pay to retrofit every sin-gle federal, state, and local government GPS re-ceiver, which will require a filter as a result of interfer-ence" caused by LightSquared's network, wrote Grassley. On October 5th, Sen. Grassley sent letters to the top investor in and the chief executive of LightSquared requesting the company's communications with the White House and government agencies. Grassley said in the letters (available here and here), "if Light-Squared has nothing to hide and would like to put questions of improper influence at the FCC, Depart-ment of Commerce and White House to rest, the pub-lic release of these communications would allow Con-gress and the American people to fully examine the facts and decide for themselves." The House Committee on Science, Space, and Tech-nology issued a press release on October 6th reiter-ating its request that agencies provide the Committee with their assessments of the potential impacts of the LightSquared network on operations. In addition, the Committee also released several LightSquared im-pact assessments by a number of federal agencies,

including the Department of Transportation, the De-partment of Interior and NASA. The agency assess-ments can be found here. Trimble Responds to Misleading LightSquared Let-ter... Trimble Vice President and General Counsel, Jim Kirkland, has submitted a letter to the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee responding to a letter to the committee from LightSquared Executive Vice President Jeffrey Carlisle that repeated many of the inaccurate claims LightSquared has made in the past. The Trimble let-ter, dated October 6th, is available here. We thought you might be interested in reading the letter because it reflects the most current positions of the Coalition to Save Our GPS. Some of those positions include those below. General Shelton is correct that LightSquared has pro-posed a new and fundamentally different use of the MSS band adjacent to GPS. LightSquared is the newcomer and approval of its plans would represent a major policy change as well as a major change in spectrum use. As recently as March 2010, the FCC reiterated that MSS licensees were only authorized to use terrestrial operations to "fill-in" the footprint of a satellite service. Because LightSquared is proposing fundamentally different operations in the MSS band than those previously authorized, it is responsible for bearing all costs of eliminating interference, including costs of replacing or retrofitting any existing equip-ment that will suffer interference after its mitigation proposals have been implemented. LightSquared's selective discussion of the technical terms of its ATC authorization is beside the point. LightSquared's suggestion that GPS manufacturers were required, starting in 2005, to start designing their equipment to accommodate eventual nationwide terrestrial operations in the MSS band has the order of priority precisely backwards. In fact, MSS licen-sees have always operated under various direct and indirect obligations to limit terrestrial operations and to protect GPS. But it doesn't matter, because even the January 2011 International Bureau waiver deci-sion makes clear that LightSquared will not be permit-ted to operate until interference concerns are re-solved. GPS receivers do not "encroach" on LightSquared's spectrum and are designed appropriately. Light-Squared's contention that GPS receivers should have been designed differently over the last several years


to avoid interference depends entirely on its inaccu-rate claim that the FCC authorized nationwide terres-trial service and terrestrial-only services in the MSS band in 2005. Revisionist history aside, GPS receiv-ers were designed in expectation that the "quiet neighborhood" in which MSS service was originally authorized would be maintained. LightSquared is directly responsible for interference to high-precision GPS receivers, but still refuses to accept its responsibility to pay the costs of replacing these receivers if and when new technology becomes available. LightSquared's claims about GPS receiv-ers conveniently ignore that many high precision re-ceivers are susceptible to interference because they were designed to receive services that LightSquared itself provides in the MSS band and in accordance with contractual requirements imposed by Light-Squared. LightSquared is clearly responsible for this problem but has refused to accept its responsibility to bear the full costs to replace this equipment. It must be required to bear all such costs. LightSquared's revisionist history is clearly calculated either to hide or justify a multi-billion dollar spectrum windfall for its owners. The mobile satellite spectrum that Harbinger Capital acquired when it bought out LightSquared's predecessor in March 2010 was origi-nally awarded for free. LightSquared's own consult-ants estimate that its value is currently $2 billion if limited to satellite use, but $12 billion if it can be used for unrestricted terrestrial mobile broadband services. So, if LightSquared is allowed to move forward, it will pocket an unjustified windfall at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. More tests are necessary. Both the NTIA and FCC have said that more testing of GPS devices in the presence of signals from LightSquared's lower 10 MHz of spectrum is required. The cost impact of interference to GPS is substan-tial. GPS is essential to economic activity between $68 billion and $122 billion per year, and "an esti-mated $3 trillion worth of commerce relies on GPS for tracking, timing and navigation" worldwide. LightSquared will have adverse effect on our nation's military forces. GPS is vital to national security and is relied upon by our service men and women for a wide array of capabilities. Even if an effective filter could be developed and even if it were itself an inexpensive item, DOD would still have to conduct exhaustive tests.

Contact: Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP Paul Scolese: 202-887-4319 Arshi Siddiqui: 202-887-4075 Prism Public Affairs Amanda Deaver: 202-207-3631 Anne Tyrrell: 202-207-3632

www.SaveOurGPS.org October 21st

LightSquared Update "The So-Called "Fix" GPS WORLD - Survey Scene, October 20, 2011 By: Eric Gakstatter LightSquared's been in the news quite a bit since my last Survey Scene newsletter a month ago, but very little of it has actual consequence. A lot of the "news" is just noise. LightSquared pumped up its propaganda campaign na-tionwide to try to build a consensus in their favor and put pressure on the FCC, and is threatening a lawsuit if the FCC doesn't do what LightSquared wants. No surprises there. However, other things have happened that I think you might be interested in hearing about.

Read the whole article: LightSquared: The So-Called

"Fix"

ALSO WATCH ACSM Radio Show ACSM Executive Director Curt Sumner and Eric Gakstat-ter talk about the latest on LightSquared. The debate goes on...stay tuned.

LightSquared’s SkyTerra satellite


http://www.SaveOurGPS.org

IF YOU EVER WONDERED WHY . . . ASK MIKE! Mike Whitling, PSM

Why are rainbows curved?” It’s because rainbows occur at the intersection of a cloud of water droplets with your cone of vision. Let me explain that further with a few basic facts about rainbows. First off, rainbows only have one side. You only see rainbows when the sun is behind you and low in the sky. The fact that you can never get to the side of a rainbow is the idea behind “looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rain-bow.” Secondly, it’s your cone of vision intersecting the cloud of water droplets that creates your rainbow, so eve-rybody sees their own personal rainbow. Lastly, a rain-bow always faces you squarely; one end never seems closer than the other. This is a result of the flattening of the reflection of the sun off the cloud of water droplets that produce the rainbow. The curve is in the geometry of reflection in that all the droplets reflect the rainbow’s light toward you in a cone with your eyes at the tip. Be-cause the angle of the sun is low, you are only seeing half the cone. Why is “thumbing one’s nose” at someone insulting? "Thumbing one's nose" has no sinister meaning beyond indicating extreme disrespect. The gesture basically consists of touching your nose with the tip of your thumb, spreading your other fingers upward, and wiggling them in the most annoying way you can manage. This ges-ture, also known as "giving the five-finger salute" and "cocking a snook," dates back to at least the 18th century and could be much older. As is true of many kinds of human non-verbal communication, the gesture itself has probably always been meaningless, and it's the thought that counts. The recipient of a "nose thumbing" finds it insulting simply because he or she knows it is meant to be insulting. Why are covered bridges “covered?” I was reading about Vermont losing some of their 100 covered bridges due to flooding from Hurricane Irene so it got me thinking. Most think that the covering is to pro-tect the flooring or roadway from snow. In days gone by, bridge tenders actually spread snow on the floor so sleighs could get by. Flooring is cheap; it’s the structure, the trusses, that holds it up that is expensive. They are made of heavy timber, and if they fall apart due to expo-sure to the elements, so does the bridge. An unprotected wooden bridge will last maybe ten years, put a cover over it and it will last for centuries. The first covered bridges were built in the early 1800’s. There have been about 10,000 built over time, with about 800 remaining. Be sure that this diminishing number is the result of pro-gress, heavy trucks, and vandalism, not exposure to rain. Why do we call someone acting foolishly “silly?”

“Silly” is an adjective that is well known for its notable shift in meaning over time. Even in my time, I think it has shifted from a happier thought to a dumber thinking. For the first 200 or so years it was spelled "seely." The root of "silly" was the Germanic "saeli," meaning "happiness or luck," and when the word entered Old English it meant both "happy" and "holy." From the 14th century onward, however, it gradually came to mean "blessed," then "innocent," then "harmless," then "helpless or pitiable," then "weak, poor or feeble," then "weak in the mind or crazy," until finally in the 16th century it acquired its mod-ern meaning of "foolish." Quick Facts: The largest stained-glass window in the world is at Ken-nedy International Airport in New York City. It can be seen on the American Airlines terminal building and measures 300 feet long by 23 feet high. Benjamin Harrison was the first president to use electric-ity in the White House. After he got an electrical shock, his family often refused to touch the light switches and sometimes would go to bed with the lights on. Since 1978, the weight of a soda bottle has been re-duced by 29 percent. A giraffe is able to clean its ears with its own tongue. It takes an agave plant approximately 8 years to reach a maturity level that makes it suitable for harvesting and using in tequila production. Mature harvested agave plants can weigh between 80 and 175 pounds. After his death, Alexander the Great's remains were pre-served in a huge crock of honey. Among the ancient Egyptians, it was common practice to bury the dead in this manner. An egg will float if placed in water to which sugar has been added. During Woodrow Wilson's presidency a flock of sheep was raised on the White House lawn. The wool was used to raise money for the Red Cross during World War I. The average twin pregnancy lasts only 37 weeks, while the average single pregnancy lasts 40 weeks. The father of American etiquette was George Washing-ton, who compiled a list of "Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour In Company and Conversation" at the age of 16.


Press ReleasesPress Releases

Wantman Group, Inc. Expands to New Location (West Palm Beach - October 2011) Wantman Group, Inc. (WGI) is pleased to announce its expansion into the northwest Florida market with the opening of a Tallahassee office. The new office will open effective November 1st and will offer full service consulting en-gineering, survey, environmental and planning ser-vices to both public and private clients. WGI derives all of its revenue from Florida based clients and re-mains dedicated to the development and economic prosperity of the local communities. “We are excited to be in a position to grow our com-pany despite the current economic situation. It dem-onstrates the strength of our company, its leaders and the dedication of our staff. We believe the Talla-hassee area will be a very strong market for WGI,” said David Wantman, PE, President of WGI.

October 2011 – Joe Edgar, PSM joins Wantman Group, Inc.

West Palm Beach, FL – Want-man Group, Inc. (WGI) is pleased to announce the addition of Joe Edgar, PSM to their corporate office in West Palm Beach. Joe brings more than 35 years of ex-perience to WGI with specific ex-

pertise in route surveys and right-of-way mapping for a variety of transportation projects; largely for the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). Joe has been a licensed Professional Surveyor in Florida since 1984 and has worked throughout the State of Florida over his career. “We are very happy to have Joe join our team. His extensive background with FDOT is a perfect fit for WGI and will allow us to bet-ter serve many public clients,” said David Wantman, PE, President of WGI.

Chop suey was invented in the United States. Its crea-tor was a Chinese dignitary visiting America in the 19th century. Requested by American friends to prepare an authentic Chinese meal and not having the proper in-gredients, the Chinese gentleman ordered his cook to collect all available foods, pour them into a large pot, and flavor the whole thing with soy sauce. Rhubarb is named after the Volga River. In Greek the name of the Volga is Rha, and barb means "uncultivated." Rhubarb is thus a wild plant that grows along the Volga. A rat can fall from a five-story building without injury. Two rats can become the progenitors of 15,000 rats in less than a year. 1.1 billion pounds - Total production of pumpkins by major pumpkin-producing states. Illinois led the country by producing 496 million pounds of the vined orange gourd. Cinderella's slipper, many scholars believe, was made of fur, not glass. The word verre, or "glass," they claim, was incorrectly substituted in early versions of the story

for the word vaire. In medieval French, vaire means "fur." A simple, moderately severe sunburn damages the blood vessels to such an extent that it takes four to 14 months for them to return to their normal condition. Cellophane was invented in 1908 by a Swiss chemist named Jacques Brandenburger who was trying to make a stain proof tablecloth and ended up with cellophane instead. Cellophane is not made of plastic. It is made from a plant fiber, cellulose, which has been shredded and aged. Adults dream off and on, for a total of about an hour and half to three hours every night. The average person has about 1,460 dreams a year. The custom of serving a slice of lemon with fish dates back to the Middle Ages; the lemon was originally in-tended for remedial purposes rather than to flavor the fish. It was believed that if a person accidentally swal-lowed a fish bone, the lemon juice would dissolve it. Send your thoughts to [email protected]



H.O. Peters

Harry C. Schwebke

John P. Goggin

R.H. Jones

Hugh A. Binyon

Russell H. DeGrove

Perry C. McGriff

Carl E. Johnson

James A. Thigpenn, III

Harold A. Schuler, Jr.

Shields E. Clark

Maurice E. Berry, II

William C. Hart

Frank R. Schilling, Jr.

William V. Keith

James M. King

Broward P. Davis

E.R. (Ed) Brownell

E.W. (Gene) Stoner

Lewis H. Kent

Robert S. Harris

Paul T. O’Hargan

William G. Wallace, Jr.

Robert W. Wigglesworth

Ben Blackburn

William B. Thompson, II

John R. Gargis

Robert A. Bannerman

H. Bruce Durden

Buell H. Harper

Jan L. Skipper

Steven M. Woods

Stephen G. Vrabel

W. Lamar Evers

Joseph S. Boggs

Robert L. Graham

Nicholas D. Miller

Loren E. Mercer

Kent Green

Robert D. Cross

Thomas L. Conner

Gordon R. Niles, Jr.

Dennis E. Blankenship

W. Lanier Mathews, II

Jack Breed

Arthur A. Mastronicola

Michael H. Maxwell

John M. Clyatt

David W. Schryver

Stephen M. Gordon

Richard G. Powell

Michael J. Whitling

Robert W. Jackson, Jr.

Pablo Ferrari

Steve Stinson

Dan Ferrans

Past PresidentsPast Presidents

1 2

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5 6

7

Calendar

of

Events DISTRICT 1 Bay, Calhoun, Escambia, Franklin, Gadsden, Gulf,

Holmes, Jackson, Jefferson, Leon, Liberty, Madison, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, Taylor, Wakulla, Walton,

Washington

DISTRICT 2 Alachua, Baker, Bradford, Clay, Columbia, Dixie,

Duval, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Lafayette, Levy, Marion, Nassau, Putnam, Suwannee, St. Johns, Union

DISTRICT 3

Brevard, Flagler, Indian River, lake, Okeechobee, Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Martin, St. Lucie, Volusia

DISTRICT 4

Citrus, Hernando, Hillsborough, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Sumter

DISTRICT 5

Collier, Charlotte, DeSoto, Glades, Hardee, Hendry, Highlands, Lee, Manatee, Sarasota

DISTRICT 6

Broward, Palm Beach

DISTRICT 7 Miami-Dade, Monroe

November 4th FSMS Board Meeting Tallahassee November 8th-10th DOACS BPSM Orlando November 19th 5J-17 Minimum Technical Standards, Instructor Oscar Pitman Milton December 3rd Boundaries, Boundaries Everywhere & All the Courts Did Shrink, Instructor Walt Robillard Melbourne

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