Surveying+Spatial Issue 81 March 2015

SURVEYING+

SPATIAL

March 2015 Issue 81

Open Tenure: Tenure Security for the Developing World Creating Quality Communities Meticulous Mapping: Orienteering Map Design

www.surveyors.org.nz

positions from pictures.

I’m proud to have served the New Zealand survey industry for over twenty five years with innovative products that enable surveyors like you to be more successful. And the new Trimble® V10 Imaging Rover is truly the most exciting innovation yet.

Achieving survey-accurate positions from pictures is just amazing! The all-new Trimble V10 is an integrated system that captures 360-degree digital panoramas for precise measurement of the surrounding environment.

Whether your need is for project planning, inspections or investigation, this radical new solution provides previously unavailable data that will make your job more efficient, no matter what industry you’re working in.

Tired of going back to the field to gather missed data? With the V10 you are sure to leave the site with everything you need. I know you’ll work faster, avoid rework, and together with Trimble Access™ field software and Trimble Business Center office software, the Trimble V10 is a professional solution that will fit your surveying workflows.

You can learn more at Trimble.com/V10 and I’d be happy to discuss how this innovative solution can help you achieve your project success.

Mark Green, Survey Manager, GeoSystems mark.green@geosystems.co.nz | 0800 GEOSYS

www.geosystems.co.nz © 2014, Trimble Navigation Limited. All rights reserved. Trimble and the Globe & Triangle logo are trademarks of Trimble Navigation Limited, registered in the United States and in other countries. Access is a trademark of Trimble Navigation Limited. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. GEO-038

SURVEYING+ COVER IMAGE: Open Tenure – Tablet Software for Community Recording of Tenure Rights.

See page 5.

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SPATIAL

March 2015 Issue 81

ARTICLES 5

Open Tenure: moving towards tenure security for all

11 It’s the Community that matters 17 Shallow Water Surveys

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22 Grow your staff . . . grow your business 25 Meticulous Mapping: Orienteering Mapping for Oceania/World Cups 2013 and NZ Champs 2014 33 NZIS Professional Streams Explained 34 Observation Coordinates 35 Momote Aerodrome Survey 43 NZIS Council: Result of Enquiry

25 REGULAR FEATURES 2

Editorial

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News

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Surveyor-General

15 Technology 29 Legal Column

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39 University Happenings 41 Perspective

• EDITORIAL

New Year’s Resolutions Diane Moriarty ISSUE 81 MARCH 2015 SURVEYING+SPATIAL A publication of the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors – Te Rōpū Kairūri o Aotearoa ISSN 2382-1604 www.surveyors.org.nz EDITOR Diane Moriarty survey.editor@yahoo.co.nz All rights reserved. Abstracts and brief quotations may be made, providing reference is credited to Surveying+Spatial. Complete papers or large extracts of text may not be printed or reproduced without the permission of the editor.

Correspondence relating to literary items in Surveying+Spatial may be addressed to the editor. Papers, articles and letters to the editor, suitable for publication, are welcome.

Papers published in Surveying+Spatial are not refereed. All correspondence relating to business aspects, including subscriptions, should be addressed to: The Chief Executive New Zealand Institute of Surveyors PO Box 5304 Lambton Quay Wellington 6145 New Zealand Phone: 04 471 1774 Fax: 04 471 1907 Web address: www.surveyors.org.nz Email: nzis@surveyors.org.nz Distributed free to members of NZIS. Subscription rates available from the NZIS National Office.

Published in March, June, September and December by NZIS. DESIGN & PRINT MANAGEMENT KPMDesign – www.kpmdesign.co.nz info@kpm.co.nz TO ADVERTISE Email: nzis@surveyors.org.nz or contact Jan Lawrence +64 4 471 1774

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I write this editorial from my home office on a very hot and humid Auckland afternoon. The progression from summer holidays back into work mode has been a very difficult one this year after the best summer in memory. I am sure that you are all feeling the pain, however I guess as surveyors a lot of us are lucky enough to get out in the sunshine as part of our job.

A New Year always brings talk of change. As usual my New Year’s resolution is one involving exercise however I still have not managed to get out of holiday mode to make that happen – maybe next week!

The government has made it their New Year’s resolution to once again overhaul the Resource Management Act (RMA) with Environment Minister Nick Smith announcing in January that this review would be the most contentious of any of its proposed reforms of the RMA. The suggested changes to the RMA’s principles are to give greater recognition to the urban environment and the importance of affordable housing. Changes to streamline the development of local planning rules and give recognition to the need for economic development are also proposed. To summarise, it seems that we are looking ahead to a more development focused RMA. This is good news for our profession. A focus on development and the streamlining of planning rules should have a flow on effect of increased work volumes for the survey profession. I see the suggested changes as a good thing so long as the environment is not completely compromised to make way for development.

RMA and planning issues is one area we seem to lack content in our magazine, so while I am on the topic I would like to make a request to any member/s who believe they have something to contribute in the area of Resource Management Planning. I would love to hear from you survey.editor@yahoo.co.nz.

In this edition we have a good variety of summer reading. Our feature article on Open Tenure is written by Neil Pullar of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The article discusses how the FAO are supporting countries in the developing world to improve tenure security. This is something we take for granted in New Zealand but is far from the norm in most of the developing world. On pg 11 Katja Lietz shares her research and findings on how the New Zealand public will accept greater residential density when the housing is supported by amenities which enable a desirable community. Maurice Perwick provides an interesting article on shallow water surveying (pg 17) giving us some insight into how to undertake such surveys in what can be a very challenging and dynamic environment. Bryan Teahan, Russell Higham and Jason Markha give an account of their ambitious project which involved mapping for two major orienteering carnivals (pg 25).

The March edition is always a tough one to put together and I would like to thank all the contributors who took time out of their Christmas holidays to write their articles. Happy reading.

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Issue 81 March 2015

• NEWS

Changes in the Office of the Surveyor- General Gerald Arthur, Senior Cadastral Survey Advisor, retired from the Office of the Surveyor-General in November 2014. When Gerald retired, Mark Smith indicated that he may also retire in the next couple of years and suggested that he take Gerald’s role to allow his position of Assistant Surveyor-General (Compliance) be advertised as a succession planning initiative. “We needed to develop someone for this key role, with the benefit of Mark Smith’s mentoring and extensive knowledge and experience,” says Deputy Surveyor-General Anselm Haanen. “We also wanted Mark to continue to play a key leadership role in the team and the profession. So he will move sideways into a new role of Chief Cadastral Survey Advisor.”

The position of Assistant Surveyor-General (Survey Compliance) was advertised before Christmas and Lyndon Telfer, who was previously Principal Cadastral Surveyor in LINZ Property Rights Group, has recently been appointed to the position. This opportunity has provided a way to make sure the Office of the Surveyor-General maintains its high level of capability and expertise, and also allows the team to develop people who will take it into the future.

OPUS to Manage Aerial Archive Opus International Consultants (Opus) are proud to announce they are working in partnership with Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) managing historical NZ aerial imagery archive which contains both the Crown archive and images previously belonging to NZ Aerial Mapping (NZAM) captured for a number of purposes since 1936.

Opus are also working in conjunction with LINZ on a historic scanning project, digitising the archive with the intent of long term preservation and availability.

Historic aerial imagery has many uses, depicting changes over the decades, in land use, weather events, erosion effects, coastlines and city expansions.

The demise of New Zealand’s oldest aerial surveying company (NZAM) left a gap in the market for surveyors, engineers and planners to purchase from the archives.

Opus have employed three former NZAM employees which has resulted in continuity of archive knowledge and service as well as safeguarding New Zealanders ability to access historical aerial imagery.

All historic imagery is available to purchase in multiple formats please contact photosales@opus.co.nz or 0800 680 690

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Transmission Gully Update

Transmission Gully is proving a significant project for surveyors – with the Leighton HEB design and construct joint venture (LHJV) building its own team and others also being engaged by neighbours and territorial authorities.

LHJV Survey Manager Martin Bower is running 12D Field for all survey equipment and Panasonic ToughPad tablets are also being widely used by engineers. So far the survey team are setting out batters for vegetation removal, moving utilities, geotechnical surveys and control surveys.

LHJV has been contracted to build the 27km motorway by Wellington Gateway Partnership which was awarded the contract last July.

Napier City Council Unveil New Benchmark Network Napier City Council (NCC) has recently unveiled their new comprehensive benchmark network. It endeavours to re-establish a reliable network of benchmarks across the entire city, providing high quality vertical levels on selected existing benchmarks and also established new benchmarks where necessary. The impetus for this project was driven by a desire to increase consistency of levels for major infrastructure works, particularly drainage works.

Cardno successfully undertook the project. The network consists of over 600 benchmarks which have been precise levelled in line with LINZ Specifications for Geodetic Services v1.1 and will be referred to as NCC 2014 Benchmark Network. The network was undertaken in conjunction with a LINZ project; with 50 of the 603 benchmarks having 4th order coordinates and over 400 having 6th order status.

The network is available online through the NCC GIS.

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• SURVEYOR-GENERAL

Unleashing the Power of Where Mark G. Dyer Land Information NZ is committed to enabling better decisions by increasing the use of spatial information in New Zealand. Publicly funded data made freely available, or at least at minimal cost, and limited only by privacy, security, or cultural sensitivity is the key driver of Government’s open data programme and spatial data is treated no differently. The success of the LINZ Data Service signals the benefits that can accrue to a wide range of stakeholders but it is only a start.

The core elements of a spatial data infrastructure are the standards, accessibility and availability of data for reuse, governance, investment, and capability. When these components are in place and working in harmony, I predict New Zealand will reap the productivity-related benefits, and experience a step change in building its knowledge economy.

One area of opportunity for the profession is the development of Smart Cities. While acknowledging the important role of our provincial economies, most of our population resides in our larger cities, and this is where most business takes place. The larger cites need to be efficient and be great places to live, work, and play. They will become denser and more complex – in the way they are built, managed, and as urban systems. The role of technology is increasingly important for design, construction, and management of assets, as a means of community participation and engagement, and to manage the city system – transport, health, education, and political systems – in fact, a city is a system of systems.

At the urban planning scale there are many decisions to be made – the location of services, transport, and land use. At the project level, there is a need for more precise data to manage rights, for design, and construction. There is an incredible amount of data generated in the course of

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these projects which we have chosen in the past to either discard after completion of the project, or we have selectively integrated a sub-set of the data into separate and distinct management systems in the case of assets, or the cadastre in the case of property rights.

Modelling (BIM) provides a concept to leverage the data from its generation throughout the life of the asset to demolition and the planning of replacement buildings and structures. There is no reason the concept cannot be applied to other elements of our built environment including infrastructure. These models are also a source of rich data for the development of Smart Cities. The surveyor’s role in developing appropriate standards to support the as-built components is critical, as is the understanding of the underpinning vertical and horizontal frameworks which tie the data together spatially. Success will come down to standards, capability, governance, and importantly trust and collaboration.

To develop smart, competitive, liveable cities, we need to achieve the same level of maturity that we are achieving with the cadastre. We must think beyond the individual project and consider the future uses of data generated for a single purpose. In itself, this thinking raises questions of intellectual property and liability, the development of appropriate standards, the optimal level of regulatory intervention, the areas of research and development required, and how we build capability across the profession and broader industry.

Government will play a part, but it is a collaborative effort that will bring about success. Technology and new systems will have a strong influence on Smart cities but at the heart of it will always be people.

He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

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OPEN TENURE Moving towards tenure security for all Neil Pullar MNZIS, SOLA Open Source Software Coordinator, FAO, Rome In New Zealand we take tenure security for granted but this is not the norm in most of the developing world. It has been estimated that worldwide only 20%–30% of land holdings are recorded within formal land administration systems. The recent endorsement of the Voluntary Guidelines for Responsible Governance, a process led by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), has strengthened the global resolution to support countries in the developing world to improve tenure security. FAO’s success with its initial Solutions for Open Land Administration (SOLA) open source software gave all countries access to an affordable, customisable and sustainable computerised solution to support registration and cadastral functions in land administration agencies. FAO has now turned its open source software attention to the informal sector – the 70–80% of land holdings outside formal land administration. Its new software solution, Open Tenure, aims to empower communities and individuals to record, map and manage tenure records of their land holdings.

Open Tenure is an open source software app for mobile devices that gives communities and individuals the ability to record tenure rights within their community. It is designed to be used in conjunction with a web based “community server” where tenure details captured with Open Tenure can be publicised and moderated by the community. Open Tenure is one of a suite of tenure related open source software products developed by FAO.

The Rationale In many of the countries where FAO works, formal land administration (such as we have in New Zealand), covers only a small percentage of all land. As a result poor and vulnerable groups have limited access to formal land administration and the tenure security it provides. Systematic registration programmes where land is brought into

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Issue 81 March 2015

(Above) Community Recorders recording land in Cambodian community forest using Open Tenure (Below) Community Forest in Oddar Meanchey Province, Cambodia

the formal arena are expensive and countries struggle to afford such programmes without the funding that comes from development assistance support. There have been other attempts to address this problem with community property mapping initiatives but these too are very dependent on external assistance.

Open Tenure takes advantage of more affordable technology in the form of mobile devices including tablets and smart phones that certainly in terms of the latter are common within many of these communities. The success of crowd sourcing in many situations (such as Open Street Maps) in developed countries has also been a reminder of the power of community and citizen based initiatives.

Other factors setting the scene for Open Tenure include: • The success of the FAO SOLA open source software and the general acceptance that open source software provides serious software solutions

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• Improved mobile phone network coverage in countries where FAO works • The availability of cloud based servers (to host and provide community access to the Open Tenure captured tenure details) • The publication of the FIG/World Bank ‘Fit-For-Purpose Land Administration’ report that encourages the use of ‘aerial imageries’ • The recent ratification of two international protocols, the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM)(ISO 19152) and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (see sidebar below).

Community Recording of Tenure Rights Using Open Tenure Open Tenure supports a crowd sourcing approach to the collection of tenure related details working at the community level. The first Google Android version of Open Tenure was released in September 2014 and the first field test of Open Tenure began in February 2015. This is in the “The Monks Community Forest Area” in the north-west province of Oddar Meanchey, Cambodia. This field test involves both the usability of the Open Tenure software in a field context and the trialling and refining of community based processes covering the collection of tenure details (including mapping) through to the display of tenure

rights that have been moderated by the community.

These processes begin with initial discussions with the particular community as a whole so that they are well informed on what community tenure recording is (and is not) and the activities that will accompany it. Members of the community with specific roles such as community recorder, member of the moderation committee and the committee’s secretary/Open Tenure administrator are identified and trained in those roles.

Once those preparations are complete tenure recording can begin. In the Cambodia Open Tenure field test in addition to recording ownership tenure rights of rice fields and dwellings, certain areas with community forestry characteristics will also be recorded including areas such as ‘Spirit Forest’, ‘Wetlands’ and ‘Illegal logging areas’.

Before the start of field recording, Community Recorders identify the areas they will be working in over the next day or two and download existing tenure rights data and high resolution satellite imagery from the SOLA Community Server onto their Open Tenure tablets. With these downloads the Community Recorders are able to operate off-line while in the field.

In the field, Community Recorders, using Open Tenure, collect details on the property itself (such as name or identifier and land use), ownership (including multiple owners and defined shares), images of supporting documents, photos of owners and the property and a map of the property. Community Recorders are encouraged to map the property in terms of the satellite imagery but

Voluntary Guidelines

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he Voluntary Guidelines outline principles and practices that governments can refer to when making laws and administering land, fisheries and forests rights. They promote secure tenure rights and equitable access to land, fisheries and forests as a means of eradicating hunger and poverty, supporting sustainable development and enhancing the environment. The Voluntary Guidelines is the first global ‘soft’ law instrument on tenure and was negotiated by UN member countries with participation from civil society and the private sector. These negotiations concluded with the endorsement of the Voluntary Guidelines by the

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Committee on World Food Security on 11 May 2012. Since then the Voluntary Guidelines have been acknowledged by many international meetings including G8, G20 and Rio +20 and a number of countries are now funding development assistance projects that provide support to country level implementations of the Voluntary Guidelines.

Open Tenure and the associated citizen and community based recording of tenure rights can contribute to the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines in the following ways: • Identify and safeguard tenure rights not recorded by formal land administration

• Engage with all tenure right holders in tenure governance processes including customary tenure rights not currently protected by law • Exercise self-governance for communities with customary tenure systems • Protect against unauthorised use of land, fisheries and forest resources • Ensure citizen and community involvement in State processes impacting on tenure rights • Support participatory gender sensitive processes impacting on tenure rights.

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the built-in GPS in the tablet can also be used to confirm the property’s location, confirm the geo-referencing of the imagery or define the position of a property corner.

Once field capture of property details is complete and the Community Recorder returns to their base, they are then able to upload the recently captured property details to the SOLA Community Server. Once uploaded the property details are viewable by other members of the community through the web-based Community Server as well as hardcopy maps and listing of all uploaded properties at the pagoda near the Community Recorder’s base. If there is a challenge to any of the uploaded property claims, the challenger arranges for a counter claim to be prepared using Open Tenure or directly through the SOLA Community Server. Any such challenge includes all the same details from the original claim to property ownership plus a link to the original claim.

The period of time that a property claim needs to be displayed before it is finalised in the Cambodia field test has yet to be decided but is expected to be somewhere between one to three months. In that time the original claimant may upload additional supporting documents, if necessary. Once the agreed upon display time is over, dispute resolution processes will be initiated in the case of any challenges. With un-challenged claims, the secretary to the community moderation committee will use SOLA Community Server to check that there are no missing details and, if there are, request the claimant to provide those details. Once the secretary is satisfied that claims are adequately described and dispute processes are complete, they will organise a meeting of the community moderation committee. At that meeting the moderation committee will confirm, modify or reject property claims and the change in status will be reflected on the SOLA Community Server. In the case of identified illegal logging areas, these will be reported to the appropriate authorities.

In the longer term, changes in ownership will be reflected on the SOLA Community Server in a similar fashion either using details collected on mobile devices running the Open Tenure app or directly through the SOLA Community Server.

It should be noted that all these processes are based on community level processes and not on law and associated regulations and rules such as would happen in formal land

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adminis­ tration. Likewise access to these property details is determined by the community.

This is not to say that a formally defined process might not be devised in the future that would bring these Open Tenure defined and community moderated properties within the formal land administration system. Technically this is simple; however such a move is one for the community to propose and then for those responsible for formal land administration to define an appropriate legal and administrative mechanism for this to happen.

Software Development A multi-national team (including several New Zealanders), coordinated from FAO Headquarters in Rome, has been involved in the development of Open Tenure and the other SOLA software applications. Initial design work for Open Tenure was begun in December 2013 with the Android version of Open Tenure released in September 2014. The first field test involving a community forest group in Cambodia began in February 2015. Another field test of Open Tenure with indigenous communities in Guatemala is being investigated for later in 2015.

Although other initiatives involved in improving the governance of tenure and in particular facilitating the application of Open Data concepts to property tenure rights (for instance MapMyRights Foundation – www.mapmyrights.org) are discussing the establishment of servers to receive, host and publicise tenure rights, no such servers are operating or designed yet. Given that the driver for the Open Tenure development work in FAO was to develop software that would support the crowd sourcing

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of tenure rights, it was necessary to develop both an inthe-field client app to run on mobile devices as well as a Community Server system that could store, provide access to and support the ‘office’ (non-field) community processes to moderate the collected tenure details.

For this reason, it was decided to capitalise on the existing SOLA software development effort and create a web version of SOLA, the SOLA Community Server. This component was developed using Java, the Netbeans integrated development environment (IDE) and involved extending both the SOLA software code (available at www.github. com/SOLA-FAO) and the SOLA database structure. The FAO test version of the SOLA Community Server (based on a fictitious community on Waiheke Island) can be viewed once you register as a user at http://ot.flossola.org. The high resolution orthophoto for Waiheke Island used to demonstrate the downloading of aerial imagery to tablets running Open Tenure was supplied by NZ Aerial Mapping.

The Open Tenure client application for the Google Android mobile devices was written using Java but was developed using the Eclipse (Kepler) IDE, with the Eclipse Android Development Tools. The Open Tenure software code as well as the installation file (apk) is available through www.github.com/OpenTenure. Ultimately Open Tenure Android version will be distributed free of charge through the Google PlayStore.

Although Google Android is the most common operating system for mobile devices, Apple iOS also has a significant market share of mobile devices. For this reason, once the Open Tenure Android development was well advanced, a second development for an Apple iOS version of Open Tenure was started using the OSX xCode software development application. This iOS version of Open Tenure is expected to be available by the end of February 2015 through the Apple AppStore with source code also available through www.github.com/OpenTenure.

The Sola Suite of Open Source Software

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he original SOLA software was developed and piloted by FAO between 2010 and 2012. Funded by the Government of Finland, the original SOLA software (now known as ‘SOLA Registry’) was designed to support registration and cadastral functions in a typical district land office. Customised versions of the original SOLA have been undertaken in Samoa, Nepal, Ghana, Lesotho, Tonga and Nigeria. As a result of these SOLA customisations as well as requests for computerised support for further tenure related functions (from which has arisen Open Tenure and the SOLA Community Server), SOLA is now available as a number of software applications.

Currently the SOLA software applications are: • Registry – providing enterprise wide support for registration and cadastral functions in a typical district land office including case management of applications.

• Systematic Registration – supporting systematic (first time) registration tasks such as the production of public display listings and maps, the generation of title certificates and the digital transfer of this data to a district land office.

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• Admin – providing system administration functionality.

• State Land – providing enterprise wide support for state land tasks including lease administration, acquisition and disposal of land and property and the management of state land and properties.

• Community Server – hosts Open Tenure captured data, provides web access (and comprehensive searching) to tenure related map and attribute data, allows new property details to be captured without the need for mobile devices (by users with internet access through an internet café) and for community authorised individuals to manage Open Tenure related processes leading to the community recognition of property rights.

• Open Tenure – provides for the inthe-field capture of property rights by communities and individuals.

Future software applications under consideration (subject to funding) are: • Mass Valuation • Public Access to Information • Street Address • Forest Tenure • Fisheries Tenure.

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Locations where customised versions of the orginal SOLA have been undertaken

The transfer of data between the Community Server and Open Tenure is in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) defined data packets which match up with LADM classes defining rights, restrictions and responsibilities (rrr), documents and sources, persons and spatial units. While the focus of Open Tenure is on community tenure recording and mapping in the informal sector, the data packages uploaded to the Community Server are stored in a separate schema within the SOLA database. When Open Tenure is used within formal land administration there will be a need to modify this database mapping so that uploaded data is stored within regular SOLA database schemas.

A significant requirement of all SOLA software is that it must be easily customised to meet local requirements including the use of different languages. The language localisation for the Java based SOLA software uses Java resource files which allows the language of the SOLA user interface to be changed “on-the-fly”. This capability has been extended in SOLA to include drop-down list selections. To simplify further language localisations in Open Tenure the iOS version of Open Tenure will use the same (language) resource file as is used in the Android version.

Currently, for Open Tenure and SOLA Community Server there are English, French, Russian, Arabic, Albanian, Spanish, Portuguese, Cambodian, Ethiopian and Chinese localisations available.

In Open Tenure another mechanism (termed ‘Dynamic Form Generation’) has been incorporated to make it easy to add new fields, lists and data constraints to meet specific local requirements. Using a similar approach to the Open Data Toolkit, users themselves can make these changes in the SOLA (Web) Admin application without any software changes. Once the Open Tenure form changes have been defined, the next time Open Tenure connects

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to the Community Server, these changes will be reflected in the Open Tenure user interface.

A lot of thought has gone into software usability in the design of Open Tenure. Unlike desktop software applications where you have user manuals and context sensitive help to overcome any usability complexity, mobile device apps do not normally have these mechanisms. With mobile apps the need for intuitive and simple user operations is essential. If your software app has not ‘captured’ the user in their first few experiences they are lost to you.

To ensure Open Tenure is seen as an easy app to use specialist software usability advice has been engaged and this has seen simplified user workflows, standardised user operations that are more in line with other mobile apps and an improved appearance of the user interface. Coupled with the usability improvements, first time tutorials have been added and a series of YouTube videos of screen operations have been created. Time will tell whether this is sufficient or that further work is required to ensure the uptake of Open Tenure by target groups.

The Challenges Although our current focus is on the Cambodia field test and on making sure that potential users of Open Tenure are aware of its existence, we are already aware there is more work to be done. Existing users of our earlier SOLA applications are aware of the potential Open Tenure has in systematic registration and in field inspection work by State land managers and valuers. There is also interest in using Open Tenure for citizen recording of boundary disputes and reserve encroachments.

Keeping in touch with related initiatives is also important to ensure Open Tenure can work with other forms of Community Server that may be established and not just

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the SOLA Community Server. A collaborative effort is also required to facilitate the availability of recent, high resolution, low cost aerial imagery for download and offline use in Open Tenure community tenure recording and mapping.

Another challenge is that although there appear to be Google Android mobile devices in the places where community tenure recording would be beneficial, these devices are primarily smaller smart phones. On smaller screens Open Tenure would be difficult to use, particularly the mapping functionality and a simplified or smarter version of Open Tenure may need to be developed if there is re-

luctance within communities to acquire a tablet or larger screen smart phones.

Although Open Tenure is showing considerable potential in providing the means to support crowd-sourced tenure rights recording, there will be ongoing challenges to ensure the uptake of Open Tenure and the growth of the SOLA open source software community.

For further information you may contact Neil at: neil.pullar@fao.org or follow the links listed below: http://flossola.org http://www.fao.org/nr/tenure/voluntary-guidelines/en/

Cambodia Open Tenure Field Test in Oddar Meanchey Province

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he first Open Tenure field test will involve the community involved in the Monks’ Community Forestry area (also known as Sorng Rokavorn Community Forest) located in Cambodia’s northwest province of Oddar Meanchey. This community forest area is the largest in Cambodia and covers more than 18,000 hectares. The Monks Community Forestry area is managed by a group of monks from the Samraong Pagoda in collaboration with villagers from 6 villages close to the forest area.

The monks apply Buddhist principles of harmony with nature to inspire protection of the forest resources. They regularly conduct forest patrols to control illegal logging and hunting. The forest is home to a wide array of threatened and endangered species such as banteng, green peafowl, and white-shouldered ibis. It also provides an abundance of non-timber forest products such as resin, mushrooms, rattan, and bamboo to support local livelihoods.

While the outer boundary of the community forest area has been clearly demarcated and mapped resulting in official Community Forest tenure status, the monks and villagers perceive a need to clarify land claims and other features within the community forest area.

The Monks’ Community Forestry community is seen as an excellent community to engage with on this first field test of Open Tenure. This community is well organised and accustomed to working with external

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Community Forest in Oddar Meanchey Province, Cambodia

partners (such as FAO) and hence feedback is likely to come quickly and lead to improvements in the software and related community processes. It also provides an opportunity to deal with both land and forest tenures.

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It’s the COMMUNITY that matters Katja Lietz, Hobsonville Land Company

KNITTING GRAFFITI – Community Art Projects have been a valuable tool to get people involved and to activate public space

Our residents say it is the quality of the community that has brought them to Hobsonville Point, and that community amenities and housing diversity are vital in denser developments.

As professionals we need to learn how deliver more desirable communities through a more integrated and multi-disciplinary approach.

Hobsonville Point is a new community located on the shores of the Waitemata Harbour in Auckland’s northwest.

It is being built on the former Hobsonville Airbase and features stunning coastal views, heritage buildings and mature vegetation. When complete, over 3000 households will call Hobsonville Point home. Two new schools, a ferry connection to downtown Auckland, local and regional bus services, community facilities, local parks, a café and a farmers’ market are already in place, and more amenities will be added over the next years.

The vision for Hobsonville Point is to build a strong, vibrant community that sets new benchmarks for quality and accessible urban development with an environmentally responsible focus. This includes ensuring that people have a wide variety of homes to choose from, ranging from free-standing homes to apartments, and from one to five bedrooms. The higher densities at Hobsonville Point are supported by high levels of amenity and good access to public transport and community facilities.

Over the last three years we have seen the Hobsonville Point community grow with more residents moving in evSURVEYING+SPATIAL

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ery week. It is heartening to see the real sense of pride and ownership locals have and residents tell us the quality of the community has attracted them to Hobsonville Point.

Houses tend to sell quickly off the plans, often before construction starts. This includes 20% of homes which are delivered under our affordable homes programme, the Axis Series.

Understanding the community experience To better understand how our residents experience their neighbourhood and community, and what is important to purchasers of smaller, more affordable homes in particular, we have completed two pieces of research.

1. A neighbourhood sustainability assessment which assessed the physical neighbourhood and surveyed residents about their experiences and behaviours, using tools developed by Beacon Pathway. This allowed us to benchmark our performance against other neighbourhoods in New Zealand.

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for first home buyers through the Axis Series programme.

Overall we feel that there is a strong trend of people wanting to live in places where people know one another and being part of a diverse community. There also seems to be a large section of the market keen to spend their leisure time in public spaces rather than their own backyard. For us, as developers, that means more focus on what is provided in public spaces, such as creating parks where residents can meet and engage in activities that traditionally happened in private gardens. Hobsonville Point reserves include facilities such as BBQs, lawn areas and inAerial photograph of Hobsonville Point’s First precinct courtesy of skylens_co_nz ground trampolines, and we are even plan2. The Axis Series Small Home Test Lab. In this projning sheds that store play equipment such as ect we built three small homes on small sections to swing-ball or croquet for residents to use. test people’s reaction to them. The lab included: • a 40m2, single storey, one bedroom home on a 111m2 section • a 87m2, two storey, two bedroom home on a 152m2 section • a 89m2, single storey, three bedroom home on a 185m2 section.

The research has confirmed what we have been hearing from our residents. It is the community that matters. People are willing to accept smaller homes and backyards if local facilities and parks are easily accessible.

Residents appreciate being part of communities The application of the Beacon tools showed that residents felt that there was a strong sense of community and that more residents than in Auckland on average felt this was important. All but one person surveyed agreed that Hobsonville Point was a great place to live.

87% of residents say the neighbourhood is safe for children (compared to 70% of Auckland residents) and 83% say it is safe to walk after dark (compared to 56% of Auckland residents) 85% of residents surveyed rated public space as good or very good (86% had used a local park or playground in the last month), and good levels of neighbourly interactions were reported.

These results confirm what we hear anecdotally from residents, who talk about having met more neighbours here and feeling more connected than where they lived previously. People also frequently tell us that they enjoy the diversity of the neighbourhood and particularly that there are options

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Community amenities complement smaller houses

The Axis Series Small Home Test Lab attracted a lot of interest, with over 5000 people visiting in the six months it was open to the public. People were asked to have a look around the homes and complete a postcard questionnaire on the spot. We then followed up with a more in-depth online survey to capture people’s more considered views.

The results were fascinating: 69% of visitors said they could see themselves comfortably living in one of the three show homes. Many linked the house with the community, stating that a small house and a small but well landscaped backyard works in a location with easy access to public open space. People also commented on the use of sloping high ceilings, natural light and clever indoor outdoor flow in making these small homes seem more spacious.

Small but usable outdoor spaces and good indoor outdoor flow were key features visitors commented on

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Visitor comment on the Axis small homes “Modern design with sustainability. Double glazing and extra insulation important. Sensible layout. Loved that emphasis was on living space rather than bedrooms. Loved high ceilings for sense of space and double glazing for warmth and noise reduction. Good quality fixtures for price. Loved that garden was planted with vegetable and incorporated worm farm. Loved the entire concept. Perfect size for a modern family :-)” The Small Home Test Lab allowed us to explore home buyers’ reactions to smaller homes on smaller lots

When asked how important various features of the homes were, people ranked section size last. The interior layout of the house ranked first followed closely by the general feeling of the house and the location.

The Test Lab houses were designed with first home buyers in mind, but we found that they were also very attractive to older buyers wanting to downsize once their children had left home. The one bedroom house, in particular, was considered as a good alternative to retirement village living or to an apartment.

Overall the Test Lab project has shown that section size is not as important as we had thought and that there is a significant market for small homes on small sections in a location with good amenities. The designs emphasised features important to the New Zealand lifestyle, such as having enough room to have friends over for a BBQ, indoor outdoor flow and a vege garden. People responded well to these yet they are sometimes missing in higher density designs, especially apartments.

Achieving community in developments Incorporating a mixture of typologies and house sizes in the same block achieves a good design outcome and surprisingly high densities without the need for apartments.

Some of our blocks have densities exceeding 45 dwellings/hectare (net), without feeling overly tight.

What we have found, though, is that an integrated design process becomes critical. To ensure a good outcome, the entire block needs to be designed as one and ideally before the surrounding roads are constructed. This ensures that levels are correct and that vehicle crossings,

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street trees and other features are in the right places.

While this means more design expenditure upfront and a collaborative approach, we believe this investment pays off in much better design outcomes. At Hobsonville Point we use a design review panel process to ensure that the design guidelines, which are part of the resource consent requirements, are adhered to.

Across Hobsonville Point such diversity means that residents can move within their neighbourhood and importantly retain their community connections as their needs change. We are already seeing this with several residents having moved within Hobsonville Point.

To support the density and diversity we are now achieving, we have included non residential uses. This means that people can go about much of their day-to-day business locally and on foot (or by bike). There are already local schools that children can walk to, and a café and farmers market. Our first group of neighbourhood shops, located on the ground floor of an apartment block, will open this year; there has been good demand for the shop leases.

Hobsonville Point’s suburban location, some 25 km from Auckland’s CBD, is not traditionally associated with mixed use, higher densities and apartments. However, we have found there is demand for a very diverse range of home sizes and typologies in such locations. Our residents enjoy being able to do most things locally and, above all, they value community and neighbourliness.

For more information on Hobsonville Point visit the website: www.hobsonvillepoint.co.nz

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GLENN STONE INSURANCE

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Issue 81 March 2015

• TECHNOLOGY

Taking as-builts to the next dimension Melanie Langlotz, Business Development Manager, Augview As-builts (or record drawings) are vital to the construction industry. These documents are submitted by a contractor after completing a project, and record the dimensions and locations of all elements of work included in the contract.

As-builts provide invaluable data on where assets are located because they reflect any changes made in specifications during the construction process.

The majority of as-builts are still initially recorded as paper plans. Often printed versions of the engineers’ CAD designs are used, which the contractor then hand marks to record any changes. In other cases, the as-built may consist entirely of a hand drawn plan, often roughly composed with elements not drawn to scale.

The contractor must then transcribe these changes into the format specified by their contract. This usually involves a staff member using the hand marked paper plan to incorporate the recorded changes into the CAD design file (which may or may not be spatially coordinated). When this process is complete, the as-builts are incorporated into the asset owner’s GIS. This process of transcription and data handling can be convoluted and time consuming, and it also leaves opportunity for mistakes to be introduced.

Issues with as-builts For instance, hand drawings and paper plans often leave themselves open to various interpretations. The person

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entering the changes into the CAD file is not necessarily the person who measured the dimensions, therefore they may misinterpret what the hand drawing shows.

At the asset owner’s end, if an asset’s location is entered into a GIS, the person completing that task is unlikely to be either the person who recorded the measurements in the field, or who incorporated them into the CAD model (if the information has been provided in that format), providing another opportunity to introduce error. In cases where the as-builts are not provided in a CAD format, the person entering the locations into the GIS must manually draft the infrastructure by interpreting the as-built and using it to calculate assets’ geographical coordinates.

Many contractors still use the trusty tape measure as the standard tool for recording as-built measurements in the field. Often this involves measuring the asset’s distance from other landmarks in the area (for instance, the kerb, foothpath, or footprint of a building or other structure).

However, what happens when the points of reference are moved or no longer exist?

In some cases, especially if assets were installed a long time ago, contractors working in the area are given hand marked as-built drawings with these measurements on them. If the objects used to define a buried assets location in space are no longer present, then how can they accurately determine its position? Likewise, if the kerb or footpath has been restored it could be slightly further in

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or out than it was when the measurements were taken, resulting in accidental excavation.

Streamlining the process One potential solution comes in the form of Augview, a fully functioning mobile GIS and augmented reality asset management application that can be used on the mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, that most workers already carry with them.

Augview is a mobile GIS, allowing users to view and edit their asset data from the field, and an augmented reality

application which allows users to visualise underground objects they wouldn’t ordinarily see.

Importantly, the application also features an as-built capture tool, which allows users to plan where new installations will be, and effectively view the new asset in-situ before it is built, allowing users to confirm that the asset footprint is achievable.

Once the asset is built, the documents generated through the as-built capture tool can actually serve as the as-built drawings for the asset. Users can accept the as-built documents into their broader GIS, confident that the data is spatially coordinated. And, as everything is completed through the application, there is no confusion surrounding hand-written notes or scribbles.

The ability to also associate geotagged photos with an as-built asset also significantly reduces the margin for human error.

It’s a simple solution that provides users with a sophisticated outcome.

OFFER YOUR CLIENTS UAV SURVEYING SERVICES NOW SUBCONTRACT YOUR SPATIAL DATA ACQUISITION

The emergence of UAVs set up as Surveying Systems has opened up a range of new products and services that Surveyors can provide to their clients. The start up costs, maintenance, staff training, insurance and compliance mean that the decision to purchase a UAV system is not one every Survey firm can justify.

Overview Surveying Ltd specialise in providing UAV Surveying services directly to clients as well as subcontracting to existing Surveying companies. Owned and operated by an experienced Surveyor, you can be sure that the data you receive has been collected, analysed and tested in accordance with good survey practice.

... Ortho-Referenced Aerial Photography ... Topographical Survey Data ... Volume Analysis ... 3D Surfaces ... Point Cloud Data ... Visit our website to find out more about the process and to see examples of work we have completed. ... Call Jared to find out how we can help you to provide solutions for your clients!

JARED REEVES Bachelor of Surveying Associate Member NZIS

021 174 5685

We use the German made MAVinci Sirius Pro with onboard RTK GPS (no need for ground control points) as well as an independent RTK GPS system to QA the results. We can produce reliable, accurate spatial data and ortho-referenced aerial photography.

We are based in sunny Dunedin, but the portability of our equipment means we are easily able to complete jobs anywhere in the country.

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03 456 2907 12 Kennedy Street St Clair Dunedin 9012 jared@overviewsurveying.co.nz

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Issue 81 March 2015

SHALLOW WATER SURVEYS Maurice Perwick, RPSurv, CPHS1, LLO, Director – Eliot Sinclair Sound velocity profiler being ‘dipped’ in lake survey to determine ‘apparent SVL’.

Shallow water surveys are many and varied in nature and, generally, take place in a constrained, challenging and dynamic environment that requires a high level of seamanship.

Tides, currents and weather are very important factors in shallow water surveys. Assessing the significance of the seabed topology, coastal effects, vegetation, isolated location, available navigable depths and the presence of manmade structures, such as bridges, culverts, seawalls, breakwaters and pipelines, becomes important in deciding how to undertake these surveys, and what type of vessels and gear to configure for the task.

Survey jetboat required for working under bridges and around piles.

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Situational Awareness This is the biggest challenge when working on the water as it is all too easy to become distracted by the overall operation or a computer setting or a data streaming problem. The boat can drift into danger or create a problem for others. It is so important to have the crew dedicated to things nautical to ensure the safety of the ship and those aboard. The pre-launch check list is one thing; the real time monitoring of fuel levels, weather, sea state and places to come ashore in an emergency need to be continually assessed.

The working environment is unpredictable. Waves do break unexpectedly, especially when the seabed shallows suddenly, seabed vegetation and shopping trolleys can

‘Holding steady’ against the current measuring uplift around bridges damaged in earthquake.

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snag the propeller or oars which can cause the vessel to become stuck and about to capsize.

A jetboat can stall when the intake gets choked on weed or ingests sand and needs to be cleared, and will start drifting immediately after the engine is stopped. Eddies, rocks, submerged branches or the transducer grinding along the riverbed can become hazardous to a drifting vessel.

An early change in weather can arrive and require the survey to be abandoned in favour of setting off home or back to shore safely with gear intact and operational - It was only going to be a morning’s work!

Origins, Projections, Geoids, Height Datums (Tides) and Calibration Most topographical and hydrographic surveys use GPS techniques for establishing a base station and site calibration in terms of known local marks and coordinates.

This survey can also establish reference marks in the water or onshore with which to check the on-board navigation and coordinate systems.

The client’s requirements will often dictate against what height datum the final dataset will be referenced. However, for coastal surveys, Chart Datum is a useful Height datum as tidal predictions found in the Nautical Almanac can be used effectively to plan the field work. Of course, some estuaries have considerable lag in tide times and may have unusual tidal streams. These are generally caused by the constraints in the inlets and outlets which give the ocean access to these areas. It can be necessary to generate a modified tide timetable with warnings as to when entrance bars can be crossed with sufficient depth to avoid grounding on the shoals or, at worst, capsize. The LINZ Tidal Almanac and Tidal Officers are very knowledge-

Tide gauge ready for long term logging of estuarine tide in Motueka.

Tide pole (staff) mounted on ladder for reading ‘at will’.

able in these matters and what marks can be used to reference the local datum to Chart Datum.

The final dataset can be adjusted in the vertical before final export if an alternative height datum is required.

‘One of the important aspects to any survey is that it should be able to be carried out using alternative methodologies and achieve the same result.’ Therefore, survey methods should be rigorous and work carried out in terms of an established set of datums, horizontal and vertical.

Geoid correction models should be used when using GPS techniques and checks made to orthometric height control marks to gauge the effectiveness of the Geoid model and also to see if further refinement is necessary in the site calibration transformational parameters.

A tide pole should be established in the water body to enable the tide to be read at will, to check water levels, settings and offset measurements.

Hydrographic Equipment Calibration

Real time Base Station with solar panel – radios can be activated remotely, and data can be polled using a modem.

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Shallow water survey depths would generally be less than 10 metres and may be measured using an Echo Sounder or Altimeter. The latter usually has a fixed sound velocity and no means to adjust for the draft of the transducer below the water level or to set the apparent sound velocity. In some surveys where the water depth variation is less than 4 metres, it may not matter if the ‘apparent sound velocity’ is different from the fixed sound velocity as long as it gives minimal residuals over the depth range and that an accurate draft can be determined. Modern hydrographic software allows for a constant and scale factor to be applied to raw depths to compensate for the draft and the fixed sound velocity respectively.

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Freshwater surveys tend to have a significantly lower sound velocity than coastal sea waters and may generate significant differences in displayed depth when compared to a staff or tape measurement of the water depth.

Usually, a bar is hung horizontally at set depths below the transducer to measure the draft and apparent sound velocity over the water depth range (see photo p. 17). Alternatively, a sound velocity profiler can be used and is more effective in moving water for measuring the apparent sound velocity. The device creates a graph showing the variation of sound velocity correlated to depth and allows a fixed sound velocity to be adopted which minimises any errors in depth due to variations in water temperatures and salinity.

Terrestrial survey techniques can and are used in this environment to great effect but only while the elements are benign. As soon as the water starts to move substantially – in, out, along, up, down – and breaks as waves, the suitability of the equipment and techniques used may need to be questioned.

Echo Sounder Beam Widths and Frequency Echo Sounder transducers have a characteristic beam width, or footprint, and cannot be assumed to be narrow ‘like a laser’. Hence, the footprint size varies with depth.

Transducers can be narrow, normal or wide as required; 200kHz transducers are considered standard, 2.75° beam is narrow, 10° is normal and 20° is wide. 500kHz transducers (high frequency) are sensitive to matter suspended in the water column, but can be more effective in shallow surveys as they can resolve shallower minimum depths below the transducer than a lower frequency transducer.

They can also be used for measuring sediment flock in oxidation ponds. Lower frequencies generally see through this material held in suspension.

Profiling surf zone in ‘breaking’ waters with S6 tracking.

In the Bromley Sewage Treatment Works we used a total station and pole to punch through the ‘crud’ to measure the earthquake damage to the base of the clarifier.

Terrestrial Survey Techniques

Mapping earthquake damage of concrete floor of clarifier at Bromley Treatment Station.

Surveying tidal flats on outgoing tide to avoid incoming flood tide!

(How fast can you run?)

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Out on the oxidation ponds, a combined high frequency Altimeter (Echo Sounder) with RTK was used with Trimble HydroPro Nav to measure to the top of the sludge while a Leica 360 Prism was tracked by Trimble S6 and logged on TSC3 for probing the pond bottom levels. The combined datasets showed the uplift of the pond’s base level and the amount of raw sewage sludge dumped in the ponds when the processing side of the treatment was destroyed.

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Pond bed and sludge level profiling using S6 and High Frequency Altimeter at Bromley Treatment Station. A Gondolier’s straw hat is essential attire!

Reconnaissance Pre-survey site inspections at low water are recommended when carrying out ‘very close’ inshore surveys. Submerged rocks can be marked onshore with cones to alert the sounding crew when on the water. Contact with locals can further inform the surveyor to dangers Broken seawall reconnaissance – otherwise unseen. pre-survey to identify hazards.

Surveys carried out at high water can be used to find safe navigable routes through sandbars when the tide starts to fall. The data can be reduced and made into an overlay (dxf) on the navigation screen to show the safe route and depth available. The real time tide display can indicate when there are safe navigable depths to pass through the shallows if the sea state is calm. Cross lines can be used to tie the various datasets together and to ensure no gaps in the sounding coverage are left. These procedures are essential when using multiple Real time screen shows detailed data vessels of varying capture over ‘Bar’ and chasing the tide draft and size. towards the shore.

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Deliverables – final plan showing safe channel, buoys and Bar depths.

The larger Orion-Cat shown here was mobilised out of Port Nelson each morning to carry out the coastline survey up to the high water mark as the tide permitted. However, contingencies were made to bring the vessel over the bar should the sea state change and make it inappropriate to travel back to Nelson Port. The 4.5 metre spring tides in Tasman Bay have to be utilised to their best advantage to maximise useable time on the water whilst maintaining navigable depth for the vessel.

Tidal Data Real time tide pole checks on the water go a long way to ensuring good quality data is logged and available for post-processing. Redundant measurements, by way of multiple tide recording devices, are also important. The RTK GNSS and GPS receivers generate tidal heights while sounding, and tide pole readings give real evidence of tidal levels. Electronic tide gauges can log and broadcast tides as required. These multiple tide files can be viewed graphically and used to supplement any shortcomings in any one dataset if required.

In river surveys, the terrestrial crew resurvey control marks and adjacent water levels in the vicinity of the sounding boat to provide a backup set of water levels to check the boat derived levels.

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Issue 81 March 2015

Conclusion Survey techniques are required to be many and varied in shallow water surveys, but the datasets must be compatible and any overlap should show consistency of depths or show outliers. The vessels and crew must be appropriate to the operation and operate under the current Maritime New Zealand rules ‘MOSS’ as these classify the work as commercial. A broad level of skills are required in the planning, execution, post-processing and preparation of deliverables.

The marine environment is a great place to work!

Site calibration and checking of Bench Marks and water levels.

Post-processing Soundings are generally run as cross-sections and, depending on the spacing of those lines, may need the addition of break lines to correctly model the DTM. In 12d software projects it is possible to link features in 3D using multiple views to generate these break lines.

Special Presentations Some projects require a more visual approach to capture the imagination of the viewer and to show the extent of a problem. Colour banding of heights, perspective views and modelling of structures can add greatly to the appreciation. Profiles showing a timeline can show migration of dunes and coastal bars or sediment build up.

Contours can show, through their eccentricity, that a uniformity of design has failed. The plan (right) should show concentric contours about the hub of the clarifier. The earthquake uplifted and ruptured the concrete base and destroyed the mechanical functionality of the clarifier.

Presentation of dataset using 3D modelling of structure and riverbed to highlight scour and pile vulnerability.

Contours should be concentric around the hub – variation shows extent of damage of the clarifier base.

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GROW YOUR STAFF...GROW YOUR BUSINESS Tom Emmerson, Expert Facilitator & Marketing Manager, THE Marketing Company Sometimes you can be so focused on the immediate problem that it’s impossible to realise that things could be easier. You’re focused on selling to bring money into your business and you think you can’t possibly afford to take some of that money, and some of that time to learn how to sell more effectively.

More businesses are seeing the value in giving their staff the skills they need to sell and market better. But even so there is still a lot of hesitation around investing in people, and the immediate cost of having people (especially key people) out of the office for any length of time.

“What if we train them and they leave?”

“What if we don’t and they stay?”

Look at the conundrum in dollar terms. The course costs $2,000 for example (or $1,000 with NZTE funding). And a day away from the customer is a day away from selling, let’s assume your best sales people pull in $10,000 a day so that’s a $20,000 loss over two days. There may be some knock-on lost revenue too, a CEO or director may bring in a few thousand a day in support and decision-making. For arguments sake let’s say there’s a total loss to the business of $22,000 over two days out of the office.

That’s a no-brainer. From a commercial sense training is unviable. How can any serious business even consider a two day training course, and those businesses that do it every few months must be absolutely crazy, right? The likes of Coca-cola, Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s, Audi, Microsoft, Google...must all be mad.

But wait...

All those global companies spend millions on training their staff, every year. The amount they invest each year keeps growing too. “Yes but they have the money to train, it’s not fair!”, did you ever consider that it’s the training that helps their staff sell more? They sell more which generates more money, which goes into training, which generates more money, which….Yes. It’s a horrible cycle those guys are trapped in.

Since THE Marketing Company started in 2010 we’ve helped over 6,000 businesses with their training needs.

One of the key questions we ask everyone is “what value do you think this training has added to your business?”.

The answers range from the tens of thousands to the tens of millions and one trend emerges from most. Once they start training, implement the learning and begin to see the changes, they carry on training.

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We have clients that are on rolling contracts spanning years because they know that to keep ahead of the competition the development can never stop.

So let’s revisit our initial cost implication.

We teach a 10% method where if each of five key areas are improved by only 10% the business can almost double its turnover. Can you imagine what your business would do with a 10% increase in turnover? Would that cover the perceived cost of training?

I’m going to assume you’re a tough crowd and that you said ‘no’ to that.

We’ve only covered the fiscal benefit of training but what about something else that also affects profit?

In a study of more than 3,100 U.S. workplaces, the National Centre on the Educational Quality of the Workforce (EQW) found that on average, a 10% increase in workforce education level led to an 8.6% gain in total productivity.

But a 10% increase in the value of equipment increased productivity just 3.4%.

So let’s assume that the training alone doesn’t get your staff to sell more, or keep more customers. We’ve now ascertained that training will increase productivity, and a more productive workforce creates greater efficiencies (lowers costs) but could probably also get more productive at selling.

By investing in your staff they realise they are valued and that you, as a business, are serious about being the best you can be. Also, let’s face it, if someone is looking at two jobs of equal measure but one is going to develop you as an individual which would you rather go for?

You might even start attracting people that want to push themselves and be developed. They might not only push themselves but also your business and before you know it you have heaps of driven people working for you and...

Whoops...you’re accidentally gaining market share and increasing profit.

Now that we’ve identified that training more than pays for itself I think the only question that remains is not “what is the cost of training” but rather, “what will it cost if I don’t train my team?” and that is easier to answer.

Why? Because we can almost guarantee that one of your competitors is looking to gain an edge.

After all, you don’t want them to be the king the machine gun sales rep turns up to who turns around and says “I could really use that.”

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Issue 81 March 2015

F R EE

Sales and Marketing Diagnostic for all NZIS members!

Make more money in your business.

TM

You (may or may not have) heard Ambrose Blowfield speak at the NZIS conference. Hopefully you took away plenty of practical marketing tips about how your business could make more money.

Marketing Quiz

Take action today: Option 1

Call/email THE Marketing Company for a free 1 hour Sales & Marketing Diagnostic ™

Sales Quiz

Option 2

Take one of our free online quizzes Just scan a QR code or visit: THEmarketingcompany.co.nz

Business Quiz

call 0800 427 627 | visit THEmarketingcompany.co.nz | email admin@THEmarketingcompany.co.nz SURVEYING+SPATIAL

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Issue 81 March 2015

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What if there was a brighter way to help your customers...

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Issue 81 March 2015

Orienteering Mapping for Oceania/World Cups 2013 & New Zealand Champs 2014 Bryan Teahan (CoreLogic NZ Ltd), Russell Higham & Jason Markham Over a period of 2 years, an ambitious mapping project was undertaken for two major orienteering carnivals in 2013 and 2014.

In 2013 the Oceania Championships and World Cup Events 1 to 3 took place in the lower North Island organised by the Wellington Orienteering club with the assistance of the Hawkes Bay, Red Kiwis Manawatu, Orienteering Hutt Valley and Orienteering Taranaki. The special and unique areas of Parliament and Government House were included.

These events had a large economic benefit with over 900 competitors including several hundred international visitors with many enjoying extended holidays in New Zealand after the events.

Also, in 2014 the New Zealand Championships were held by the Wellington Orienteering Club with assistance from the Red Kiwis club with over 400 competitors. Extensions were made to the Oceania/World Cups maps along with an event at Ohakea Airbase.

Organising major events like these was never going to be easy especially with so many competitions needing to be organised within a small time frame. For the Oceania Carnival there were 19 events that had to be organised.

What made it harder was the Carnival had to move around the lower North Island. Having five world cup races with exacting requirements placed further pressure on the organisation. For the New Zealand champs, five events were held on four days, with a night champs being held for the first time in New Zealand.

Extensive use of new technology was used throughout the events – with the latest Lidar and orthophotos used as base maps and GPS for field surveying, with electronic punches and live radio links producing instant results, and both waterproof and offset printed maps on the latest SURVEYING+SPATIAL

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Issue 81 March 2015

Lizzie Ingham finished in 3rd place in the Word Cup Sprint Final on January 2013 – the best ever result by a NZ female orienteer.

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digital and offset printers. World Cup events have exacting requirements for organisation, competition rules and mapping. High quality maps with a consistent mapping style were produced to International Orienteering Federation (IOF) mapping specifications.

Over 50 square kilometres was mapped, with 25 events, and 23 new or re-mapped areas. For the Oceania / World Cups carnival, over 12,000 maps were printed with nine areas, 199 courses and 30 layout maps created and 241 PDF files supplied to the printer. Burning the midnight oil was required by many for weeks on end.

Mapping All maps were required to conform to two international specifications for sprint and non-sprint maps. For these events, a standardised symbol set was created in the orienteering software (OCAD).

There was a wide variety of base information available in the form of Lidar contour and DEM data, local council kerb and building outlines, GPS data like tracks and walkways, orthophotos and aerial imagery which ranged from high to low, existing orienteering maps for some areas, topographic 20m contours if Lidar or photogrammetry was not available. A base map was created bringing together the best information available. The mapper would then fieldwork the area laboriously, sometimes taking hundreds of hours walking over and mapping every distinct feature using GPS or measuring distances by eye.

What follows are some examples of the technically demanding mapping required.

Waikawa Beach – World Cup 1 Middle Distance The following sample from Waikawa Beach shows some of the differences between a base map and the finished product and the complex work required to produce an orienteering map.

Figure 1: Lidar contours compared with Final map

Shown above is a comparison between Lidar (2.5m contours) and the finished map. Note that extra work was required in flatter areas, and survey by eye was required near the beach as sand dunes shifted by prevailing winds.

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The index contour was used to make it easier for competitors to see the complex landforms. Generalisation of the complex area required numerous different visits by the mapper, planner, controller, national controller and international advisor before final map was printed – a contentious area may have been visited more than 20 times before the final shape was decided upon. Thirty eight different versions of this map were created. Accentuation was also required in some areas as an orienteer sees relative height not absolute height.

Ohakea Air Base – New Zealand Sprint Champs For the Ohakea Airbase map, cadastral drawings were imported into OCAD via DXF format including pavements, kerbs and building outlines. No suitable height data was available however it was satisfactory to interpolate 5m contours using topomap 20m contours as index heights.

Aerial imagery from WAMS.org was used for desktop survey. Fieldwork combined hand-drawing on tracing paper over printed maps along with digital capture of point-features, linear feature vertexes and tracks using a Garmin Montana 650 touchscreen handheld GPS. Data management was undertaken using Garmin Basecamp application.

Parliament and Government House – World Cup 2 and Oceania Sprint Champs Wellington City Council (WCC) 1m DEM data was used to generate a 2.5m contour interval as required for World Cup sprint maps. WCC kerb lines and building outlines were used but extensive work was required to add canopies, split-levels and stairs. The building outlines from WCC were mapped from above and these had to be adjusted to the ground level where there were overhangs.

WCC GPS tracks and walkways were used but had to be adjusted as the tracks weren’t accurate enough.

High resolution recent orthophotos were used to accurately define point features and vegetation.

Extensive smoothing of contours was required from the Lidar as the dense data contained too many points resulting in jagged contours which the orienteer could not discern. Contours which meandered across playing fields were offset to the side of the field near a significant relative change in height which the orienteer could see.

All walls had to be mapped either uncrossable or crossable. Out-of-bounds residential and vegetation areas had to be clearly defined and marked both on the map and out in the field via tapes.

Each map required many different versions before the final was produced with hundreds of hours of field survey and field checking. For the Parliament map, more than 20 course versions were created by the planner, with planning taking over 400 hours.

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Fusilier – Oceania Event 1, ANZ School Relays, New Zealand Long Distance Champs/Relays For this map, photogrammetry was paid for as no Lidar was available. The area is currently covered in beautiful runnable pines, however the photogrammetry was created using old aerials on clear land flown in October 1968 at a height of 16,400’ ASL. This results in a base map which requires extensive rework by eye and GPS to get the correct sand dune shapes.

A major requirement was that IOF standard symbols be used at a map scale of 1:15000. For most international maps this requirement is not a problem, but New Zealand sand dunes, which are extremely complex, require a high level of expertise to show the correct shapes – too little and the map is too generalised, too much detail and the orienteer cannot read the map. This makes the process more of an art than a science.

To create this map the digital photogrammetry was printed and tracing paper or drafting film was placed over it with coloured pencils used to show changes in the field.

The field draft is then scanned and digitised to produce a draft map. Access to the area was usually by foot or mountain bike. For this map, the fieldwork on paper was only done when it was not raining requiring planning around the weather. For other maps, because of severe time constraints, mapping was performed in all weathers using waterproof pencils and waterproof drafting film.

Other maps were mapped using digital methods only – a GPS hooked up to a hand-held tablet device using mobile mapping software – this had the added advantage of not requiring the fieldwork to be digitised later however this method could not be used in rainy weather (without the use of expensive rugged devices).

The mapper’s job is to represent the map in orienteering terms, showing subtle landforms like small knolls and depressions, and detailed vegetation runnability, as well as all the other normal map features. Every square metre of a map needs to be eyeballed and interpreted.

When producing this map, which covered 9 sq kilometres, the mapper walked about 300km, approximately 20% of which was biking to and from survey areas.

Photogrammetry quality varies, it might not show the detail required or is sometimes different to the real terrain. For this reason a handheld GPS (Garmin GPSmap 62s) was used to map various features. GPS accuracy was variable under tree cover so a combination of common sense, experience, laser range finder, and compass bearings has to be used to accurately pin point features.

Sometimes in the complex areas, many visits to the same area were required. For this area the field survey required 250 hours work along with 100 hours for cartography equating to about 40 hours per square kilometre.

A draft map is produced from the first survey this always requires field checking. For international events, the field checking can take almost as long as the initial field survey to obtain the quality and excellence required. For this map, the mapper checked the draft using a tablet with independent GPS (Nexus 7, bluetooth GPS tracker, and Momap software). This was new technology and will be used to replace pencil and paper for future maps.

Figure 3: Comparison between original photogrammetry and final map Figure 2: GPS Plots and Tracks made during field survey

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Figure 4: LINZ Topo50, 20m contours Base Map,5m contours interpolated Final Map

Mt Lees – New Zealand Night Champs

A successful result

A detailed base map was not available for this area so to save costs a base map was created from the LINZ Topo50 map series and aerial photography. The Topo50 contours were interpolated from 20m to 5m requiring extra manual adjusting of the contours in the field.

The mapping was a superb effort and the events were a resounding success with everything running smoothly. Many international competitors complimented the organisation with some commentators highlighting the professionalism and use of technology. The International Orienteering Federation (IOF) praised the high quality of the events and technical excellence of the maps. For all the events, there were no errors or protests and only positive feedback was received which is rare for orienteering events.

In conclusion, it is clear that orienteering surveying has many different requirements when compared to traditional surveying: • Base maps are compiled from a variety of high to low quality sources

Live Results A local wifi network around the event centre meant people could access results anywhere in the event arena and car park. Live results were uploaded to the web so people overseas could see how their favourite elite runner was performing.

Radio relays from selected controls were used to relay intermediate results to the finish. Large LCD screens were showing all the action as it was happening live. The finish line was hooked up to the results screens so that results were shown on the screens just after competitors finished. The use of this innovative technology greatly enhanced the buzz and excitement for the spectators at

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• Maps require hundreds of hours of field surveying and checking to end up with quality maps • Maps have to conform to exacting international orienteering standards • Mapping is sometimes more of an art than a science to show correctly what the orienteer sees Based on the positive feedback and compliments that were received for these events, the mapping was ‘just right’ and New Zealand now has a well-deserved reputation for excellent mapping and for hosting outstanding international events.

Bryan Teahan (MNZIS, GISP-AP) is a senior geospatial consultant at CoreLogic NZ Ltd and has been involved in orienteering mapping for over 35 years.

the finish.

Russell Higham is a self employed semi professional mapmaker (fieldwork and cartography) for Orienteering, Bushcraft tuition, LandSAR exercises, and farm maps.

Tim Robertson, current World Junior Champion

Jason Markham came to mapping from an engineering background and his orienteering achievements include a national long distance title as well as representing New Zealand at several orienteering world cups and a world championship.

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Issue 81 March 2015

• LEGAL

COLUMN

BUILDING FOR CONSUMERS Stephanie Harris & Nicola Harrison, Glaister Ennor Solicitors 2015 brings with it significant changes to the way in which building contractors need to deal with their customers. The Building (Residential Consumer Rights and Remedies) Regulations 2014 and certain sections of the Building Amendment Act 2013 came into force on 1 January 2015. In addition, changes to the Fair Trading Act 1986 that prohibit unfair contract terms will come into force in March 2015. The combined result is that all building contractors (which includes plumbers, electricians and other tradespeople) will need to review and change their sales processes and re-write their residential building contracts.

The intention behind this legislation is dual. First, it is meant to help consumers distinguish between contractors on the basis of performance, rather than price alone by requiring contractors to disclose certain information. The hope is that cowboy-contractors will be less able to undercut performing contractors on price alone as their track record must be disclosed and will be up for comparison too. This should result in increased building quality across the board. Second, these consumer protection measures should result in consumers placing less heavy reliance on building consent authorities for building quality and should incentivise contractors to take more responsibility for the quality of their work. As a result, we should see a fundamental behavioral change on the part of both consumers and building contractors.

The new consumer protection measures include: • Mandatory written contracts for residential building work costing $30,000 or more (including GST) with mandatory content; • A requirement for building contractors to provide checklists and disclose certain information for residential building work $30,000 or more (including GST) or whenever they are asked for this (even for lower value works);

• Infringement fees, compensation and damages for breaches.

How does this affect Surveying & Spatial Professionals?

These changes affect all property professionals, including surveying and spatial services professionals because: 1. Depending on your client (ie. home owner) and the work you undertake for them, you may well be caught by the Building (Residential Consumer Rights and Remedies) Regulations 2014 and you will definitely have to comply with the Fair Trading Act amendments.

2. In any event, your developer clients must comply and this requires that they understand and know what they must have available for disclosure in terms of plans and surveying information and title limitations and issues.

Pre-Contract Information

• Deemed provisions in residential building contracts if they do not contain the mandatory minimum content;

A disclosure statement and checklist now have to be provided for residential building contracts if the price is $30,000 (inc GST) and upwards or if the customer simply requests it. You may be fined $500 (and up to $2,000) if you do not provide this pre-contract information. Note that only the main contractor need provide this information; sub-contractors generally do not.

• Prohibitions against unfair contract terms;

Disclosure Statement

• Post completion information that must be provided;

This is contained in Schedule 1 to the Building (Residential Consumer Rights and Remedies) Regulations 2014 (Regulations). You cannot make any changes to this form (other than answering the questions of course!) and you

• Implied warranties and remedies; • A 12 month mandatory defects maintenance period; and SURVEYING+SPATIAL

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may not even add a business logo or contact details to it. The information it includes are contact and entity details, key contact person details, details of licensing, experience, qualifications and skills, insurance details and information about any guarantees or warranties offered.

Beefing up your experience, qualifications and including references will help make this more of a sales tool.

The Department of Housing and Building (DHB) has requested that even if a question does not apply to you you need to retain the question, write “none of these” or “not applicable” as your response and then provide an explanation. For example, under “Type of Business” you could write “my business is none of these entities, it is a trust called X and the trustees are X and X”.

Providing misleading information or knowingly leaving out information from your disclosure statement can result in a fine on conviction of up to $20,000.

The Checklist This is contained in Schedule 2 of the Building (Residential Consumer Rights and Remedies) Regulations 2014 (“Regulations”). This contains a list of matters for your customer to consider. It gives them advice on compliance with the Building Act 2004, explains project management generally, recommends researching the building contractor, cautions consumers on pricing and payment arrangements, confirms that there must be a written contract, explains the implied terms, recommends clear communication and decision making and gives information about resolving disputes. This is meant to inform and empower your average consumer.

Your Contract If the cost of the building work is $30,000 (inc GST) or more, it must: • be in writing • be dated as at signing by both parties • contain the names of the parties • contain each parties physical address, postal address, address for service, contact telephone numbers, email address • describe the address/location of the work site • contain a description of the building work (materials, persons undertaking work, persons supervising, responsibility for consents/approvals) • contain expected start and completion dates • specify the contract price or method of its calculation • describe payments, installments, triggers • set out the terms of payment, invoicing and receipts

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• set out how notices can be given pursuant to the agreement • contain variation mechanisms • describe how delays will be dealt with • prescribe how defects will be remedied (including a reference to the implied 12 month warranty discussed below and the other warranties implied by the Building Act) • contain dispute resolution provisions • refer to the disclosure documentation (the statement and checklist discussed above) If you have a written contract, but it doesn’t contain all the above listed matters, then the Regulations will effectively patch up the missing parts of your agreement by implying the default provisions in Schedule 3.

If you do not have a written contract at all, then the Regulations steps in and your contract is deemed to contain all the terms set out in Schedule 3 (discussed below).

That will control responsibility for consents and CCCs, how variations can be made, payment terms, subcontractors, dispute resolution and notices.

Fines of up to $2,000 can be imposed for failing to meet these mandatory contractual requirements. The DHB say on their website these fines are currently set at $500.

Fair Trading Act – Unfair Terms From 17 March 2015 clauses declared to be unfair become unenforceable and become an offence if included in your contracts going forwards. Any existing consumer contracts you have that are renewed or varied (even by a price increase) become subject to these new obligations.

The Commerce Commission can review your contracts and apply to the Courts to have terms in your standard form consumer contracts declared unfair and unenforceable. If you use terms declared unfair, fines can be imposed of up to $600,000 for a company or $200,000 for an individual.

Terms used in consumer contracts must not cause significant imbalance, must be reasonably necessary to protect your legitimate interests and must not cause detriment to the other party if relied on. Contracts must be transparent, easy to read and understand. This requires a re-write in plain and simple English and without the traditional legalese. Important points can be brought to customers’ attention by placement on the front page, the use of colour or the addition of graphics. Online contracts should have functions added to them to ensure consumers are engaging with them and considering the most important terms, rather than simply pressing “accept”.

The unfair terms prohibition only covers standard form contracts, so in cases where you have significantly negotiated the terms and conditions or had a bespoke contract

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drawn up, that will (in most cases) not be a breach of these provisions. But where you use a standard contract or impose terms and conditions across the board – those will all need to be revised to ensure they do not contain any of the “grey list” terms that will likely be deemed unfair or those provisions that are deemed unfair.

Implied Warranties Every new contract in 2015 for residential building works or the sale of newly built household units or those under construction will contain mandatory implied warranties of: • proper and competent building works • compliance with plans, specifications and building consents • building material suitability • building materials are new (unless otherwise stated in the agreement) • legal compliance • reasonable care and skill • completion by specified dates (for contracts with no dates, a reasonable time) • suitability for occupation upon completion • fitness for purpose • expected nature and quality While the warranties given to consumers under the Building Act 2004 remain unchanged (these were previously recorded in s.397 of the Act), as do consumers rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993, the 12 month defects remediation period (discussed below) means that the timeframe for those rights is now concrete and the onus is now on the builder to prove he or she is not liable for them. This gives consumers an undisputable timeframe and a prima facie claim – empowering tools.

Specific remedies are given to consumers in the Building Act for breach of these mandatory warranties. The client can require remediation (discussed below) and if that does not address the issue, the client has a self-help remedy where they can get someone else to complete the remedial work and then charge the builder for it. The client can also sue for damages. If the problem cannot be remedied or if it is a substantial breach (and there is a provision describing what “substantial breach” means), the client can seek compensation and/or cancel the contract and/or seek damages depending on the scenario.

Defects Remediation Consumers and subsequent owners can, from 1 January 2015 call for defects remediation on a “no questions asked basis” within one year of completion. This won’t apply to

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work undertaken before 1 January 2015 or for work undertaken pursuant to agreements entered into before 1 January 2015. The 12 month period runs from when the work is completed. While usually this is obvious, going forwards it would be good practice for builders to confirm to consumers in writing when the work is completed.

The Act now presumes that the defect is attributable to work undertaken by the contractor. If the builder denies the fault was his or hers, it is now up to them to prove why that is the case.

There are exceptions for defects caused by matters outside of human control (earthquakes for example), acts or omissions made by persons for whom the contractor is not responsible and failures on behalf of the consumer to carry out normal maintenance and failures to carry out repairs as soon as the defect became apparent.

Note that because contractors are going to be responsible to consumers for the actions of their subcontractors, it is important that sub-contractor terms are amended going forwards to contain mirror defects remediation obligations that the head-contractor can enforce if defects later become apparent.

Post Completion Information After works are completed, building contractors must supply: • copies of live insurance policies relating to the works; • copies of guarantees and certain information relating to these; and • certain maintenance information.

In summary, the amendment to the Act, the Regulations and the changes to the Fair Trading Act mean contractors need to develop pre-contract information processes, train sales staff, update their existing contracts and establish processes for providing consumers and the relevant consenting authority with the post completion information.

For further advice, contact the writers.

Nicola Harrison is an Associate at Glaister Ennor works alongside Stephanie Harris, Joint Managing Partner on the commercial team. She has over 16 years’ experience in property and commercial law in both NZ and the UK. They work in tandem in the property and commercial team and have a holistic approach to client’s requests, tailoring advice, agreements and strategies in a way that meets client requirements and streamlines work and revenue flows. Nicola and Stephanie ensure that the commercial goal is kept foremost in mind and achieved in the most time and cost effective manner possible. For further information or advice, contact them at nicola.harrison@glaisterennor.co.nz and stephanie.harris@glaisterennor.co.nz .

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Issue 81 March 2015

NZIS Professional Streams Explained Jan Lawrence, NZIS Professional Streams have been a focus for NZIS – in 2014 NZIS has been busy getting them operational to support both membership growth and members’ special areas of interest. In 2015 Professional Streams will become the source of knowledge in specialist areas for NZIS and the public. Members can expect to see them become very proactive; they will be leading the training and CPD requirements for their members and have a strong presence and visibility at future conferences and in all our publications.

The streams will provide a forum for members – giving them a voice. They will act in an advisory capacity not only on standards, the law, qualifications and certification but also on CPD requirements to NZIS Board, Council and CEO. A summary of the role of the Professional Streams is as follows: • Act as an advisory group to Council, Board and the CEO • Develop policies for standards, admissions and qualifications for Council approval • Set standards • Provide assessment and certification • Point of contact for CPD – identify requirements/ need • Co-ordinate Professional Stream

STREAM

• Co-ordinate Special Interest Groups which are attached to their Stream • Provide a forum for members • Develop and retain relevant knowledge • Source information for voice of NZIS • Liaise with tertiary institutions • Provide leadership for Branch related stream support • Update the Terms of Reference for each individual stream Becoming part of a stream will ensure that members enjoy the benefits of a wider range of events that will allow increased participation in advocacy, CPD and training to meet their organisational and individual needs. Topics will cover all of the individual professional streams, and be at both national and regional levels. Non surveying specific topics such as; business skills, ethics, health and safety and risk planning to name a few will also be offered during 2015.

There are currently six professional streams available for NZIS members to join. These are Cadastral, Positioning and Measurement, Engineering Surveying, Land Development and Urban Design, Hydrographic and Spatial Professional Stream. The areas of specialisation and interest covered by each stream are shown in the table below.

SPECIALISATION/INTEREST • Urban Design

• Land Investigation

• Land Development Engineering

• Development Economics

• Land planning

• Project Management

• Contract Administration

• Spatial Planning

• Cadastral Surveying and Spatial practice

• Land tenure

• Land law

• Land information systems

• Land administration

• Geodesy

• Remote Sensing

• GNSS

• Photogrammetry

• Laser Scanning

• Spatial Data Infrastructure

• Engineering surveying

• Positioning and measurement

• Mining surveying

• Monitoring structures

• Hydrography

• Marine exploration

• Marine construction • Geographic Information Systems

• Spatial Analysis

• Cartography

We encourage all members to visit the NZIS website http://www.surveyors.org.nz and click on “your dashboard” to register your interest in a professional stream.

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OBSERVATION COORDINATES David Goodwin, National School of Surveying In New Zealand’s surveying past, the technology of the day captured data in the form of directions and distances and it would have made more sense to use the term “observation vectors” than “observation coordinates”. However, today both our data capture and information display technologies are more in line with coordinates, from which vectors can be inferred where necessary.

Don Grant, the outgoing Surveyor General, asked in Issue 77 whether the best 1950s cadastral system is still the best form of cadastre for New Zealand in the 21st century, and although we would have to answer “no” to that, the details of how to change our survey rules and reform our admirable but vector-based Landonline system are not trivial. I would argue that, as we position ourselves for a 3D National Cadastre and aspire to smart and robust data for our towns and cities, six principles emerge that we should consider seriously if we want our national cadastre to catch the same wave on which smart phones and Google Earth are riding: 1. Retain the monument-based cadastre principle.

Physical marks, if unmoved, should continue to have the greatest weight in evidence not only on grounds of equity but also on practical grounds including earth movement.

2. Require an observation coordinate file of both surveyed and adopted marks to accompany each submitted survey and be made available for subsequent surveys. This would give the same accuracy for surveys going into the system and coming out, it would prevent copying errors and avoid repetition of work in ray-trace and missing line calculations, and it would be in a format uploadable to GNSS, Total Stations and CAD. Such coordinates would not be “legal coordinates,” they would merely be survey evidence from a particular epoch in the same way that vectors currently are.

More details are given in the article “An alternative cadastral survey dataset” in the New Zealand Surveyor, No. 300, 2010.

3. Vectors should no longer be required on survey plans. Depiction of vectors made sense where

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positions were still captured as vectors in the past, but is anomalous in conjunction with technologies such as GNSS (again, see samples in NZ Surveyor No. 300).

4. Survey marks in an approved CSD that are surveyed, checked to a prescribed standard and accepted as not having moved enough to make a material difference to property rights, should supersede earlier evidence. Where marks have coordinates on a more recent survey, there should be no need to go back to earlier origin information, which will, in general, be inferior.

5. All new boundary marks and also resurveyed old marks should have well-defined centres. In other words, either new generation marks should be used or else wooden pegs should be tacked.

This has nothing to do with imposing unrealistically high boundary standards, it would solely be a means of densifying control for use in redefinition or partition surveys.

6. Similarly, boundary marks and witness marks should always be surveyed and checked from an independent set up, and the resulting best weighted position should be given equal status with control such as traverse stations. The independent coordination requirement is no longer onerous given the ease of GNSS and Total Station fixes, and there is no reason why the resulting position should be inferior to the control used. This requirement would densify control and so (a) give more options for finding which marks are disturbed and which unmoved and (b) in some cases would avoid detailed mathematical modelling where there is earth movement.

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Issue 81 March 2015

MOMOTE AERODROME SURVEY

Neil Gunn, Technical Director-Survey, Beca Ltd Neil Gunn, Technical Director-Survey, Beca Ltd

Introduction If you were to stick a pin in every spot around the globe where New Zealand surveyors have practised their ‘art’, the results would be very interesting. I suspect New Zealand surveyors might rightly conclude that the whole world is theirs to explore and conquer. Waves of surveyors have worked in far-flung places and, having just finished reading 100 Fathoms Square (the interesting adventures of Bruce Alexander and Larry Wordsworth in Tonga), I was inspired to write about the project work two Beca surveyors (Peter Baker and Joe O’Connor) carried out on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea in October 2014.

Background In June 2011, the Papua New Guinea National Airports Corporation awarded Beca a contract to project manage a series of airport upgrades. The works typically involved a review on how the airport was used, a proposed programme of required upgrades including infrastructure and navigation, and approvals, design and construction.

Local consultants handled the survey component of the contract where possible, but in August 2014, Beca got the opportunity to undertake a survey at Momote Airport.

The scoping documents received were ignored for the most part because the contents were too generic. Fortunately, we were able to develop a good understanding of the design requirements as the designers of the upgrade works were on hand to clarify all aspects of their works

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(runway lengthening and rehabilitation, construction of new terminal buildings and a perimeter security fence).

This led to a practical scope and a sound technical proposal for the survey works. One of the first steps in this process had of course been to jump onto the Internet to figure out exactly where the Momote airstrip was located.

Where would we be without Google Earth?

In early July, the work was approved and planning started immediately.

Geography / Brief history Manus Island is located about 300km north-east of the Papua New Guinea mainland. Measuring approximately 100km by 25km, it’s the largest island on the north-west corner of the Bismarck Sea and has a population of 50000.

Momote Airport is situated at the eastern end of the island with an average of two flights a day going to and from Port Moresby or Lae via Focke F100 aircraft.

The island saw action in World War II, with a Japanese presence from 1942 to 1944 when the Allied Forces reclaimed the island. The British Pacific Fleet was based there for some time after that.

Manus featured in the news last year for riots and a death at an Australian-funded detention centre, built to house and process Australia-bound asylum seekers. An Australian company operate the centre with an annual budget in the region of $50 million.

There is some eco-tourism on the island, mainly involving diving and snorkelling.

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Manus Island

Proposed survey The existing asphalt runway was starting to fail and it was not long enough for the planes using it. Concerns about climate change and the need to minimise construction risk influenced the basic design philosophy, which was to raise the existing runway by as much as 0.5m by simply building a new runway on top. Once we understood this, it was clear that the need for ultra-precise levels on the runway (as stipulated in the original survey specifications) and hardstand was redundant. This eliminated high density scanning or any methodology involving precise levels as options for consideration.

We reviewed the flight schedules and knew there would be large periods of the day with no flights. And any surveyor who’s worked airside at a busy airport will understand the frustration of incredibly short windows for work time - the quiet schedule was a bonus! It wasn’t clear whether the Australian Air Force (in association with the Detention Centre) were regular users of the runway, but enquiries suggested they weren’t likely to affect survey progress.

From Google Earth we noted that several tracks appeared to cross the runway strip – something quite common in less secure runways in the Pacific. We were initially concerned about security on the island, but thanks to a combination of local knowledge from Beca engineers and our medical backup suppliers (SOS International), the work site was deemed safe.

The survey scope included four basic elements: • a topographical survey of the extents required to support the design for the proposed works

The survey area included the full runway strip (which terminated at the tidal lagoon at each end), the taxiway and hardstand areas, and the terminal building. The proposed extents were widened on one side (which was covered in secondary bush) to include the area for a new terminal building. All available information indicated that the survey area was no more than 5–10m above sea level.

A key component of the upgrade works was the construction of a secure perimeter fence, and for this purpose, it was critical that our survey was in terms of the local cadastre.

Our counterpart engineers in Port Moresby provided a scanned image of a single cadastral plan that defined the airport parcel. It was mostly legible and appeared to have ties to marks located in the runway centreline. We anticipated reasonable success with finding a connection between our work and these centreline marks.

We also received several old control plans dating from the 1980s that were surveyed by the Royal Australian Survey Corps. Having worked with considerably less data on similar projects, we felt we had enough information to achieve a result on the ground. There was certainly no going back to site for a repeat visit on this project.

Trip Planning Medical advice from International SOS suggested that malaria was a threat on the island. On their recommendation

• connection of the survey data to a recognised datum, and in particular to sea level • the establishment (or confirmation) of sufficient control marks for construction set-out work • a connection to the local cadastre to ensure the topographic detail was related to the boundaries.

[The relationship of the proposed perimeter fence to the underlying boundary was not known with any confidence prior to the survey.]

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The view from the bush area back over the runway strip

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One of the key boundary marks was located in a swamp – with significant help from local support

we purchased mosquito proof socks, trousers and long sleeve shirts impregnated with a chemical to discourage insects. Both Peter and Joe had travelled overseas within the previous 12 months, so their inoculations were up-todate and the doctor gave them the ‘thumbs up’ to travel.

More control and cadastral information would’ve been nice, but we felt we had the minimum information necessary to complete the work. We were also hopeful of picking up some more data whilst in Port Moresby, but we weren’t holding our breath.

In terms of methodologies and equipment planning, we were constrained by how much luggage we could carry for the Port Moresby to Momote leg.

Our initial thoughts were to send two surveyors capable of working independently while still supportive of each other. We considered using a Real Time Kinematic (RTK) system, but given the remoteness of the site, the unknown quantum of bush survey and other unknown factors, we decided to use two robotic total stations. We also decided on a precise level approach to confirm relative heights for the existing benchmarks. Our bar code staves were too long to fit into the travel bags, so the team reluctantly took an optical level and micrometer. We only took two tripod legs (given their weight and size), and light, backsight tripods with alligator clips.

Mountaineers planning an ascent must face similar challenges – extra gear means extra weight, versus insufficient gear and lack of critical supplies. Fortunately this wasn’t a life and death scenario!

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Our communication plan between Momote and New Zealand was based on email, and ultimately a combination of text messages and phone calls proved sufficient.

Local internet charges were prohibitive.

Momote Joe and Peter had an early morning departure from Auckland Airport which was followed by a transit in Brisbane, before going onto Port Moresby where they were met a Beca engineer based in the country. He picked Peter and Joe up from the airport, deposited them at the nearby

Pete modelling the latest in survey fashion

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hotel, and strongly suggested they didn’t leave the hotel compound. The extensive security measures, barbed wire fence, armed guards, and recent news that a policeman had been murdered by an angry village mob, reinforced that Port Moresby probably wasn’t a great place for casual site-seeing.

The survey team, departed the following day without any incidents. They arrived in Momote, picked up the rental jeep, briefly met the local airport staff and headed into Lorengau, the main town on Manus – a bumpy 45 minute drive away.

The next day the survey works had an excellent start, with the airport staff showing the team the five local benchmarks. Subsequent horizontal traversing and precise levelling proved that the benchmarks were in agreement to better than 10mm which removed one of the risk factors at an early stage.

The benchmarks consisted of metal plaques set in a concrete collar, and given the excellent agreement we found with the published values, the marks were obviously quite stable.

The surveyors then split up, working independently.

Joe captured the detail along the runway strip and Peter concentrated on the bush areas and the detail around the terminal and hardstand. Both really appreciated the support given by the airport staff, including the use of their fridge to store food and drink! Local staff were engaged to cut lines through the bush at 30m centres.

Having completed the main control traverse Peter and Joe were able to complete trial calculations, however no connection could be found between the control marks and the cadastral data.

Assistance from local staff with locating several boundary and traverse marks was invaluable. The worst misclose for the underlying boundary work was about 1m. At the northern end of the site an old boundary mark was located (refer photo) – it was a 44 gallon drum filled with concrete with a pin placed on the top. Sadly this mark was much worse for wear and unable to support any reasonable definition in the area.

As it transpired, the proposed perimeter fence was located well within the land owned by the airport, and the significance of the boundary information (including the 1m misclose) became less significant.

Joe surveyed several water levels on the coastlines at either end of the airstrip. This included low tide levels to help us confirm the relationship of the site levels to the sea level datum.

Pete noted several World War II artefacts while surveying in the bush and is now the proud owner of an old army water bottle with 1942 stamped on it.

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Joe surveying low tide positions at the southern end of the runway

Processing and deliverables The processing of the data files went very smoothly as a result of the good control base. Standard library files were used together with mapping routines in 12D to produce a layered 3D model. We ultimately held all the existing control values fixed in the adjustment. The contour surface produced was of high quality, although we did conclude that the bush contours required a larger interval (0.5m) to look sensible. The final deliverable was a 2D PDF version, a 3D DWG version and a survey report.

One of the most useful background documents on climate and sea level change was sourced from the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). In June 2006, they undertook work in Papua New Guinea and their results were very useful in understanding tidal information. Interestingly, the levels observed were clearly in line with the mean sea level datum. However, we found the value for mean sea level was not zero (as you might expect), but 0.66m, which agreed with AusAID’s work.

Both Peter and Joe noted the relative absence of utility features on site. Working in an urban New Zealand environment, you come across any number of plinths, manholes, trench lines and paint markings. At Momote , there was a notable absence of these utility services.

Conclusions The end of project review reached several conclusions, with the only significant one being that shorter portable bar codes staves would be useful for future overseas work involving large amounts of precise levelling.

The author, Neil Gunn, is a Technical Director with Beca Ltd in Auckland. He’s spent a good decade enjoying life overseas, working in Malaysia and Brunei.

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Issue 81 March 2015

• UNIVERSITY

HAPPENINGS

A NEW YEAR Christina Hulbe, Dean, National School of Surveying 2015 is off to a busy start in the School of Surveying. As many of you will know, we hired a new Lecturer in geodesy and geospatial science last year, Dr. Robert Odolinski.

Robert arrived in early January and is now preparing to teach Geodetic Reference Systems and Network Analysis (SURV302), in semester 1. Later, he will add coordination of the third year field course (SURV399) and modules in other papers to his repertoire.

The interview and selection process was, on my view, excellent. A diverse group of applicants expressed interest in the position and the School of Surveying. We invited representatives of the professional community and our students to participate in the process, and the insights provided by both groups were important to our deliberations. The OUSSA executive committee collected student reflections on the candidate presentations, and then met with me to consider the candidates, the process, and the importance of new hires. I was thoroughly impressed with their thoughtfulness and interest in the future success of the School.

We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Odolinski to our academic staff. Robert earned his BSc in Geomatics at the University of Gävle and his MSc in Geodesy and Geomatics at the Royal Institute of Technology, both in Sweden.

For his doctoral work at Curtin University in Perth, Robert developed mathematical models to combine different GNS systems together in order to achieve better accuracy than is possible with single system solutions, for a variety of positioning applications (for example, Odolinski R, Teunissen PJG, Odijk D (2014) Combined BDS, Galileo, QZSS and GPS single-frequency RTK. GPS Solutions, doi: 10.1007/s10291-014-0376-6).

When I began my own postgraduate studies, civilian applications of the U.S. Global Positioning System were a relatively novel idea. Years before the GPS constellation was complete, geoscientists like my MSc advisers were developing new ways to work within the limitations and applying the new satellite capability in locations both exotic and mundane. They could see the possibilities and were busy making them a reality. In North America, it seemed to me that you couldn’t visit a tectonically interesting

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place without finding a postgraduate student camped out next to a tripod bearing a big, saucer-shaped antenna.

Today, there are more than eighty satellites representing several national systems, the kit is smaller and smarter every year, and GNSS applications are flourishing. It’s an excellent time to be thinking about how to push ahead in both the theory and application of precise satellite positioning.

The value in multi-GNSS is intuitive. Eighty satellites today and close to 100 by the end of the decade mean more lines of sight and more information nearly everywhere in the world. The number of satellites in view is increasing more quickly in Asia and Oceania than anywhere else and while New Zealand is a bit farther east than would be ideal on the map of global coverage, we still benefit. The animation of satellite visibility over time posted by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency at the Mulit-GNSS Demonstration Campaign website (http://www.multignss. asia/campaign.html) is worth watching.

Intuitive, of course, does not necessarily mean easy.

Considerable theoretical development is required to transform data from the different systems into useful positioning solutions. Data diversity brings challenges but also opportunities and I expect that Robert Odolinski will write more about this for a future issue of Surveying+Spatial. For now, just look fondly back on your Survey Maths and Network Adjustment papers…it all started there.

Looking forward, it’s research like Robert’s that transforms what is possible into what is practical for the full spectrum of GNSS users.

You may have also seen our advertisement for a Professional Practice Fellow (PPF) in GIS and Geospatial Analysis. I will bring you news of the outcome in due course.

The objective of the new PPF position is to support a range of topics within geospatial science, with an emphasis on professional practice, emerging technology, and interdisciplinary frameworks. In this, we recognise both the importance of geospatial applications outside the research realm, as well as the School’s role in providing specialist support to our students and to colleagues across campus.

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Issue 81 March 2015

• PERSPECTIVE

A PATH TO PROGRESS? Julia Glass (Licensed Cadastral Surveyor, Harrison & O’Sullivan Ltd) & Phil Rhodes (Vice President NZIS) Further to the drop in the number of graduates sitting For an emerging surveyor, after four years at Survey the Professional Entrance Exams, it is also a well-estabSchool, the prospect of further years of study to become lished fact that the period of time between graduating a Licensed Cadastral Surveyor, and gain full voting memPerspective from Survey School and sitting the Professional Entrance bership of the NZIS as well as full time work, can be a Exams has extended. The requirement for sitting the Prorather daunting prospect. This reality has become a new fessional Entrance Exams is a minimum of 24 months area of concern for employers and the Institute. In the last experience in various disciplines. Yet, figures from NZIS five years, there has been a very clear trend towards fewJulia G lass, L icensed C adastral S urveyor, H arrison &

O ’Sullivan L td show that the average time graduates take, in the four er graduates becoming licensed and passing through the prior to 2014, istactually 5 years and 7 months. This Professional Entrance Examination process.

In addition, For an emerging surveyor, after four years at Survey School, the prospect years of further years of study o is a considerable length of time and not what the prothose who do choose to complete the process are taking a become a Licensed Cadastral Surveyor, and gain full voting membership of the NZIS as well as full time work, can be a of rather prospect. This reality has become cess a new area of It concern for intends. is imperative for young surveyors to make significant length timedaunting to do so. employers and the Institute. In the last five years, there has been a very clear trend towards fewer progress through these important early years so they can The number of BSurv graduates has increased over the graduates becoming licensed and passing through the Professional Entrance Examination process. In build on the next phase of their career, unencumbered by years.

However, figures supplied by the New Zealand Inaddition, those who do choose to complete the process are taking a significant length of time to do these qualifying projects for such a lengthy period. stitute of Surveyors (NZIS) show there has been a general so.

Taking a step back, one could also start to question the decline in the number of graduates sitting the Cadastral The n umber o f B Surv g raduates h as i ncreased o ver t he y ears.

H owever, f igures supplied by the New need for professional examinations for graduates with five Law Exam. This trend is consistent with the declining numZealand Institute of Surveyors (NZIS) show there has been a general decline in the number of to six years’ experience. Often, by the time the project ber of graduates sitting the Professional Entrance Exams graduates sitting the Cadastral Law Exam. This trend is consistent with the declining number of work is completed, the individual’s experience could be (see diagram below). graduates sitting the Professional Entrance Exams (see diagram below). far more advanced than the work outlined in the entrance projects 100 – making the whole process a 90 purely academic exercise.

80 So, why has the number of 70 graduates becoming licensed 60 Number of Graduates siYng dropped and why is it taking Cadastral Law Exam 50 those who do become licensed Number of Graduates siYng 40 longer?

Professional Registra[on Exams 30 There are many factors influ20 encing the number of graduates 10 becoming Licensed Cadastral Surveyors and the time it takes 0 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 to become licensed. These in-

A path to progress?

Further to the drop in the number of graduates sitting the Professional Entrance Exams, it is also a well-­‐established fact that the period of time between graduating from Survey School and sitting the SURVEYING+SPATIAL March 2015 • Issue Professional Entrance Exams has 81 extended.

The requirement for sitting the Professional Entrance Exams is a minimum of 24 months experience in various disciplines. Yet, figures from NZIS show that

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clude employment opportunities, economic factors and overall motivation.

Survey graduates have a diverse range of employment options available after gaining the Bsurv qualification.

It is no longer a straight progression from university to licensing. There are many opportunities to work internationally, particularly in Australia. There are also many jobs which require specific surveying skills such as roles within contracting companies as well as government agencies.

These options restrict graduates’ ability to even consider the Professional Entrance Exam process and also to gain a Cadastral Surveyors Licence, and even make attainment of RPSurv slightly more difficult. For these graduates, licensing is almost rendered irrelevant.

Economic factors can also influence the number of graduates becoming licensed. The global financial crisis had a significant effect on the surveying industry, which led to a decrease in workloads. This consequently led to a decrease in the number of graduates being employed by surveying firms in New Zealand; and employment related experience is critical for licensing.

The length of time taken to sit the Professional Entrance Exam and become licensed is also influenced by other factors. The standard project list remains largely unchanged for the last couple of decades. In addition, there is the perennial problem of gaining suitable projects that the examination panel would deem compliant, such as the engineering supervision component of the land development section.

The other problem might be the actual projects set out in the Annual Circular for candidates to complete. While most will have little problem with a cadastral or topographic project, the inclusion of remote sensing or GIS options, relevant to very few, means the choices a candidate has becomes very limited. This might mean that there is no choice available within the range and the candidate simply has to wait until suitable projects turn up from the limited options remaining.

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A complete review of the projects in the Annual Circular is urgently required. Very encouragingly, Ross Thurlow, Chair of the Admission Panel has advised that such a review is about to commence. Both the NZIS examination Panel and the CSLB whose examinations form a subset of the Institute examinations are critically aware of the shortcomings in the Annual Circular and the pathway to professional membership and licencing respectively. Both the Panel and the CSLB are promoting a complete review of the Annual Circular which will culminate in an appointment of a reviewer in the second quarter of 2015.

The purpose of the projects is to show competence in “surveying” that is useful to development in the modern world and if not, should be removed from the list. Examples are remote sensing - hardly the type of project any young surveyor would be able to consider because its use is so limited. Much more important for surveyors today is a sound understanding of the shape of the earth and the relationship of this to local and international datums so that the use of GPS is better understood. Such understanding means that the science of measurement across large areas can be done appropriately and accurately. Historically, a New Zealand surveyor required little knowledge of datums because scale factors were clearly defined but now it is an essential skill.

Planning for National Parks is another example of a project mentioned in the Annual Circular that is largely a historical artefact. Of much more relevance to surveyors and the profession today are the modern methodologies for 3D and mobile data capture, data management and building of spatial data sets. There is a new language developing around the spatial sciences and management, and the Institute has already taken early steps to increase its interests and involvement in spatial sciences. This is being reflected very successfully in professional partnerships, annual conferences, the CPD programme and the Surveying+Spatial magazine. The School of Surveying (continued page 44)

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Issue 81 March 2015

• FROM

THE NZIS COUNCIL

RESULT OF ENQUIRY On 28 August 2014, Council of the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors conducted an enquiry to consider whether the actions of a Member of the Institute were in breach of the rules.

The enquiry arose from a complaint related to work undertaken on a 44 lot residential development. The complainant alleged that the Member had failed to exercise a reasonable and proper level of skill, care and expertise in the preparation of subdivision Engineering Plans and also failed to exercise a reasonable and proper level of skill, care and expertise in the preparation of asbuilt Engineering Plans for Stage One of the subdivision.

The complaint was initially investigated by the Ethics Committee of the Institute in accordance with Rule 23.3 of the Institute. The Ethics Committee determined that a prima facie case had been established against the Member for breaches of Rule 19 (Ethics), Rule 20.2.1 (d) (Professional Conduct) and Rule 21.2 (Public Practice) on the following grounds: i. That the engineering plans prepared by the Member in respect of the subdivision did not meet the minimum standard expected of NZIS members competent in the discipline of land development engineering.

ii. That the original design submitted by the Member for the above subdivision failed to meet the reasonable standard in line with good engineering practice for a development of this scale. iii. That the level of professionalism demonstrated by the Member in respect to the completion of the as-built surveys was not to the standard expected of NZIS members. iv. That the effort by the Member to achieve timely approval of the as-built plans was not to the standard expected of NZIS members.

As a result of the enquiry Council found that: • In terms of preparation of the design and as-built plans, the Member is in breach of Rule 20.2.1 (d) in that he failed to demonstrate a standard expected of a member of the NZIS experienced in Land Development Engineering appropriate to the scale of the project.

• In terms of submission of as-built plans, the Member is in breach of Rule 20.2.1 (a) in that by knowingly submitting incomplete plans he had placed himself under an improper obligation.

• In terms of professionalism, the Member is in breach

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Issue 81 March 2015

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of Rule 19 in that the above failures undermine the collective reputation of Registered Professional Surveyors and the NZIS, most specifically in an area of practice where the profession is actively being challenged to maintain standards equitable with other professions.

Council resolved – i. That in accordance with Rule 24.1.1 (c) the Registered Professional Surveyor distinction held by the Member be suspended from 1 October 2014. ii. That the Member be required to undertake, and satisfactorily complete, a Continuing Professional Development and Mentoring Programme which addresses the deficiencies identified by Council in his performance.

This programme shall be submitted to Council for approval with quarterly reporting detailing progress with the programme and a summary of activities completed. The CPD and Mentoring programme is to include the identification of a mentor, mentor to be approved by Council, and include a summary of expected activities to be completed with the mentor.

iii. That on the completion of the course to the satisfaction of Council that the Registered Professional Surveyor distinction of the Member be reinstated if requested, and without payment of any additional fee. iv. That in accordance with Rule 24.1.1(d) that a fine of $5,000 be imposed on the Member, such fine to be remitted on the satisfactory completion of the CPD/Mentoring programme referred to in para. (ii) above within 18 months of the date of this decision. v. That in accordance with Rule 24.2.4 the Member be required to pay the costs incurred by Council in investigating and hearing the matter in the sum of $1,954.65 (Incl. GST). vi. That the decision be published in Surveying+Spatial.

View online www.altus-ps.com www.globalpos.com.au NZ Contact 0220919503 (to see the equipment)

(continued from page 42)

is also playing a huge role in the education of surveyors for modern spatial applications such as laser scanning, augmented and virtual reality and data infrastructures. An environment is being crafted around the professional examination projects that are making some elements look redundant or irrelevant. It’s a fair bet that some candidates may be put off because the projects in the Circular are not current with their everyday work life and therefore too difficult to attempt, which is why the review is imperative.

Whatever the reason for the declining numbers of licensing examination candidates, the Institute must try to find some means to shorten the time for graduates to appear before the examiners. It’s valuable to apply fresh eyes to the professional examination

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projects, having regard to the bigger global picture.

By observing modern world trends, candidates will be energised by the prospect of undertaking challenging and worthwhile projects. A new Annual Circular with standards of professional attainment in a simple, clear and relevant format is needed now if we are to grow and improve the professional base. To quote a recent email promoting the review “Obviously the direction of the whole profession starts and finishes with the appropriate people wanting enthusiastically to join the profession”. The review is key to this.

Julia graduated from survey school in 2010 and recently passed the professional entrance exam in 2014. She is currently working for Harrison & O’Sullivan in Wanganui and is now working towards achieving RPSurv.

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Issue 81 March 2015

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