Surveying+Spatial Issue 82 June 2015

SURVEYING+

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June 2015 Issue 82

Preserving the NZ Aerial Archive Building the Pukehau Memorial Park and Arras Tunnel Disruptive Innovation: Redesigning a town in five days

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

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COVER IMAGE: Mount Taranaki/ Egmont Peak, Taranaki, west coast, NZ 2007. See page 12.

ARTICLES 6

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14 18 25 27 30 32 33 37

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100 years on, lest we forget . . .

Construction of the National War Memorial Park New Zealand from the Air: Aerial Imagery Archive Teaching Definition: Cadastral studies at the School of Surveying Disruptive Innovation: Coming to an industry near you Better Coordinates with PositioNZPP GeoSystems turns 30!

The Story of Shaky City Open Data: The way to the future for New Zealand’s geospatial industry Thinking outside the Classroom Commercial Partners back NZIS Conference Iraq-Kuwait Boundary Maintenance Project

REGULAR FEATURES

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Editorial Surveyor-General Professional Stream News Technology Perspective Legal Column BCB Commentary University Happenings Obituary: Leon Huia Armstrong

• EDITORIAL

ch ch changes Diane Moriarty

ISSUE 82 JUNE 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. 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 have been meddling again with the format of the magazine and this month you will notice a few changes to the content. These changes have been undertaken in order to promote the new professional stream structure of the NZIS. Accordingly the magazine will now feature articles from the streams in every edition as well as a ‘Professional Stream News’ page where each stream will feature a news item about what they have been up to or news about what is happening in their stream’s professional realm.

In this edition, it was the turn of the Cadastral and Positioning and Measurement streams to provide input to the magazine. Their articles can be found on pages 14 and 25. The remaining four streams will provide input in future editions of the magazine and this will rotate each issue so they all have a chance to showcase the variety of work undertaken by their unique sector of the survey/spatial profession. If you are not yet registered with a professional stream, it’s easy. Just login to the NZIS website, click on “your dashboard” and select the stream/s that you wish to register with.

It is not all about streams in this edition and in timing with the recent 100 year commemoration of ANZAC Day, our feature article on page 6 covers the construction of the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park in Wellington and the diversion of an existing section of State Highway 1 underneath this park. The story tells of a major engineering feat including a 300m long, 12m deep cut and cover trench required to bypass three lanes of traffic underneath the memorial park.

Nick Williamson a former NZIS member and now ‘Systems Thinker & Innovator’ at Mashmatix.com fills this month’s perspective page. Nick’s article tells of a radical town planning experiment in Kamo, Whangarei where he headed a project to draft and consult on a full district plan review in only five days, a process that would normally take months or even years to complete. Nick’s article uses this project as an example to convey his thoughts on ‘Disruptive Innovation’ and how we as a survey profession must ‘Adapt or Die’.

A thought provoking piece which should be read by all.

A hot topic of the last few months has been the Christchurch rebuild and the issues around redefining cadastral boundaries in areas affected by shallow ground movement. LINZ, NZIS and other industry leaders are working together to respond to this situation and formulate a solution to the problem. In light of this current issue, David Goodwin of the University of Otago has provided an article entitled The Story of Shaky City. In the article, David offers a witty Socratic dialogue to get readers thinking about how this particular problem should be dealt with. See page 30 to decide who you think deserves the case of Emersons.

I hope you all enjoy this month’s magazine.

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• SURVEYOR-GENERAL

Urban Issues Mark G. Dyer Since the 1800s, Surveyors have helped to shape and record New Zealand’s landscape. Our profession has mapped and recorded the changing face of our country’s towns and cities. But as our urban environments become increasingly large and complex, there are new and vital roles for surveyors and spatial scientists to play in helping New Zealand continue to be home to liveable, workable and globally competitive cities.

Both here and overseas we have seen the need for increasingly well connected and sophisticated information to help policy makers and city administrators manage the demands of urban growth and development.

We’re still adjusting to this new view of the world, and we’re in a space where we are bridging the gaps between old methods and standards for how we collect and describe data with the new demands. Surveyors and spatial scientists are key to helping New Zealand mesh the old with the new – and have a key role in helping to resolve the technical, policy, legal, and administrative issues. This will require research, investment, collaboration, innovation and most of all, active participation.

Areas that are being actively researched, and which signal the way ahead, include how authoritative land information and crowd sourced information can be integrated, spatial information policy and institutional arrangements, technological requirements, and integrated sensor and positioning networks. Public safety, natural hazard management, energy efficiency, and social inclusion are examples of the key drivers. These go far beyond the traditional drivers of property rights, design and construction but the data which underpins the analysis is often derived from those traditional sources of spatial information.

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As an example, at the moment if someone was surveying a new sewer pipe in Wellington it may well be done to different standards and requirements than those required in Auckland. This makes it difficult for asset managers and decision makers to do any comparative analysis or even undertake the analysis needed to develop accurate ‘whole of life’ models. Surveyors play an integral role in the design and construction of our built environment, and have the opportunity to be at the forefront of developing and implementing common standards, in turn enabling the ability to mash, analyse and apply the understanding that comes with having access to this data.

People are judging the value and relevance of information by its availability and accessibility, which goes way beyond the purpose for which the data was first captured.

Our professions need to stay relevant, and play the vital role that society expects in making information about our environment available and usable. Ongoing engagement in the development of standards is perhaps more important than ever.

I find it really encouraging to see the NZIS reshaping the Institute to respond to these changing needs. New streams focussed on spatial information, engineering and land development and urban design show a growing focus on the wider context that we are operating in. I look forward to seeing this broader focus reflected in the NZIS Conference programme in Wellington this year, and taken forward to FIG2016 in Christchurch next year.

We have the opportunity to help contribute to some of the big issues facing society today – let’s continue to show the relevance and importance of what we do.

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• PROFESSIONAL

STREAM NEWS

Cadastral The members of the Cadastral Stream Leadership Team have been meeting monthly, by web conference, to discuss all manner of items of interest to NZIS Cadastral Surveyors. Some of the topics we have been involved with recently are: LINZ Guidance on Canterbury Earthquake Affected Cadastre – the Leadership Team met under urgency to discuss the proposed LINZ Guidance and to prepare a submission. The Stream has also discussed establishing a new working group to support NZIS and the Canterbury Working Party in reviewing further LINZ Guidelines. The Cadastral Stream will review any new Guidelines and prepare a further submission as required.

Chorus Guidelines – a number of members have highlighted difficulties in the process of getting Chorus connections into their subdivision. Josie FitzGerald and Karl Wilton of the Leadership Team, along with NZIS members Kate Clancy and Ryan Healey, met with four members of Chorus’ Acquisition and Legal team to discuss the process for reticulation and connection of a subdivision to the Chorus network. We identified the issues (particularly delays) that our members were experiencing in dealing with Chorus in obtaining a connection to their network, and they outlined to us the reasoning behind their processes. We were able to obtain a mutual understanding of the issues and processes and came away agreeing that Chorus would prepare a new subdivision pack which we could circulate to our members to ensure that all of our members were aware, from an early stage of a subdivision, of the processes required and can advise their clients accordingly. This subdivision pack will be reviewed by the Leadership Team and circulated to our members along with a quick reference guide once complete.

Cadastral Stream leaders continue to pick up on issues raised by stream members and we welcome feedback and comments. Please contact Hadyn Smith, CEO at National Office in the first instance: nzis@surveyors.org.nz

Spatial The Spatial stream is progressing well – we now have 102 members, 40 of whom are spatial-only members. Regular committee meetings are held and a key discussion topic is defining what we mean by “Spatial” and what sort of members we are trying to attract, along with how to reach out to those in the Spatial community who may have no idea there is a professional body they can become affiliated with.

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We are engaging with existing groups such as the NZ ESRI Users Group (NZEUG) and others to bring in members to NZIS and encourage joiners through promoting NZIS benefits such as training, career progression and certification opportunities. A key area for progress is how we recognise the Registered Professional qualification and the professional skills of stream members who are not mainstream surveyors.

We are looking to forge better links with NZIS branches through presentations to branch meetings and by bringing in potential new members; this will be happening over time as we gain greater numbers in the regions.

This year’s NZIS conference has a number of slots available for presenting on topics relevant to the Spatial stream and we welcome ideas and papers for submission.

Email your ideas to: kat@e-spatial.co.nz

Hydrography Requests for Proposals for Hydro Surveys by LINZ LINZ have issued Requests for Proposals for hydrographic surveys of the coastal and harbour areas in Northland;

Hokianga Harbour

Parengarenga, Doubtless and Rangaunu Bays, Whangaruru, and Hokianga Harbour. (Refer GETS website). The surveys are to update existing official navigational charts and are part of the LINZ Prioritised National Survey Plan for 2015/2016. Most of these areas were previously fully surveyed in the 1960’s and 70’s, with some areas as old as 1940’s. The work requires surveys to be undertaken to LINZ specifications and completed before July 2016 (http://www.linz.govt.nz/system/files_force/media/pages-attachments/hyspec_v1-2-aug2010.pdf?download=1) and includes the use of multibeam and single beam echo sounders, dual positioning systems, tide and sound velocity measurement. For more information email: bruce@dmlsurveys.co.nz

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IHO Competence Standards Review The International Hydrographic Organisation (IHO) are in the process of reviewing the international publication; IHO Hydrographic Standards of Competence for Category A and B Surveyors, with the intent of developing separate standards for Cat. A and Cat. B Surveyors as well as providing a “Guideline for the Implementation of the Standards of Competence” for the use of training establishments.

Positioning and Measurement The Positioning and Measurement stream will produce a webinar on Wednesday, 5 August 2015 titled “The NZGD2000 deformation model – what is it and how should I use it”. The webinar is divided into three sections.

The first reviews New Zealand’s position on the plate boundary and the challenges this introduces into maintaining stable coordinates. This will include a review of plate motions, the seismic cycles and a discussion on the major plate boundary structures and recent earthquakes that have affected New Zealand. The second section covers the specifics of the NZGD2000 deformation model and its role in the definition of the NZGD2000 datum. This section includes a discussion on the way the deformation model corrects for earthquakes and the changes resulting from the earthquake deformation models introduced in NZGD2000 coordinates last year. The third section will cover when and how surveyors and GIS professionals should apply the deformation model.

The Webinar will be presented by Chris Crook and Nic Donnelly of LINZ and Chris Pearson of the School of Surveying University of Otago.

Land Development and Urban Design A number of amendments to the RMA that look to offer significant improvements, particularly to the processing of consents, came into effect on 1 May this year. Matters such as enabling cancellation of a hearing if an objection has been resolved might encourage a return to pre hearing meetings which have apparently been in decline for a while.

Information requirements for consent applications have been extended to include assessments of the application with Part 2 of the RMA, National Environmental Standards, National Policy Statements and Regional Policy Statements. The assessment can also include a demonstration of any permitted aspects.

From the date of submitting applications time limits have been altered with Council now having 10 days in which to return an incomplete application and the clock

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only stops for the first Section 92 request for further information. Requests for additional information can be made by Councils but the clock continues to run. If the information continues to be insufficient then Council can decline the application. However it might be possible in such cases to offer a set of conditions to compensate for the information quality.

Further information is available in the MfE Fact Sheets available on the MFE website and the RMA.

Engineering Surveying

NZIS has made some great progress surrounding the development of a new certification model, which is great news to the Engineering Surveying Professional Stream (ESPS). There are many potential members out there who are waiting for a national certification which recognises the construction specific skills of a surveyor, as well as their professionalism. Higher education will be important for the certification but there will also be the option to prove competencies through experience.

The value of the certification to Engineering Surveyors will be the recognition by potential clients that we have the technical ability and professionalism which at least equals that of our Licensed peers, without the requirement to be savvy in cadastral matters.

The last meeting of the ESPS leadership group focused on what competencies would be expected of an Engineering Surveyor. We agreed that it was mostly similar to the Positioning and Measurement competencies, but we have added a few of our own, mostly in relation to construction and data management (leaving the door open to BIM).

The leadership group is made up of five members, four of which are Auckland based and one in Wellington. We are a mix of contractors and consultants, and are either project based or have multiple clients. The one thing we have in common is that we are all very busy, but are determined to find the time to progress the development of Engineering Surveyors in New Zealand. For more information email: michaelcu@fcc.co.nz

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100 YEARS ON, LEST WE FORGET. . .

Construction of the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park and SH1 Underpass Kirean McCarthy, Project Surveyor – Memorial Park Alliance, HEB Construction

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The recently opened Pukeahu National War Memorial Park in Wellington is the New Zealand Government’s key project to commemorate the centenary of New Zealand’s and Australia’s involvement in the First World War. Due to the complex nature of construction in a seismic prone city, accurate and precise engineering and surveying was paramount to achieving the Government’s goal.

This goal was to divert an existing section of State Highway 1 underground and provide a memorial park that would be a significant and fitting setting for the existing National War Memorial and would be a lasting legacy for generations to come.

The Project – Tight Time Frames In 2012 the Memorial Park Alliance (MPA), a consortium consisting of construction contractors Downer and HEB, designers URS and Tonkin Taylor, and the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) were engaged to design and construct a cut and cover underpass to divert State Highway 1 underground at Buckle Street to allow the development of the park on top. Special legislation was passed through Cabinet with consents and rules to ensure it was possible for the Alliance to meet the strict deadline of April 2015.

A challenge in itself was to undertake the project and its associated construction works in a busy part of the city whilst respecting the area’s neighbors: Massey University, Mt Cook School, HMNZS Olphert Naval Base, numerous businesses, and the military history of the surrounds.

The Underpass – Divert Traffic underground to create an open space In early 2013 excavations began for the 300m long, 12m deep cut and cover trench required to bypass 3 lanes of

Artist impression of the Memorial Park, the Underpass in the left foreground.

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traffic underneath Buckle Street. As the excavations progressed, 285 15m king posts were installed with over 14,000 pieces of timber lagging installed in between each post to retain the cut as it progressed. Along with these a 90m sheet pile wall was installed to reduce ground subsidence around buildings in close proximity to the trench by preventing water loss, stabilising the water table in the area and therefore improving soil strength. Ground anchors were used to assist the retaining walls in resisting lateral forces with over 500 13m long injection grouted anchors placed and fixed to the temporary walls. Overall 35,000m³ of earth was removed from site to create the trench.

With over five known faults within 20km of the site, all with return periods of less than 2500 years, it was necessary to undertake extensive geotechnical investigation and design in order to provide adequate stability in a severe seismic event. Seismic uplift resulting from liquefaction was a significant issue that needed to be addressed.

Restraint on this uplift was provided for using tension piles. The proposed tension piles were tested on site using a 600 tonne jack to simulate the predicted earthquake and allow for specific design to be undertaken safeguarding against movement of the structure. As a result of poor sub-ground conditions and the straight bored piles failing at 10% of design load, a bell-shaped pile was designed and installed below the liquefiable soils into the bedrock.

In addition to the usual bored pile technique, the new design required a special project manufactured cutting

Arras Tunnel 2014, opening night.

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tural melter slag material to improve skid resistance in the event of a heavy brake or vehicle accident. Over 1,200 tonnes of pavement was laid over two layers onto a scabbled concrete surface. Ensuring compliance was met, extensive testing was undertaken on the road during paving including the use of a Bomag Smart Vibrating Drum Roller that has inbuilt testing regimes that allow drivers to avoid damaging the pavement through over-compaction and prevent wasting time on areas that no longer requiring further compaction.

The underpass was named Arras Tunnel in honour of the efforts of New Zealand miners during World War I in the French town of the same name. About 300 NZ tunnellers, along with their Allied counterparts dug 4,300m of tunnels from Arras toward the frontline in order to launch the 1917 Arras Offensive on German troops occupying Belgium.

Home of Compassion Crèche Move

On site pile design/testing

tool to be used on the piling rig to create a bell shape at the base of each pile. In total 95 reinforced concrete piles were poured at depths ranging from 10 to 30m.

Once ground engineering was complete over 2,600 tonnes of steel reinforcement was placed and 7,500 cubic meters of concrete was poured to construct the base, wall and roof slabs of the underpass. Thickness of these structures varied from 800mm – 1200mm in order to provide capacity and movement in the event of a severe earthquake. The steel reinforcing in the walls, roof and base linked to help create a resilient tunnel able to resist a 1-in-2500 year earthquake. The underpass structure was also designed and built with movement joints between the different structural forms to allow for movement during an earthquake.

Due to being part of State Highway 1, high standards were required to provide a safe traffic passage for the 30,000 vehicle movements that travel down Buckle Street and through the underpass each day. A new asphalt mix was used on the 300m stretch of road and adjoining intersections that contained a low maintenance, highly struc-

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The historic Home of Compassion Crèche located adjacent to the Basin Reserve in the north eastern corner of the park needed to be relocated (forward, up and across) to ensure it was appropriately incorporated

Belled Pile cutting blade

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in the new park. Reinforced concrete runway beams and block walls were cast to provide a base for four hydraulic jacks that pushed, pulled and lifted the 450 tonne building up the hill into the Memorial Park. Real time high precision mechanical surveying techniques were required to set the platforms, monitor the beams during tensioning, and guide the shift to ensure the 100-year-old building was not put under any additional stress during the moves of which could have seriously damaged the structure.

Underpass base and wall construction

National War Memorial Park – Pukeahu 100 years on, and numerous world conflicts since, New Zealand’s National War Memorial will now have a new 21,000m² Memorial Park that creates an open green space – an area of Wellington that has in the past been somewhat neglected. Our Australian counterparts also have a dedicated area to honour our close relationship that formed the ANZAC spirit all those years ago.

An urban designer’s dream, the new look park has some key features: • 224 precast concrete panels • 15 6m high sandstone pillars in the Australian memorial • 6500m² square meters of pathway

Road paving in the underpass

• 4000m² square meters of grassed areas • 4500m² hand-paved ceremonial areas • 165 different types of trees.

The Survey Work The construction of such large structures in short time frames requires constant and extensive survey setout and supervision of the works to ensure all facets of the build were in line with the project specifications and that all design elements complemented each other and did not create clashes or issues throughout construction.

High precision Trimble robotic Totals Stations with Trimble SPS900 Tablet Software were used to control concrete, structural and drainage works, with RTK GPS complementing with earthworks and roading. High precision Leica levelling equipment was used to provide sub millimeter levels where required.

Due to the always changing work environment, ground control was destroyed very early on in the project. To ensure a robust, accurate, reliable, and continuing control network was available, control prisms were installed at high level on surrounding buildings and facades. Once traverse works were completed, a full least squares adjustment was run for the entire site using the Star*NET software package.

Prior to, during and after construction works an extensive level network was surveyed on a regular basis with SURVEYING+SPATIAL

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273 Poppies attached to the inner walls of the Underpass to represent the 2730 NZ fatalities during the ANZAC campaign

Home of Compassion Crèche being lifted from its foundation

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Aerial image of completed park

datum points established on surrounding buildings and structures to monitor ground movement. Due to the nature of the water table in the area, the removal of such content can have a serious effect on the stability of the ground surrounding the trench and retaining walls. Spencer Holmes, the MPA’s specialist monitoring consultant, provided rapid high precision survey monitoring of the noted locations to ensure that no substantial movement was occurring during construction and thus controlling the works. Even though during this time Wellington experienced two large earthquakes, no significant movement was picked up during these rounds, which showed the design of the temporary and permanent works was correctly gauged and executed.

The role of the Engineering Surveyor was pivotal to the successful completion of the underpass and park. As a result of tight time frames and design conflicts, a number of features were required to be re-designed and set out on the fly which is a true test for any surveyor!

Successes and a Proud Legacy With over one million man hours worked during the past three years, the Memorial Park Alliance has delivered a significant and historical park and tunnel that has become a notable Wellington landmark – and will be an enduring legacy commemorating the sacrifice the people of New Zealand have made during times of conflict.

ANZAC connection – Red sand stone columns representing the Australian outback

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GLENN STONE INSURANCE

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NEW ZEALAND FROM THE AIR Aerial Imagery Archive Stephanie Lockyer, Information Management Technician, Opus International Consultants Ltd

Napier City 2009

Infrastructure project managers, surveyors, engineers, archaeologists, ecologists, planners, spatial scientists and scientists will be delighted that access to some 750,000 plus aerial photographs, taken above New Zealand between 1936 and 2014, have been preserved through a partnership between Opus International Consultants Ltd (Opus) and Land Information New Zealand (LINZ). The collection is the most comprehensive aerial photographic archive in New Zealand and is a critical resource for many professionals working in the natural and built environment.

The demise of New Zealand’s oldest aerial surveying company (NZAM) in September 2014 left the channel for public access to both the Crown archive (approximately 600,000 photographs) and NZAM’s own archive (approximately 150,000 photographs) at risk. Both archives are now housed on-site at Opus, Napier.

Opus is a multi-disciplinary infrastructure and asset management consultancy. Our company’s rich history

dates back to colonial New Zealand, when the Public Works Department was opening up the country’s notoriously difficult terrain with a combination of national road and rail networks. Today, we are a trusted partner in the creation of sustainable communities, facilities and environments through world leading social and fixed infrastructure. We are proud to be part of the communities we work within and we care about the quality of the work we deliver.

Rakaia River, Canterbury Plains South Island, NZ

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It is great to be able to keep the photographic collection in Hawke’s Bay and Opus is genuinely excited about the opportunity to be involved in something that has a lot of history attached to it. Opus already has extensive historical records, relating to infrastructure - bridges for instance - so having aerial photography is seen as complementary.

A vault and scanning room were purpose built to house and reproduce products from the massive collection. The vault contains 3500 rolls of film, and has been built in accordance with Archives NZ Standards in terms of fire-proofing, temperature and humidity control, and monitoring. Extreme care was taken transporting the film to its new home in Napier – a mammoth operation.

Three staff members from NZAM have joined the Opus team bringing with them vital knowledge of the archive and the experience to provide New Zealanders with effective access to the historical aerial imagery. The scanning room houses two large format scanners, designed specifically for scanning large format roll film.

In addition to providing public access to the archive, Opus is working with LINZ to scan and digitise the historical aerial imagery archive to preserve the historical records into the future, and to eventually enable free public access to all the imagery. The process may take more than ten years to complete.

Aerial Imagery was captured for a range of purposes including mapping and land management for Local Authorities, land development, road realignments, farm planning, and subdivisions. This collection is also of particular significance for studying historical change over time, with many areas having been photographed multiple times over the past 80 years.

Historic aerial imagery has many uses. Photos over the decades vividly illustrate changes of land use over time, identification of historic exposure to contamination, weather events, water movements, erosion effects, coastlines and city expansions, as well as identification of archaeological sites. Historical imagery can assist with legal disputes. Most recently historical images of Christchurch have been valuable resources for the re-build.

Opus has developed significant capability in the science of photogrammetry. This leaves us well positioned to deliver a wide range of photographic products for a wide range of projects. Access to the original camera calibration files and aerial triangulation information allows Opus to create orthophotos from high-quality digital scans of the original imagery. Orthophotos are photographs where distortion from camera lens, the perspective of the ground in relation to the camera, and camera tilt are removed from the imagery such that accurate measurements can be taken from the photographs. This process is also partic-

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ularly useful when trying to align multiple photographs from differing time periods in a GIS platform.

Digital elevation models are becoming a standard part of workflows for infrastructure projects. With the advent of computerised photogrammetry, the production Chris Parkyn Photosales manager of a digital elevaviewing a historical stereo pair tion model or the production of contours from historical aerial imagery is becoming more common as the costs of producing and delivering the information are falling.

Typical Applications For Aerial Imagery • Contaminated land identification for the National Environmental Standard • Topographical mapping • Land-use planning • Flood and erosion studies • Coastal, river mouth and estuary variations through time.

• Highway engineering • Forestry and mining studies • Urban management support • Environmental studies • Conveyancing • Archaeology • Telecommunications modelling • Tertiary and Post Graduate studies • Commercial advertising All historic imagery is available for purchase in print and digital form with or without photogrammetric corrections or digital elevation models. Opus are more than happy to tailor products and services to meet specific project requirements.

Contact us to talk about how we can assist with your project. e photosales@opus.co.nz p 0800 680 690. w http://photosales.opus.co.nz

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• CADASTRAL

STREAM

TEACHING DEFINITION Cadastral studies at the School of Surveying

Don McKinnon teaching a first professional year group at Otematata

Richard Hemi, National School of Surveying Cadastral surveying remains for many professional surveyors, a significant part of their skill-set and field of work. While a high number of surveying land professionals may not carry out cadastral surveys on a daily basis, the knowledge they have in this field is still critical to their work in land development project design, resource planning and client advice.

So it is at the University of Otago’s School of Surveying that the teaching of cadastral studies remains a core subject within the degree of surveying even in the face of significant advances in spatial data capture and a broadening of what surveyors do in their working life. Indeed cadastral surveying is one field that is solely the professional domain of the surveyor and one where they are not competing with planners, urban designers, engineers, or project managers. This qualification makes them an essential member of the land development team and provides opportunities to position themselves as head consultant or to become involved in other parts of the land development process.

The School has an important role to play in the provision of undergraduate cadastral education not only for

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aspiring cadastral surveyors who wish to ultimately become licensed cadastral surveyors, but also to strengthen the degree as a whole. The final year of the course is intended to be relatively free for students to choose specialisation papers in alignment with the NZIS streams. As it is, only a very small number of the graduates leaving Otago each year choose not to complete the undergraduate requirements for licensing. This is possibly because of a poor understanding of the different paths available to full professional membership, but also for some, from exposure to the industry in summer employment where students see cadastral surveying as a key component of their employers’ daily work. It goes without saying that the employers play a very important role in not only training the graduate to professional membership, but also in

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survey in detail from start to finish, and in the modern exposing students to what a professional surveying career environment using Landonline. Students obtain an edureally involves. cation licence which allows them access to the system for Having taken over the teaching of the senior years in casearching exercises, tuition in the preparation of datasets, dastral surveying relatively recently I am somewhat in awe as well as the import and export of data files to 3rd party of the lecturers that have taught this subject previously – software. Lectures also cover the areas of definition and Don McKinnon, Mark Smith, Allan Blaikie all had lengthy boundary evidence as well as other topics such as limittenures in the cadastral role. Some material remains the ed titles, natural boundaries, and alternate dataset types. same - Allan Blaikies’ definitive notes on half-angles and The art of boundary definition is perhaps the most difficult circular curves still appear - while much has changed over concept for students to understand and most practicing the years with the introduction of Landonline, regular surveyors would agree that this typically comes only afchanges to cadastral rules and advances in surveying inter some years of real experience. Any student who has struments. Don McKinnon worked hard during his time to had prior work experience or summer employment with incorporate e-Surveying into the curriculum and thanks cadastral projects is often well ahead of their peers when to his efforts and the cooperation of LINZ, students enjoy it comes to definition and boundary computations. Em(perhaps) the use of Landonline and with it the creation of ployers of summer students should do what they can to real survey datasets. expose students to cadastral work and not just harmless In the 1st and 2nd professional years of the degree stutopographical or As-Built surveys. dents complete a cadastral paper in each year – 207 and To fulfil this paper’s learning objectives students com307. A student cannot proceed to 307 without first having plete a large amount of internal assessment albeit still completed 207 and indeed 207 must be preceded by 201 with an external end of semester exam. Due to the need - Survey Methods, and the introductory field camp 298 in to familiarise themselves with Landonline (not an easy order to have the necessary plane surveying competence. task) a lot of the assessment for this paper is indoor work At the same time students are also required to take the – searching, importing data files and preparing datasets.

Land Tenure papers 206 and 306. These papers are fundaOnly one field survey exercise is undertaken in this paper mental in supplementing the students’ cadastral studies – a GNSS cadastral subdivision of a straight forward lot with an understanding of land law and property rights. within a modern development. The logistics of getting up In February of the first professional year the 298 into 60 students through this exercise with establishing an troductory field camp in Otematata introduces cadasorigin, pegging and checking is not an easy task and is tral surveying with a short exercise where students peg typically run over three afternoon streams. an allotment in a fictional subdivision. This is somewhat reminiscent of earlier camps – former students may recall Allan Blaikie’s thorough instruction on how to dig a square hole or place a plumb survey mark. The first full cadastral paper, 207 covers areas such as the development of the NZ cadastral system, survey information and plans, cadastral geometry and computations, projections, first principles of cadastral evidence, and the NZ land registration and land transfer systems. Students must complete a number of computation, searching and plan interpretation assignments for this paper as well as field practicals where they survey a cadastral origin and set out a garage in relation to a boundary.

The second professional year paper, 307, is a very busy one with a number of lectures covering the process of carrying out a land transfer Nick Jagvik placing a peg during the 298 cadastral exercise at Rata Park, Otematata

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For students who do not ultimately wish to become cadastral surveyors it could be argued that this heavy investment in learning the workings of the NZ cadastral system may be unnecessary. Equally foreign students enrolled in the Bachelor of Surveying or students contemplating work overseas may also ask this question. However there are a number of broader skills that come from studying cadastral surveying. Due to the often varied nature of underlying cadastral survey data, the need to research titles and documents, and the weight that a surveyor may need to apply to other evidence such as occupation, it would be fair to say that some boundary definitions can be complex and often challenging to complete. This trains the surveyor to be a spatial problem-solver which holds them in very good stead in other working environments such as on a construction site or on difficult engineering projects.

The understanding of spatial geometry developed or enhanced by cadastral surveying, as well as a healthy suspicion of data and measurement uncertainty leads to a well rounded measurement specialist. The majority of feedback we receive about graduates is positive in this respect, especially from outside of New Zealand. And while it is unlikely that all of a 60 strong graduate class are needed as cadastral surveyors each year these papers should be seen as a vital part of their overall surveying education.

In their last year of study students who wish to go on to cadastral licensing are required to complete the final year paper Surv457 – Cadastral Surveying 3 – and while this is an elective only, as stated above, almost all students take the paper. The bulk of the assessment sits with a full reinstatement survey of a genuine urban property in Dunedin. The students work in pairs and have full responsibility for all facets of the job - client contact, traffic management, field survey, boundary definition and preparation of the cadastral survey dataset (CSD). Most properties are sourced from the university property services, university and survey school staff and Dunedin City Council reserves. Students therefore typically get to deal with real property owners as clients. Dunedin provides a good supply of challenging sites, often with old and conflicting survey data. It has been regularly noted in feedback about this paper that students enjoy the freedom of working on their own project and the genuine nature of the work, finding old marks, working in public, and having to make their own decisions about survey methods and definition.

This paper is very valuable in terms of student self-learning and the change in teaching style creates a degree of professional maturity in most students. It also greatly enhances their understanding of the entire process of a land transfer survey. The students continue with the use of their Landonline licences and prepare a full CSD of their reinstatement survey, but with a full geodetic origin. This

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forms sixty-percent of the papers’ grade but in order to test the students individually the paper also includes two definition tests and an end of year exam.

While this paper relies on the significant project further lectures are also provided typically in advanced areas of cadastral study. This includes some further limited title case studies, adverse possession, and when large numbers of students were leaving for work in Australia, some material was presented on cadastral surveying in that country. This has more recently been replaced with lectures on working in Christchurch and areas affected by ground movement. These lectures are also supplemented by guest presenters from LINZ staff and practitioners which are much appreciated by the school and greatly enhance student learning.

So while the core principles of the teaching of cadastral studies have remained the same over the years it is notable that change has been brought about by advances in survey methods and digital systems. Students still need the academic theory of boundary definition and the weighting of evidence, but this must be taught in a new environment which includes Landonline, GNSS and resection surveys.

With only three semester papers there is a limit to what students can be taught albeit that during this teaching they are covering a significant amount of other material in property law and survey methods to compliment their cadastral studies. But the ‘art’ of boundary definition comes only with practice and experience. The final year project provides students with their first genuine example of this practice but from that point it still requires an employer and mentor to fully educate them in this discipline.

The cadastral stream is still clearly at the core of the BSurv given that this field remains the unique domain of the professional surveyor. And although many surveyors will have progressed in their professional work to different and broader streams of practice, it is considered likely that a good deal of the knowledge gained from cadastral surveying has assisted them at some point in their working life. The teaching of the measurement, research and problem-solving skills within the sphere of cadastral studies also enhances the students overall competence and is part of the whole graduate package. So while the School of Surveying endeavours to remain up to date with technology and remain current with its teaching of methods and best practice, and the industry rightly strives to highlight the role for modern surveyors in wide areas of spatial science, resource planning, development, etc, there is still a crucial role for cadastral studies at the School in providing the first steps in a surveyor’s pathway to professional work.

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Issue 82 June 2015

• TECHNOLOGY

SMARTFIX

Integrating BeiDou and Galileo Signals Bruce Robinson, Director, Global Survey The great news for surveyors is that the SmartFix reference station network now supports both BeiDou and Galileo signals. The introduction of these signals into the SmartFix network gives SmartFix users access to the most advanced tracking and fixing solutions available. Currently sites in Auckland and Christchurch are in BeiDou and Galileo roll out with more sites and BeiDou/Galileo upgrades to be added to the 70+ stations SmartFix operates.

Currently BeiDou is the more influential of the two new systems on offer in NZ. This is because a BeiDou user can typically track an additional six or more satellites. These additional satellites will give the user a faster time to ‘first fix’ and more resolved positions.

The Smartfix reference station network is built on the most advanced GNSS reference station software platform in the world, Leica Geosystems GNSS Spider. The system delivers the most advanced, open and flexible network in NZ, working with all Rovers from all manufacturers using internationally agreed transmission signals (RTCM).

The Smartfix reference station network

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SmartFix broadcasts datum 2000 coordinates in terms of a real base station, providing accurate and traceable site coordinates on the datum. The user receives datum 2000 coordinates on the rover, in terms of the LINZ 2000 coordinate for that the reference station. Allowing users to be very quickly on top of their old marks and have a feel for the mark reliability. By having the observation vector tie directly back to a true base station, repeat observation and data traceability is guaranteed.

By truly understanding reference frames, epochs antenna offsets and alike SmartFix offer unparalleled user support .To obtain our free guide to Cadastral surveys using a reference station network please contact Bruce Robinson, bruce@globalsurvey.co.nz Technology continually advances forward. That is why at SmartFix we are constantly working with our customers to determine their needs and then working with our developers and technical resources to make sure we are ready not just for today, but for tomorrow as well.

Here is a great customer reference from a Global Survey SmartFix customer: “The Global Survey team has offered consistent excellent service and support to Fulton Hogan Major Projects. The Smartfix and Survey teams are always happy to assist with my GPS/Smartfix queries at any time of the day and night. Customer Services/Sales are always friendly and helpful. The Machine Control team always go the extra mile with machine control support. The Services Workshop team make an extra effort to do quick repairs to enable us to get urgent work done. I would recommend your back up and service to anyone who asks.”

Julian Vos, Project Surveyor, Fulton Hogan Ltd For a free 2 month subscription please contact Bruce Robinson, bruce@globalsurvey.co.nz.

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• PERSPECTIVE

e v i t p u r s i D nnovation I

Kamo Place Race: The program for the 5 day district plan ‘design sprint’.

Coming to an industry near you Nick Williamson, Systems Thinker & Innovator, Mashmatix.com

“Where were all the surveying practitioners?” This was one of the questions that emerged during the Whangarei District Council District Plan Team’s ‘retrospective’ (debrief) after the dust had settled on one of the most radical town planning experiments this decade. The team had just completed their ambitious project to draft and consult on a full district plan review for the urban suburb of Kamo in only 5 days. This ‘design sprint’ format of town planning & place-making was dubbed a “Place Race”.

The ‘Place Race’ regulatory planning experiment The Place Race was conceived from the ‘Startup Weekend’ event (http://startupweekend.org/), which is a 56 hour design sprint that takes an idea for a business through to an operating business model in one weekend. The ideas are developed and tested through ‘live’ customer feedback using a methodology known as ‘agile’. The ‘lean’ meth-

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od for developing business cases focuses not on selling a product, but solving a customer’s problem.

The Lean & Agile methodologies are used extensively by the ‘Tech Startup’ community to rapidly get a product to market with minimum expenditure. These two sensitivities to timeliness and cost are equally pertinent to council business, so we were interested to see how these recipes could be adapted to local government regulatory planning.

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By transforming district plan making from a process into an event, the council received an unprecedented level of interest and participation in the process.

It is not unusual to have immense numbers of submissions on a district plan – but it is unusual to have Kamo Village: More than 250 people were interviewed on the street during the course of the week. praise being heaped on the council Disruptive companies create innovations that invade for doing such a great job of listening to the people. the market, force change, and create new sectors of an

Engaging audiences The suburb of Kamo is home to around 7,000 of Whangarei City’s 53,000 urban residents. Over the course of project, more than 7,500 unique users visited the project Facebook page. Over 560 of these users visited the page more than 21 times, and one single post attracted more than 2,600 views. And that was just the numbers through Facebook.

The project was broadcast through Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn as well. The social media metrics enabled us to know not only the number of visitors, but also where they were from, their age, gender, and what time of the day or night they liked to log on. You can even tell what type of content is more engaging (text, pictures, or video), and what subject matter is appealing to your audience.

Opportunities lost Just think for a moment about why most businesses that care about their brand have a social media presence. Several of the local businesses based in Kamo participated in the consultation process through social media. Each time they liked or commented on a Facebook post, their business name and logo was stamped onto the timeline that was being visited by hundreds of local residents every day.

By regularly engaging in this digital conversation, these businesses were becoming recognised for the contribution they were making to their community. It was the equivalent of putting your company’s advertising banner on the wall during a public meeting at the community hall.

This is why today’s businesses, professionals, and industries that rely on paying customers, need to understand how social media and communication technology is transforming the world. Those businesses that place customers at the centre of everything that they do, recognise that they cannot afford to ignore the ever increasing digital audience. So, where were all the surveying practitioners?

Disruptive innovation “An innovation that creates a new market by applying a different set of values, which ultimately (and unexpectedly) overtakes an existing market.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation SURVEYING+SPATIAL

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industry. More often than not, these companies come from outside of the industry, and bring entirely new perspectives and approaches to doing business. That kind of innovation changes the rules. Over recent times we have become accustomed to seeing mature products wiped out by new technologies, but now entire product lines – whole markets – are being created or destroyed overnight. So what might disruptive innovation look like in the land development sector?

Bite sized content & the ‘on-demand’ generation Most resource management processes are about as exciting as watching paint dry. And yet a large number of people will spend hours doing just that . . . most likely by watching ‘The Block’, ‘Changing Rooms’ or ‘Dream Home’ on TV. So what makes watching paint dry so exciting that thousands of people tune in week upon week to watch house renovations? The formula for making it highly compelling, is to compress the action over a very short timeframe, and build up the anticipation so that everyone wants to see the ‘big reveal’ before getting bored and tuning out. Understanding how to capture and maintain people’s attention in the digital age is big business.

In this fast paced world of digital connectedness, the mantra is rapidly becoming ‘whenever you want, where ever you want’. You only need to look around at what is happening in the world of television. No longer do you have to fit your household chores around the hours determined by the television programmers. In the world of print media, you no longer have to wait for your daily newspaper to be delivered to find out what happened yesterday, and there is certainly no such thing as ‘bank holidays’ any more.

What this leads to is an ever increasing number of consumers that expect business to adapt to their lives, rather than the other way around. In the technology sector this is described as the ‘user experience’ and there are now whole industries that specialise in designing services around customers. Adopting a ‘citizen-centric’ approach was the key factor that led to transforming the relationship between the council and the Kamo community.

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ing from their customers. It is not necessarily the business with the first and best idea that becomes market leader.

A sure fire way of loosing huge chunks of your customer base is to not respond and adapt to what the crowds in the marketplace are telling you. You can bet someone else will.

The power of the crowd The power of the crowd: Residents were asked to nominate their favourite walks.

Open government to build trust My own experience tells me that a lot of the time, if you arm people with the same information and consequences, it is much easier to reach consensus than when there is disparity of information. Our solution was to tell the community everything that we knew, every legal box that we were required to tick, every problem that we could see, and every compromise that needed to be made.

What this does is change the council’s role from arbitrator to facilitator. We weren’t going to be presenting any solutions at all. We were presenting information to the community that could be used to identify problems and potential consequences. We gathered and summarised the feedback, before handing decisions back to the community to determine their own fate. We were guiding the conversation through the topics that we needed to cover, but we kept the conversations focused on exploring the true nature of the problems, rather than jumping to solutions.

To achieve this we figuratively and literally took the council’s planning team to the street. This made the process more real for the audience (the community), by making it more personal. People would be able to see that planners are real human beings and not secret agents of the ‘government’. True transparency was achieved by enabling people to watch the team discuss and draft documents as ‘real time’ information came in from the community. It also meant that the planners spent their time working and living in the area, getting a taste of daily life through the eyes of the community – a fundamental element of service design.

It’s no secret that much of the development within the technology sector is being driven by the mass consumer market. In 2007 Garmin, the world’s top seller of GPS devices doubled its sales from the previous year (http://www. technologyreview.com/news/511786/a-shrinking-garminnavigates-the-smartphone-storm/). Then smart phones happened, and by 2013 the company was worth less than a third of its value in 2007.

Smart phone apps, such as Google Maps Navigation offer virtually all the features of high-end GPS devices, but cost nothing. Many of the free mapping platforms are maintained by communities of mappers that use aerial imagery, GPS devices, and low-tech field maps to verify that information is accurate and up to date. Crowd-sourcing location data and information is just one of the areas where members of the public are moving into roles that were once the exclusive domain of professionals.

Of course it’s not just information that can come from the crowd – solutions to real world problems could be found that way too. Take the Kamo Place Race project for instance. The community expressed concerns about pedestrian safety when crossing the road. The usual approach

Great ideas can come from anywhere The technology sector is acutely aware that the greatest innovations can come from the harshest critics. Listening to customer feedback, both positive and negative, will provide you all the insights you need to improve your services and grow your customer base.

Start-up businesses that do not yet have a product to test on the market will make a habit of monitoring the feedback and reviews that their competitors are receiv-

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Rapid Prototyping: Photo montages do not need to be professional looking for people to get the idea.

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The ‘prototype’ District Plan: Most of the citizen-centric planning controls focused on ‘walkability’.

would have been for the council’s roading department to pay a consultant thousands of dollars to do a study and then tell the community what the answer is.

Instead, we could ask the global community of experts.

“Calling all engineers on Twitter, fly across to this address in Google Maps, and let us know your ideas for getting across the road”. Engineers love solving problems, and we can get half a dozen ideas from the other side of the world overnight while we sleep. We have solutions that we can test with the community immediately without spending thousands. It no longer makes sense to do it the old way!

The era of design & rapid prototyping Everything works in idea land. Sure, you can spend lots of time developing plans and strategies, theorising and talking about how to find the perfect solution for anything. But, you will never know if your idea works until you try it. This is especially true for ideas that are developed by groups of people. It is usually not until you start ‘showing’ what your idea looks like, that you realise that words can mean different things to different people. This is why it is important to start ‘building’ prototypes of what your idea looks like, as soon as possible.

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In the context of land development, this might be a sketch layout of a subdivision, a visual ‘mock-up’ of photos, or a screen capture of some GIS data. The Kamo Place Race project used all of these techniques via Facebook, and even posted links to the draft district plan chapter on the cloud as it was being typed. This practice was the opposite of the approach generally taken by councils. In a bid to manage the ‘risk’ to council, documents are typically put through a rigorous review process before being made publicly available.

Disrupt or be disrupted In an industry that is particularly sensitive to decisions being subject to ‘legal challenge’ it is counter-intuitive to embrace failure in the land development sector. Of those professions that operate within that sector, it is perhaps even more difficult for those that pride themselves on error reduction, precision and tradition. But in times of rapid change through exponential technologies, those that are willing to unlearn old habits, try new things, fail, and re-learn will be well placed to take over from those who are not. It is very much a case of “Adapt, or Die”.

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• LEGAL

COLUMN

Incorporated Societies and other methods of owning and managing Shared Lanes and Facilities Stephanie Harris, Glaister Ennor Solicitors Securities Act 1979 – Historical Position In 2013 I wrote an article for this magazine (March 2013 Issue 73) about shared accessways being unwittingly caught by stringent Securities Act obligations resulting in significant compliance duties for developers and requiring adherence to fairly onerous disclosure regimes (even under purposely created Securities Act exemption notices) and other duties owed to purchasers of land involving shared accessways.

Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 In December 2014, the Financial Markets Conduct Act (FMCA) came into force superseding these relevant parts of the Securities Act. The FMCA does not require a disclosure procedure in respect of the sale of land in conjunction with rights to use common facilities like shared lanes which involve no aspect of financial return.

This means that the creation of an incorporated society to comply with Securities Act obligations is no longer a statutory requirement.

Rethinking Methods of Owning and Managing Shared Lanes and Facilities Historically surveyors, in conjunction with their developer clients would commonly create a driveway owned by one or more of the landowners intended to use the driveway and grant rights of way over the driveway in favour of oth-

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er landowners. However, as there is increasing pressure to intensify density in land development, shared lanes have become more common where the number of landowners accessing a driveway is frequently more than 10 and often in excess of 20 or 30 dwellings. These access ways are increasingly being created by way of access lots owned jointly by all of the owners using the driveway.

Whatever option is utilised, management and maintenance rights and obligations are essential to end purchaser decisions in buying property as it provides necessary access to their dwelling, but also the rules associated with the use of that accessway are important to them.

I consider that the users of the shared lane, however it is legally structured, have to be the persons who ultimately own it and should control the land that provides them with access to their properties. Those owners should be able to govern and manage their shared lane without having to (except in the most dire of circumstances) resort to external legal rights, such as the courts to resolve issues.

Incorporated societies as a method of owning and managing shared lanes and facilities – pros and cons 1. Every owner using the driveway is required, by way of encumbrance on the titles, to be a member of the society and this encumbrance and the society rules can record enforcement and governance provisions.

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2. Incorporated societies require administration, especially in their first year and this necessitates an additional cost to owners. There are some property management institutions such as Crockers that are familiar with this structure. Shared lane societies can look towards self-governance after their first year, which will likely reduce administrative costs going forward.

8. They do, however, rely on what the Law Commission has described as an “uncomfortably old” act with little amendment since its 1908 enactment.

Yet it is widely used in New Zealand in property developments in shared lane or communal facilities situations in the absence of specific and focused legislation, which is available in some overseas jurisdictions.

3. Incorporated societies enable maintenance and upkeep costs to be assessed and collected in advance. The intention being is to ensure proper maintenance, upkeep and presentation. Gardens, lighting and other assets within shared lanes are fairly difficult to upkeep without the collection and application of levies by a society manager.

9. The Law Commission has recommended its replacement, but it will remain focused on its extensive use across New Zealand in all sorts of club, charitable and community focused organisations, rather than specifically addressing its use in property developments. This means governance and management of shared lanes (however owned) remain very relevant for the foreseeable future.

4. Incorporated societies should create a forum for people to meet their neighbours and create community atmosphere through meetings/voting etc.

5. Incorporated societies can give owners a forum for complaints/issues to be discussed and addressed.

Otherwise, where an owner has for example a parking complaint, damage issue or maintenance demand, those communications often have nowhere to go for resolution.

6. Incorporated societies mean that where desirable or necessary, long term maintenance funds can be created and thus “future-proof” the upkeep and presentation of shared lanes and the facilities within them for the benefit of dwelling owners and the presentation of the development generally.

7. On sale, the new owner does need to become a member of the society (the encumbrance on their title will require it) and this is important to ensure their rights to utilise all of the rights and obligations associated with the accessway are passed to the new owner – it does entail some additional settlement paperwork.

Alternative methods of owning and managing shared lanes and facilities – pros and cons 1. Rights of way – The access way is surveyed and the owners of each lot using the access way have a divided share in it. This historically has been the common surveying approach. Right of way easements are then created granting reciprocal use and access rights. Right of ways are easy to implement and widely used and understood. There are standard statutory provisions which provide for a method of redress and self-help if neighbours will not undertake required works or contribute funds towards them. In addition to this, provisions can be included in the right of way dealing with ad hoc issues such as carparking rights.

2. The downside is that ultimately owners have to sue through the courts to enforce their rights. There is no management tool for uncooperative parties so although the right of way helpfully implies some useful terms, it does not provide any kind of

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management or governance structure to address enforcement, leaving remedies to be sought through the courts. Although additional covenants can be put in place to address some governance issues including dispute resolution.

3. Joint ownership – Title to the shared lane is held by all dwelling owners as tenants in common in equal shares. The shared lane is held in a separate title and can be linked to each dwelling owner’s title by either a covenant or by amalgamating the titles (for example the owner’s title comprises Lot 1 and a 1/Xth share of the access lot).

4. As with rights of way, statutory provisions are implied into access lots. Land covenants can be registered to address the relevant issues and require contributions towards maintenance, upkeep and repair, together with self-help remedies but, as with rights of way, there is usually no management tool for uncooperative parties and owners’ remedies are through the courts. It is possible to have additional covenants to address governance issues and appoint a manager. The covenant registered on the title can mirror your standard incorporated society rules and create an unincorporated society that can come into existence as and when required.

I have found this structure useful where there are smaller numbers of dwellings utilising an access lot (say, no more than about 10) as it keeps costs down while addressing the issues.

Conclusion Previously, the threshold for shared lanes needing an incorporated society was five plus due to Securities Act requirements. Under the new FMCA legislation developers can choose whether or not to use incorporated societies when selling land in conjunction with rights to use common facilities (provided no financial return is involved).

Despite the likely replacement of the Incorporated Societies Act in the next few years there is no suggestion of any new legislation that is contemplating adopting any kind of regime designed to accommodate the increasing drive to maximise land use in terms of density but helping maintain developer’s design imperatives and practical use, management and maintenance of shared accessways.

Where there are no common facilities requiring continual maintenance and upkeep (such as gardens, lights and bollards) and there is little chance of disputes arising that cannot be dealt with adequately by statute, meaning that rights of way and joint owner-

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ship structures are generally the most efficient and cost effective method of owning and managing shared lanes.

Such rights of way and joint ownership structures can contain carefully crafted covenants dealing with contributions, maintenance and repair, dispute resolution processes etc. They can act as pseudo incorporated societies if worked through carefully.

For those shared lanes that do include communal facilities or are significant in size and will require on-going management (possibly even sinking funds for repair and replacement) an incorporated society likely remains be the best method of owning and managing them.

Stephanie Harris is the joint managing partner of Glaister Ennor Solicitors. She has extensive experience in property and commercial law. She acts for SMEs, larger corporates, investors and developers on many large and complex property transactions and developments, ownership structures, leases, security interests and general structuring and finance.

Contact Details: DDI: (09) 356 8232 Fax: (09) 356 8244 Email: stephanie.harris@glaister.co.nz

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Issue 82 June 2015

• POSITIONING

AND MEASUREMENT STREAM

Better Coordinates with PositioNZ-PP Rachelle Winefield, Geodetic Surveyor, Land Information New Zealand Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) recently launched PositioNZ-PP, its PositioNZ online GPS processing service, giving surveyors, engineers and other positioning experts the ability to create high accuracy control points, without the need for their own specialised processing software.

This is a free service, designed specifically for New Zealand conditions. It uses the PositioNZ CORS (Continuously Operating Reference Stations) network as reference stations and provides results in terms of local New Zealand datums.

Results are typically provided within ten minutes of submission.

To use PositioNZ-PP, users upload a GPS RINEX file, along with required station metadata. The service processes each file individually and sends the results, including useful statistics, back via email.

PositioNZ-PP calculates coordinates in the official geodetic datum, NZGD2000. The service also provides NZTM2000 projection and meridonal circuit coordinates, as well as heights using the official vertical datum, NZVD2009.

• Rapid orbits – available within 41 hours after observation time.

• Final orbits – the most accurate – available within 18 days after observation time.

For most PositioNZ-PP jobs, Rapid orbits will provide good accuracies (to within a few centimetres) and there may be little benefit waiting for Final orbits. The graph below shows the difference in accuracy between the Rapid and Final orbits.

Getting the best results Since it was launched, use of PositioNZ–PP has been steadily increasing, and feedback from users is that is straight forward and simple to use. To help get the best possible results from the service, we can offer the following tips and advice.

Antenna heights For the most accurate coordinates, antenna heights must be correctly measured. The antenna height required by PositioNZ-PP is the height of the Antenna Reference Point (ARP) above the vertical reference point of the mark.

Observation times PositioNZ-PP can only process RINEX files with observations of between 1 and 48 hours. Longer observation times are likely to provide more accurate solutions and at least 4 hours observation time is suggested to achieve centimetre level accuracy.

Processing takes advantage of the best available orbit information for each RINEX file at the time the job is submitted for processing. These are: • Ultra Rapid orbits – the earliest and least accurate.

Available within 9 hours after the observation time.

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Reference station fit errors

Formats and data As this service includes corrections for the New Zealand deformation model, it will only operate within New Zealand, and only for files observed after 1 January 2000.

Files must be submitted in the RINEX v2.11 format and RINEX and the expected heading metadata must be correctly populated. PositioNZ-PP will provide error messages if this information is incorrect and a solution can be found in the help files.

The RINEX data must be observed in ‘static’ mode. PositioNZ-PP is unable to process kinematic or real-time data.

Position-PP can only process GPS data. The RINEX file may, contain data from other constellations; such as GLONASS, GALILEO and Beidou. This additional data will be stripped out during processing and will not be used in the final result.

PositioNZ-PP GNSS, as well as information on how to use is it, is available at www.linz.govt.nz/positionzpp

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All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. GEO-068 (04/15)

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Issue 82 June 2015

GeoSystems turns 30!

Daniel Wallace, General Manager, GeoSystems NZ Ltd June 2015 marks thirty years of dedication to New Zealand’s survey, mapping, civil construction, and infrastructure industries for GeoSystems NZ Ltd. To acknowledge this milestone, we asked Martin Hewitt – Surveyor and GeoSystems’ first General Manager, and now Southern Region Account Manager with the recently formed sister company SITECH NZ, and Mark Green – GeoSystems’ Survey Division manager, for a brief history of the company and some highlights.

In June 1985, Geo-Systems Ltd (now GeoSystems NZ) was incorporated, breaking away from its parent company Eliot Sinclair and Partners in Christchurch, where it had been in operation for a year as a wholly owned subsidiary.

Martin Hewitt became its first general manager and GeoSystems was initially the South Island agent for Sokkisha.

In the early 1990s, it opened an Auckland Office and became the national agent for Trimble, beginning a long standing business relationship that still runs strong today.

Mark Green joined to run the Auckland office, where he currently serves the surveying industry from GeoSystems’ North Shore location.

When asked what comes to mind when he reflects on those thirty years, Mr Hewitt identified a top list: • Mid 1980s: Marketing the first personal computer based software for surveyors – SURVIS. This was developed by Datacom Software Research which subsequently became Trimble Navigation New Zealand in the 1990s.

• 1990: Clyde Dam tailrace dredging, we provided excavator barge mounted positioning systems using Geodimeter 140T Robotic Total Stations and HYDROpro software.

A global first: Trimble’s first machine control system being operated at Clearwater Resort by Christchurch Mayor Gary Moore.

• 1994: Auckland Sky Tower positioning (partnering with Harrison Grierson who were the main consultants).

• 1999: First 3D Machine Control system developed by Trimble and used on a Caterpillar D4 Dozer on the Clearwater Golf Course Project in Christchurch.

• Mid-2000s: GeoSystems owned and operated GNSS reference stations added around the country to create the iBASE correction service for single and network RTK. • 2011: Provided positioning and real-time monitoring services on board the Rena after it was wrecked off the coast of Tauranga.

• 2013: Supplied the hardware, software and services for the first fully Connected Site in New Zealand – the MacKays to Peka Peka project.

• 2015: SITECH NZ formed out of GeoSystems, to focus on the civil construction industry.

Early days: Martin Hewitt (far left) and Bruce Sinclair (far right) were key individuals in creating GeoSystems.

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Over those thirty years GeoSystems has engaged hundreds of organisations around the country and has been privileged to be involved in many interesting projects big and small that have all contributed to the changing landscape that is New Zealand. As a proud Diamond Partner of the NZIS, GeoSystems remains true to the initial vision it held – to serve the surveying industry to help solve problems for surveyors using technology.

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• BCB

COMMENTARY

WHEN IS A ROAD A ROAD? Mick Strack, National School of Surveying I have taken a slightly different approach to my column this issue – looking at some older case law as a way to respond to the current debate about the legality and/or construction of the Haast-Hollyford road.

So, when is a road a road? The question sounds rather tautological, so an extended question is: when is a strip of land, either evident on the ground because it is formed as a road or track, or illustrated on a plan of survey (often as a strip of land appearing to connect with many adjoining land parcels), or described in the words of a deed, a legally designated way for the purpose of allowing for a public right to pass and repass?

The simple answer is ‘almost always’. An extended answer follows.

Roads can be created, and become legal, in many different ways, including the following:

Road legalisation The most common way roads can be created is for the road to be designed, surveyed, pegged, constructed/formed and shown on a Deposited Plan as ‘Road to Vest’. The plan showing such road, and the legalisation of the road, will usually require approval by a territorial authority, and (because it is then deposited) by the Registrar General. No further legal action needs to be undertaken to complete the legalisation of such a road.

Roads may also be acquired or taken under the Public Works Act when land under a fee simple private title is

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required for a public highway. Here the process requires negotiation with the land owner, the preparation of a plan of survey, the appropriate pegging of all new boundaries, and then the new road being gazetted as a legal road.

Note that in the two examples above, it is quite clear that the road boundaries are required to be marked out on the ground in order that there to be no dispute about the actual road alignment.

Roads may also be created either when a survey (and the plan deposit) is incomplete or the territorial authority has not officially signed its consent for a road. If the road has been formed and opened for public use, then our courts have held that the road may become legal by ‘implied dedication.’ While a normal process may then be for the road to be surveyed and marked out on the ground, this is not a necessary step for the road to be legal nonetheless.

Roads were also created when Crown or Maori land was subdivided (or otherwise partitioned) to be made available for settlement, where there was a requirement for such parcels to have road frontage. These roads may not have been laid out or formed, and only shown on survey plans or record maps (as roads and coloured burnt sienna) with minimal or no dimensions.

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If tracks over Crown or Maori land have been used as roads without obstruction, they can under the Counties Act 1886 be ‘deemed to be public roads ... notwithstanding that any such lines of roads have not been surveyed, laid off, or dedicated in any special manner to public use’ (s245) In the three latter examples of road legalisation there has been no need for the road alignment to have been surveyed nor marks placed in the ground in order for the road to be legal.

Historical Note In the early days of settlement of New Zealand, there were two driving influences on the work for surveyors: 1) to subdivide the land for acquisition and settlement by incoming settlers, and 2) to set aside land as roads for access to all those new land parcels and legally establish all such roads. Closer settlement of land and ready access to that land were the priorities.

When very early surveys were being undertaken of land acquired by the Crown from Maori (and particularly so in Te Wai Pounamu / South Island, where large blocks of territory were purchased from Ngai Tahu), the Crown had the freedom to create new parcels and new roads over that Crown land. Because of the demand for land to be made available for settlement and the limited capacity for full surveys of this land, land parcels were often granted title without a survey and the marking on the ground of the necessary roads.

Early surveys were often rather rough, boundary marking may have been sporadic, plans may have been lacking in accurate detail and definition, and roads may have only been defined as strips illustrated on a plan. The courts have recognised these strips as legal roads because they were marked on the plan and because the adjoining parcels would have had no access.

In determining the legal alignment of such roads today, there may be some choices to make. Should the alignment of the road be calculated from the limited dimensions shown on the plan (in other words, by some documentary evidence)? Should the road as formed (no matter how informally) become the true alignment (on the basis of possession/occupation)? Or should there be some interpretation of the intent of the surveyor (whether to set aside land appropriate for access and passage, or following the most convenient alignment, or in the most efficient way – Surveying is, after all, a pragmatic exercise)? This question was asked in the case Re Application by Waitemata City Council, where the planning Tribunal decided against the documentary evidence (even though a good close by survey was calculated), and determined that the road as currently occupied by a rough track, was the true and intended alignment of the road.

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Snushall v Kaikoura County (1840-1932) NZPCC 670 An 1865 survey of land purchased from Maori by the Crown showed several parcels of land and strips of land appearing to be roads. If any survey was actually undertaken it was only of the roughest kind and the ‘roads’ were neither marked on the ground nor formed. The question soon arose from one of the adjoining owners as to whether the road was legal. The case reached the Privy Council.

The survey had been undertaken under the Nelson Regulations (during the period of Provincial Government) under which “the vital matter is only the laying down on the surveyor’s map as distinguished from the land itself” (p676).

The decision also recognised that the road became legal under the Counties Act 1908 “even if the line of the road had not been surveyed, laid off, or dedicated in any more particular or special manner to public use” (p676). In the alternative, the Public Works Act 1908 “contains a provision sufficient to make the strips such public roads, … if a right of way has in any manner been dedicated to the public by any person entitled to make such dedication” (p674).

“There is no provision in the [Nelson] regulations analogous to that in s101(a) of the Public Works Act 1908, pointing to the necessity of the road being laid out on the land itself” (p676). The roads were clearly legal although the boundaries had not been marked on the ground by survey.

Wellington City Corporation v McRea [1936] NZLR 921 From the earliest years of the settlement of Wellington there was a track formed around the shoreline between Wellington and the Hutt River valley. Land was subdivided and sold, showing an intent to have frontage to this road although initially there was no survey of the road. With the proposal to construct the railway, the road and railway corridor was surveyed and shown on a plan – the east boundary mostly shown as MHWM and the west boundary 100 links inland. In other words, much of the road was defined by reference to the natural boundary rather than by being pegged. “Pegging the boundary of a road is not the only way in which a road may be laid out on the ground” (p935). In some places the coastal strip widened significantly and the road turned inland further where it was shown as a centre line with boundaries 50 links on each side. Later there was legislation that allowed for that road to be closed (stopped in modern terms) and a new surveyed alignment that mostly followed the old, but there were additional parcels of land left over. The case was brought over a dispute about whether or not these parcels were legal roads. The court decided that the road had becontinued bottom of page 30

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The Story of Shaky City David Goodwin, University of Otago The device of Socratic dialogues to stimulate critical thinking, challenge assumptions and stimulate moral, philosophical and mathematical debate goes back at least as far as the book of Job in the Old Testament and thence through Plato and Descartes and others to remain a feature of contemporary lecture theatres. It is in that spirit that the following story is offered.

Once upon a time, three land surveyors lived in a particularly shaky part of the shaky land of Aotearoa. So unsettled was their city that the rangatira who lived in Te Whanganui-a-Tara assigned them a quest to find the best way of surveying and submitting cadastral records. ‘You should all use a trial site,’ stipulated the rangatira, ‘with an origin of three fifth-order marks; about a dozen Class A wooden property marks; and a distant PositioNZ control mark. The surveyor with the best solution will win a case of Emersons.’

The first surveyor wore his “I’ll miss missing-lines” T-shirt for this important quest. He knew that in the 1950s the Aotearoa cadastre had been rated the best in the world, and he certainly would not want anything to change. But this surveyor was also very progressive, and owned GNSS receivers with which he surveyed positions for all marks. He inferred vectors between the positions and submitted his data set to Landonline, and thereafter, whenever the earth shook and marks were cruelly liquifacted, this surveyor accessed numerous pages of vector data from Landonline and had endless enjoyment doing the missing line calculations necessary to replace the marks. He was unworried about the PositioNZ mark shifting relative to the survey area because, as everyone knows, vectors between adjacent marks are usually relatively unchanged. Once someone said the word “coordinates” in his hearing but he said ‘mind your language – that word should not be spoken within three metres of any building!’

The second surveyor came from Quebec, where people say the word “coordinates” all the time and never have to say “‘scuze my French.” He wore his politically correct T-shirt with “I love C**@?&nates” on the front, and he too surveyed all the marks and lost no time in declaring that their coordinates were from now onwards the best legal evidence. When the earth shook and the PositioNZ mark moved relative to the others,

BCB Commentary continued from page 29

come legal by being laid out on the plans: “A requirement that a road be ‘laid out’ on the ground should be interpreted no more strictly than is fitting, having regard to the object to be served and the practical conditions under which the work has to be done” (p942).

Roads are a priority Although our land transfer system makes much of the protection of private property and the indefeasibility of title, roads whether formed or unformed, marked by survey pegs or not, still trump private title. This is illustrated in s77 Land Transfer Act “No right to any public road or reserve shall be acquired, or be deemed to have been acquired, by the unauthorised inclusion thereof in any certificate of title or by the registration of any instrument purporting to deal therewith otherwise than as authorised by law.” The Privy Council (Man O’War Station v Auckland CC [2002] 3 NZLR 584) has upheld this priority by deciding that even though title to a well defined parcel of land was issued, land that had become legal road, but not acknowledged in the title, was nevertheless excluded from the otherwise indefeasible title.

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Extinguishing a road We must be careful of aphorisms such as ‘once a road, always a road’ and similarly ‘the exceptions prove the rule.’ But roads usually stay roads, and the only exceptions I can think of include: 1) roads can be extinguished by the process of road stopping under the 10th schedule of the Local Government Act 1974 (s342) or Public Works Act 1981 (s116), and 2) when an unformed road becomes part of the foreshore and seabed under the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 (s14) it ceases to be legal road.

It has been claimed that a road may cease to be a road when the surrounding land is declared to be a National Park without a statement about the roads being excluded.

Indeed some National Park declarations have specifically stated that some roads are excluded from them. However, given the over-riding importance of access to and through land that roads provide, it seems unlikely that the Crown would have intended for roads to be extinguished through land where at least one purpose is to allow for public access.

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he merely shrugged and said ‘c’est la vie’, then set about performing prodigious mathematical algorithms to model the earth movement and re-coordinate any shaken-up positions.

The last surveyor, whose name was Mud, wore an “I love monument cadastres” T-shirt especially to reassure the rangatira. He also began by surveying all the marks, but with one important difference – before fixing existing boundary marks, he tapped in a flat-topped nail and measured to this, and for new boundary marks he used next generation marks with well-defined centres. ‘The more marks to reconstruct from the merrier,’ said Mud. He always checked his surveyed positions with a double-tie or an independent GNSS fix, and his best adjusted values he submitted as an Excel file of “observation coordinates”, specifying that the tacked boundary marks henceforward carried the same weight as the origin marks from which they were surveyed.

‘But you have not supplied vectors,’ complained the rangatira in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, ‘and everyone knows that only vectors stay constant when the earth moves.’

‘What don’t you understand about the joins between observation coordinates also being vectors?’ asked Mud. ‘The only downside is that I’ll have to forego the pleasure of calculating all those lovely missing lines.’

‘But hang on,’ said the rangatira. ‘You forget that the coordinates of marks will change over time, especially relative to the far-away PositioNZ mark.’

‘Here’s what I do when a mark gets liquifacted,’ Mud explained. ‘I upload the most recent observation coordinate file to my GNSS or Total Station data logger, and then survey a number of marks in the vicinity to ensure good redundancy – all checked and approved marks now have equal status, don’t forget. I begin by using a 2D transformation to see which marks still occupy the same relative locations and so can be assumed not to have moved.’

‘But their coordinates will probably have changed,’ objected the rangatira.

‘Not the inverses though,’ said Mud. ‘I infer vectors from the two closest unmoved marks, calculate a polar and check polar vector to compute coordinates of the liquifacted mark on my current survey system, and then replace it.’

‘But Landonline was built for vectors,’ said the rangatira.

‘Even if that doesn’t change,’ said Mud, ‘and it may yet have to, a spreadsheet of observation coordinates accompanying each survey would save plenty of time, could avoid copying errors, and would make it easier to derive weighted means that check measurements contribute towards. Granted, there is still an issue with occupation boundaries, because equity dictates that occupiers should not have to move their structures, but with such a dense network of survey control I’m sure something will be possible.’

Gentle readers, who should get the Emersons?

Current debate

built to today’s standards will be quite different from what is needed for, and currently provided for, a walking track.

It may be expected that the original surveyors may have expected a road to be formed sometime in the future, so their intent would have been to set aside a practical route.

If the law can take a liberal view of the intent, then there may be no barrier to road construction (apart from cost, environmental impact, loss of unique wilderness, and widespread public objection!).

Any application for construction consent may require the road to be stopped in its entirety and a new as-built alignment legalised by survey. This should obviate the need for a full redefinition of the old (and maybe redundant) survey position, with its attendant problems with boundary intersections, severances and efforts to build within inappropriate boundaries.

While there may be a very logical and well argued case against the construction of this road, the legality of the road does not provide a cause for objection.

Note: full references are available from author. mick.strack@otag.ac.nz

The discussion above is relevant because of the recent (and indeed, historical) debate about the legal status of a road from Haast to Hollyford Valley traversing parts of the Fiordland National Park. While I have not fully investigated all the surveys and changes of land title and management in this area, by applying the above principles, I am convinced that the road remains a public legal road.

One of the arguments against the road legality is that it has not been clearly defined by survey; specifically it has not been laid out on the ground. While surveyors routinely seek to mark boundaries on the land, and the cadastre is very much tidier and overt when the boundaries are marked on the ground, this marking is not a prerequisite for a legal road – at least in selected circumstances.

Significant problems remain however, beyond the ‘simple’ question of legality. The definition is extremely limited: only superficial dimensions, alignment indicated on large format very old plans which appear more topographical than cadastral, but clearly a strip coloured burnt sienna. The requirements for a route for a new highway

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OPEN DATA

The way to the future for New Zealand’s geospatial industry Mark Fisher, Managing Director, Eighty4 Recruitment It’s always interesting to get a global perspective on our industry – how we stack up, what is best practice internationally, what we can learn from, what areas we are leading in. We have some very clever Kiwis doing awesome things overseas and their perspectives on the global market can be very telling and helpful. Such as the insights Mark Fisher, founder and MD of Eighty4 Recruitment, gleaned from one of his internationally experienced candidates returning home recently.

Andrew Hunter spent eight years as an assistant professor at the University of Calgary, teaching land survey, GIS, and planning courses to Department of Geomatics Engineering students. Before this he worked for a multinational land development company in Brunei Darussalam, where he first got involved in the digital world of spatial information and GIS. Mark spoke to Andrew about his thoughts on New Zealand’s future in Spatial Information and GIS. In your opinion, what does NZ need to do to become a leader in using spatial information/GIS? I’d suggest New Zealand will best flourish when there is a commons (think roadways, sidewalks and telecommunications) for GIS data – this has been highlighted by international examples where privatisation of common resources (water, forestry etc) has stifled access and use. To promote geospatial data as a common resource, we need to develop a digital infrastructure, core data, and standard (simple and open) data licensing. New Zealand has established a geospatial strategy that outlines a framework for data governance.

To become world leaders, New Zealand needs to focus on building infrastructure to enable this strategy. This will ensure development of core data sets and metadata so users know what they are getting. We should build a catalogue service for publishing data – a kind of library where users can find the data they need. We need to adopt the tools and standards to allow automated sharing of data internally (between various levels of government) and externally (with the public). We need data portals to let users access data in real-time. Our users need to trust in the accuracy of the data they are using, so it’s important the design, development and testing of tools are in line with interoperability rules. And like all good systems,

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there should be the ability to fix or improve any errors or issues identified during testing and reviews to make the system easier to use.

Take Landonline as an example. Landonline contains a wealth of data that I believe could be used far more extensively than it appears to be. However, this is unlikely to happen until access to the data is simplified. One approach is to improve the user interface to allow users to do the things that they need to do easily, quickly and naturally.

Where best can New Zealand organisations use spatial information to benefit our communities?

It may be better to ask what our local communities, or clients, are actually interested in. For example, a municipality may want to improve public transit within their jurisdiction and want to engage the public in the discussion. One approach might be to ask community members various questions to help frame the problem: what types of services (employment, social, entertainment etc) would they like to access via public transport, perhaps with some form of ranking (service need); how long are they willing to travel on a public service (service frequency/duration); and do they have preferred routes – these could be sketched on a map by community members, for example.

Then using an origin (residential addresses) destination (ranked services of interest) based model, community members could be presented with potential transit routes that maximises their service selection and frequency criteria. By attaching a funding model to the proposed route, community members could then begin to understand the effect of choices that have been made. The point is: we should be developing solutions driven by end-user needs, rather than our “perceived” capabilities. continued bottom of page 33

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Thinking Outside the Classroom Debbie Hallam, BOP Polytechnic

2014 was a very big year for us here at the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic (Polytechnic). We celebrated the successes of our first three graduates being awarded their National Diploma in Surveying (NDS): Phil McCaughan (Putaruru), Tony Williams (Christchurch) and Russel Hodson (Tauranga).

Some interesting facts about those three graduates: • They all studied while they continued to work • Only one graduate resides in the Bay of Plenty close to the Polytechnic • All had been working in surveying for quite a while prior to obtaining their NDS If you are wondering how three people in varying locations around New Zealand, whilst working, obtained a NDS and how your staff might be able to as well – keep reading!

Background Let me take you on a short journey of the background to the NDS landing at the Polytechnic. Firstly we need to travel back to 2007.

2007 As a member of the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors (NZIS) Education Committee, I was a party to many discussions around training people working in surveying around New Zealand who were not qualified, or who were struggling to complete study they had embarked on. The NZIS was experiencing a skills shortage, and the numbers of graduates with tertiary qualifications were well short of industry demand. The committee convenor requested committee members approach their local polytechnic about

taking up delivery of the NDS. I took up the challenge and did exactly that! Shortly after my initial approach the committee convenor and I met with the Head of School of Applied Technology at the Polytechnic, and the seed was planted. The NZIS president at the time wrote to the Polytechnic and offered the association’s support, outlining the skills shortage which had been growing steadily since the late 1990’s.

2010 I heard through the grapevine that the Polytechnic was watering the surveying seedling. I approached the Polytechnic and leapt at the opportunity to get involved and secure delivery of the NDS at the Polytechnic in order to provide a solution for the countrywide problem identified by the NZIS in 2007. The year of 2010 included a lot of consultation with surveyors around New Zealand to choose a set of electives and firm up our programme for delivery to suit working surveyors.

2012 The Polytechnic began delivery of the NDS to working surveyors in and around the Bay of Plenty region.

2013 The Polytechnic began delivery of the NDS to working surveyors outside the Bay of Plenty region.

continued from page 32

What is the most exciting global trend in the use of GIS and spatial data technology?

The open data movement. An open data philosophy assumes that general (not private) data about the places we live, the environment we live in, and the things we do as a society should be made available to the public so they can make informed decisions. The best GIS example would be OpenStreetMap, which has proven to be as accurate as authoritative data sources – and, in most cases, thematically

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equivalent as well. The open data movement continues to put pressure on data custodians to allow society to benefit from access to publically funded data, rather than hiding it away. A number of studies from Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UK have also shown that opening up geospatial data to the public has also increased data use.

Eighty4 Recruitment specialises in engineering, construction, planning and surveying recruitment. www.eighty4recruitment.com

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Phil McCaughan (Putaruru), Debbie Hallam and Russel Hodson (Tauranga) on graduation night, December 2014. credit photo to Kate McCaughan.

2014 The Polytechnic awards NDS to three graduates.

2015 Hamish McKenzie is employed to grow the surveying team at the Polytechnic.

The Significance of 2013 Note that in 2013 the Polytechnic began delivering the NDS to students outside the Bay of Plenty region. From the outset our goal here at the Polytechnic was to find a way in which to achieve that, and we had spent the previous year exploring options.

We settled on a wonderful platform to include students distant from our campus in our classes by utilising the genius of the internet. It was important that our solution was based around robust learning theory, because those theories underpin the value of studying with tutor supported and facilitated learning in a collaborative environment.

In Tony William’s (Christchurch) words: ‘Things I liked about the BoP [Polytechnic] course was the ability to do the course via distance learning and that with people being spread over the country the discussions on how things were done differently or interpreted differently across the country.’

Theories and Strategies to Facilitate Learning Theories and strategies employed by us at the Polytechnic include: • Constructivism – through acknowledgement and sharing of pre-existing knowledge, then building on knowledge from there – encourages collaboration between tutor and students as a group. At the recent Consulting Surveyors of New Zealand Workshop,

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Tony Williams, 2014 graduate (Christchurch)

Christina Hulbe and I began our presentation to the delegates with a jointly presented and collaborative activity involving all our audience. We utilised Thinglink as our tool – this is a tool that supports constructivism.

• Tuakana-teina (traditional style of Maori teaching) – a means of acknowledging how a person with more expertise guides those with less expertise – accepting that those roles may reverse at times.

• Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development – recognises that a higher level of development is reached through guidance and collaboration with peers, than through independent problem solving.

We see time and time again how collaboration provides a much richer learning experience for our students. When our students come together as a group of working surveyors, each individual gets increased exposure to a range of surveying experiences.

Tim Archer studies with us from Wanganui, and his thoughts are, ‘I work for a small business and really enjoy getting the support, learning new ways to tackle problems that may be encountered when surveying and the fact that although learning remotely still feel a part of an active classroom.’

As a polytechnic we place high value on growing a student’s skill set and confidence around learning to enquire.

We employ strategies around project, problem and inquiry based learning. The added value for our students is they receive: • Tutor supported and facilitated learning • A planned programme of study with set goals and deadlines • Flexibility for working surveyors

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• Online technology such as collaborative tools like Google docs and Thinglink to support those learning theories and strategies mentioned 2014 graduate Phil McCaughan has this to share: ‘I didn’t think that spending 3 or 4 years at Otago University was the best option for me. So being able to study part time without having to take too much time out of work time (1 day a fortnight wasn’t too hard for the boss to accommodate) was an overriding factor in deciding to do this course. Also the teaching staff were extremely competent and presented the courses in an easy to understand format. Another plus was the opportunity to interact with other students with the same goals, it was great to be able to bounce ideas and concepts off others.’

Acknowledgements Having begun my own surveying career training as a technician in the early 1990’s, working with many talented survey technicians (and marrying a particularly delightful one too) – education is something I have been passionate about for over 20 years.

The following enthusiastic and clever surveyors have helped to deliver content and/or support our students in some way over the past three years, so I acknowledge Tony Aldersley, Maurice O’Neill, Grant Sutherland, Richard Hallam, Peter Robinson and Nikki Harnett’s assistance and thank them for their contributions.

We have a well-established Advisory Committee. Its role is to ‘…develop and maintain effective liaison between industry and professional groups and the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic to continually enhance the quality of existing educational programmes and to recommend the development of new programmes to meet the identified industry requirements.’ Mark Dyer was a member of our committee up until taking up the role of Surveyor General. John Collie (our chairman), Tony Aldersley and Anthony Moss are our other founding members. The Polytechnic is grateful for their time and energy in supporting what has been a start-up programme here. We are now beginning to see some tangible and positive results.

The Polytechnic was thrilled to bring Hamish McKenzie into the surveying team just prior to Easter this year. He

We see time and time again how collaboration provides a much richer learning experience for our students. has brought with him a great deal of enthusiasm and infectious positivity, as well as some varied surveying experiences which are so useful when employing storytelling to contextualise surveying concepts during a learning session with students. Hamish has found a niche for himself here, bringing a unique perspective of surveying together with his passion for sharing knowledge.

Where to from here With an understanding of what we are doing with the NDS here at the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic we would encourage you to contact us if you have amongst your team, any surveyors who are unqualified and could benefit from what we have to offer to help them reach their goal of holding a National Diploma in Surveying.

Geographical location in New Zealand is not a barrier to studying with us. The level of exposure your staff have had to surveying is not a barrier to studying with us. Enrolment can happen any time throughout the year. Potential students can act now!

We are looking forward to growing our graduate numbers and continuing to contribute in a positive way to both the individual surveyors who study with us, and the surveying profession.

I will finish with a thought from another of our three graduates last year, Russel Hodson (Tauranga) ‘BoP Polytechnic introduced their in-house and distance based Diploma at the start of 2012. I joined this course and through their effort, and accommodation I completed and graduated in 2014. I can only speak highly of the tutors and staff at the BoP Poly as they bent over backwards to facilitate, assist, and encourage my learning journey. Their efforts and flexible approach was the catalyst I needed and the only reason I eventually graduated. I really enjoyed the experience, the caring approach of the tutors and the flexibility to pick, choose and complete the outstanding papers that I needed. There was a great mix between practical and theory, a relaxed but positive class environment and a wealth of resources at hand. Thank you BOP Poly.’ www.boppoly.ac.nz debbie.hallam@boppoly.ac.nz – Programme Coordinator

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Commercial Partners Back NZIS Conference GeoSystems and Glenn Stone Insurance are again showing their support for NZIS as the leading commercial partners for this year’s NZIS conference being held in Wellington in October. “We are very fortunate to have such a strong support for NZIS,” says Hadyn Smith, NZIS CEO, with all booths now sold. “Many of the stand holders have supported our profession for many years, but GeoSystems and Glenn Stone Insurance have definitely stepped up to ensure this event is successful. It will also be a big year for GeoSystems as they rebrand.”

Dan Wallace, General Manager of GeoSystems, who will be the conference Premier Commercial Partner, was a key speaker last year and has no doubt that this year’s theme of Adapt, Innovate, Integrate will open the door to new thinking at every level. “There are some great ideas being worked through around the Christchurch rebuild and some integrated solutions to real NZ problems. We are really looking forward to being involved,” says Dan. This year delegates will also get to enjoy the company of professional MC Greg Ward who will not only oversee the conference but will also provide the entertainment at the Glenn Stone Insurance NZIS Awards Dinner to be held

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at one of Wellington and New Zealand’s top prestigious venues – Te Papa (Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa).

Glenn Stone is proud of his involvement with the awards and excited by the venue and some of the options being considered for this year’s event. “The people that receive the NZIS awards need to be placed on a pedestal and to have that opportunity at Te Papa is something we should all be looking forward to as it is such a special place for all New Zealanders,” said Glenn.

The venue for the conference is the James Cook Hotel Grand Chancellor in Wellington and it will run for two days, starting with a welcome and opening ceremony 15 October.

The local organising committee headed by Matt Carson is pulling together a programme to reflect the theme of Adapt, Innovate, Integrate. They are currently busy with a ‘call’ for presentation proposals and abstracts. These can be emailed to: matt@landlink.co.nz The conference website – www.nzisconference.co.nz – will be updated with programme and conference information as it is confirmed.

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IRAQ-KUWAIT BOUNDARY MAINTENANCE PROJECT Vince Belgrave, Project Manager, Sounds Surveying Ltd

New pillar emplacement

Introduction The United Nations Security Council resolution 687 (1991) established the United Nations Iraq Kuwait Boundary Demarcation Commission. According to its mandate, this Commission undertook the technical tasks to demarcate in geographic coordinates the international boundary following the Gulf War of 1991. During the period 1991-1994 a total of 105 boundary pillars (plus one existing) and 28 intermediate boundary pillars were constructed and surveyed along the boundary by surveyors from the Depart-

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ment of Survey and Land Information (NZ) and Swedesurvey (Sweden) along with engineering contractors. Two ex NZ Surveyors-General had significant roles with Bill Robertson being a member of the Commission and Don Grant being the Chief Geodesist. My role in that work was as project manager.

The Commission also made recommendations to the Secretary-General of the United Nations to allow for ongoing maintenance of the pillars and markers of the international boundary including the ability to emplace additional markers if required.

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Access over the barrier

Morning tea with Kuwaiti border police

As a result, in 2005 initial arrangements between Iraq, Kuwait and the United Nations were agreed for a United Nations led field inspection, which took place in February 2006. My role was as a consultant to the UN for the field inspection and report. Based on this field assessment, but subject to unforeseen delays, contracts were prepared by the United Nations and put to tender in 2012. After award of the contracts for Engineering and Survey, work was able to get underway in early 2013.

Stage Two: Survey

Field Survey Requirements The Survey contract was awarded to a consortium of three companies which had recently completed the Kuwait/Saudi Arabia boundary, being Merrett Survey Ltd from England, Al-Kharafi & Sons from Kuwait and Sounds Surveying Ltd from New Zealand.

The field survey team consisted of the following: • Vince Belgrave, Project Manager/Surveyor, New Zealand • Robert Peggs, Project Surveyor Merrett Survey, UK • Tom Swaine, Surveyor, Merrett Survey, UK • Adnan Khan, Technician/Driver, Al Kharafi, Kuwait • Zaheer Admad, Technician/Driver, Al Kharafi, Kuwait Survey Equipment: • 1 x Leica TCR1203 Total Station • 10 x Leica 1200 GPS Receivers The survey contract involved the following tasks:

Stage One: Field Assessment: • To locate the existing witness marks, intermediate pillars, pointer pillars and main pillars • To check the intervisibility between main pillars to determine the need, if any, for extra intermediate pillars • To assess the damage to the structure, including missing plaques, of all existing marks as listed above

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• To verify by survey the existing pillar network in relation to the original primary control • To verify by survey the pillar network in relation to the existing witness marks • To set out and survey replacement main boundary pillars • To set out and survey replacement intermediate pillars • To set out and survey new witness marks, intermediate pillars and pointer pillars Fieldwork was carried out between 14th January and 17th March 2013. Stage one of the project involved the field assessment in conjunction with the construction contractor (UCALSA of Spain). Representatives of the joint boundary commission of Iraq and Kuwait were in attendance along with UN personnel. These included two Iraqi government surveyors.

Vehicles and drivers for our team were provided by Al-Kharafi in Kuwait. Accommodation was an apartment in Kuwait City. Each working day involved a drive of around two hours from the apartment to the nearest border police station to the boundary sites. From there we were escorted to the boundary via gates in the electrified fences by the Kuwaiti police. The police stations are located within 1km of the border and spread about every 20km or so. The Kuwaiti and Iraqi police patrolled along the boundary in the specific zone as supplied to them in the work schedule. The work schedule for the week in advance was submitted to the UN representatives and forwarded to the Kuwaiti and Iraqi authorities. The working week from Sunday to Thursday was limited to the five days.

A steel barrier built 2 metres inside Kuwait around the boundary prevented normal vehicle and machinery access to the Iraqi side.

A sealed road extended from pillar 1 to pillar 91 on the Kuwaiti side adjacent to the steel barrier. Beyond

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pillar 91 a dirt vehicle track continued to pillar 106 at the coast.

The Kuwaiti police accompanied the teams around the border on this road. Without a border road on the Iraqi side, access for the Iraqi police was by driving across the desert from the nearest police station.

All 106 main pillars were visited and inspected for damage. Of these, 72 had missing or damaged centre plaques that required replacing. In addition, three main pillars were considered too badly damaged to be repaired and were noted for replacement.

The location of the main pillar and intermediate pillar witness marks were established by using a combination of total station, tape measure and metal detector. There were two witness marks at each main pillar and one at each of the intermediate pillars. A total of 32 buried witness marks were either not found, damaged or had been exposed and therefore liable to future disturbance. In all cases replacement markers were required.

At each main pillar site, inter-visibilty between pillars was assessed. Where there were visibility difficulties a location for a new intermediate pillar and witness mark was marked ready for installation by the construction contractor. A total of 15 new sites were required and nine existing intermediate pillars were damaged and needed replacing.

During the original survey, pointer pillars had been placed at every main pillar site indicating the direction to the forward and back pillar. A total of 17 replacement pointer pillars were required due to damage or loss of the existing marks. Most of the existing pointer pillars required a new survey plaque in the top.

Main pillar emplacement: Main pillars at sites 27, 63 and 68 required replacing due to excessive damage. These were placed precisely to match their original position. They were set out using a Leica TCR1203 total station from the existing witness marks. Positioning was undertaken in conjunction with the construction contractors.

The final position check was undertaken using static GPS observations from the witness marks, adjacent pillars and the primary control.

Pillar 68 to be replaced

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Damaged centre plaque

Intermediate pillar emplacement Where a replacement was required at an existing site, these were positioned directly from the adjacent witness mark using a total station. For new sites or where the witness mark was missing, a new witness mark was first emplaced and surveyed using GPS and referenced to the adjacent main pillars. The intermediate position was then calculated and set out from the witness mark.

Pointer pillars These were replaced if they were found to be missing or damaged. Pointer pillars were set out by total station on line between main pillars. The position was checked against witness marks. Although pointer pillars were not coordinated in the original survey, it was agreed with the UN to include them in the GPS as-built survey where the main pillars, pillar plaques or witness marks had been replaced.

GPS Survey The GPS survey was divided into three sections: Primary Network: This required the connection of selected boundary pillars (every fifth pillar) to the existing primary control network.

Secondary Network: This required connecting all boundary pillars to adjacent pillars and hence indirectly to the primary network.

Pillar Networks: Ties all newly coordinated boundary pillars, intermediate pillars, witness marks and pointer pillars to the existing witness marks.

Primary network The primary control connections were made to all of the 12 stations located between pillars 1-106 on the Kuwait side as well as three on the Iraqi side. These were tied to every 5th pillar along the boundary. It was assessed as being unsafe for us to travel inside Iraq to the extent of the primary control sites and so this work was undertaken by the Iraqi surveyors who were with us in the field. They were only able to locate three of the 12 existing control stations inside Iraq.

One of the four original datum stations (D12) was located in an abandoned UN camp in the south of the border

Damaged intermediate pillar

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Pointer pillars and witness marks were originally placed at a nominal distance of 30 metres from the main pillar.

New pointer pillars and witness marks were placed in similar positions to suit the situation.

Data Processing

Intermediate pillar setout from new witness mark

area and was in surprisingly good condition. The datum stations had been occupied by Doppler Receivers originally to obtain absolute coordinates in terms of WGS84.

The contract required that coordinates be computed in terms of the original Iraq Kuwait Boundary Datum 1992 (IKBD-92). Along the northern boundary (pillars 72-106) the pillars were not surveyed by GPS originally, but set out from witness marks with total stations. These have now all been surveyed by GPS and some minor differences noted. During this recent survey it was also found that some control stations had damaged or missing plaques but their repair was not part of this contract.

Secondary Network This involved the survey of all 106 boundary pillars so that all were connected to every fifth pillar as included in the primary network. A total of 10 GPS receivers at a time were deployed along the boundary. All main pillars and newly emplaced intermediate pillars were fitted with a threaded central plaque, which force centred the GPS units.

Pillar Networks This tied all newly coordinated boundary pillars, intermediate pillars, witness marks and pointer pillars to the existing witness mark control. For those sites where one of the witness marks had been replaced or where a main pillar plaque had been renewed, observations were made to include the two pointer pillars and adjacent main pillars.

Exposed witness mark

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The Primary control network was made up of 15 primary stations and 23 boundary pillars. All GPS vectors were processed using Leica LGO ver.7.0 software. A minimally constrained least squares adjustment with a single station held fixed was computed and no baseline vector residual was greater than 12mm.

Final coordinates from a fully constrained adjustment were within the specified tolerances allowed for the boundary demarcation survey. Some discrepancies with the original survey where the boundary pillars were not originally surveyed by GPS arose but all are within the original specifications.

The secondary network involved the resurvey of all 106 main pillars. All pillars were processed as part of a closed loop using vectors from more than one observation session. A comparison between the new results and published 1992 coordinates showed that no coordinate differed by more than 30mm apart from pillar 102 where the difference was 61mm. No heights differed by more than 60mm.

The original 1992 specification for boundary pillars was that the true position must be within 200mm of the specified coordinate. Since all newly surveyed coordinates were within that specification, the 1992 published coordinates were accepted.

It was not within the scope of this project to provide an updated reference system for the survey. Nor was it within the scope to assess the global accuracy of the original datum.

Acknowledgements: The author thanks Robert Peggs and Tom Swaine from Merrett Survey Ltd in England for their dedication and commitment in the field.

Reference: Survey Report, May 2013 prepared for the United Nations by Merrett Survey Ltd.

Locating existing witness mark

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GLENN STONE INSURANCE

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• UNIVERSITY

HAPPENINGS

GRADUATION Christina Hulbe, Dean, National School of Surveying The number and aspirations of Survey School students was a popular topic (for me, at least) during the recent CSNZ Workshop in Hamilton. I chatted with folks about what the current BSurv cohort are up to, and in light of demographic trends, where future cohorts are going to come from. Debbie Hallam (Bay of Plenty Polytech) and I gave a presentation in which we viewed education as an ongoing activity, with many access points and many opportunities for reflection – for individuals and for the professional community. The visibility of Surveying and Spatial Science professionals, particularly in the context of recruiting from diverse communities in our urban centres, was another important topic. I talked whenever I could about all of us working together to interest future generations of students in our disciplines and professions.

I hope we can keep all of these conversations going and continue to find new ways to collaborate and coordinate our recruiting and outreach activities.

Future students are always on our minds, but I would be remiss if I did not use this column to say congratulations to the class of 2015. By the time you read this column, 50 Surveying students will have walked across the Town Hall stage in one of Otago’s May graduations, bringing the total number of graduates for the academic year to 58.

Well done, all of you, and an extra set of congratulations to Samantha Mogford and Samuel Wells, both of whom graduate with Honours this year.

While it is an important milestone, graduation alone is not what makes a surveyor, or a GIS analyst, or any kind of professional. Graduation is just one step on the path to a professional career. The first step might have been work experience during school holidays, it might have been employment as a technician before coming to the School of Surveying, or it might have been successful management of papers and projects and life while a student at university. Don’t underestimate that last one—good students are already good managers of complicated work requirements and they already know all about “work/life balance.”

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know a lot about their chosen field, they can think about the whole while paying great attention to the part, and they are adept problem solvers. Nevertheless, while our graduates have disciplinary expertise, they are not yet professionals. The former is about the body of knowledge while the latter is also about its application in a very particular environment (Coutts, 2014). While we provide the theoretical framework for ethics and professionalism, it’s not until our students are employed in their first job that this particular theory can be applied. You could say that graduating is stepping off one learning curve and onto another.

The same holds true for planning a career. Our students know what the “real world” looks like and we collaborate with the University’s Career Development Centre to help them with practical matters like CV writing, interview skills, and career planning. By the time they graduate, our students understand career as a concept, even if their focus is on taking just that next step into a job. They are not yet professional surveyors, but if that’s what they aspire to, they will achieve it. They are not yet geospatial analysts or managers of spatial data assets, but if that’s what they want to accomplish, they will.

Given everything that I know happens here in the School, I was surprised to have also in Hamilton heard a stray expression of concern about insufficient career mindedness in our graduates. I simply don’t think that is true. Now, I can’t account for what happens during any individual interview. Nervous students say silly things sometimes, and interviewers ask questions they shouldn’t sometimes. But our graduates are ready, all of them, to take the first step into challenging and rewarding professional careers. That’s what the university degree signifies, after all.

REFERENCE Coutts, Brian J., 2014, The Profession of Surveying: where do we stand?, FIG Congress, Kuala Lumpur. http://www.fig.net/ pub/fig2014/papers/ts08i/TS08I_brian_j_7038.pdf

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• OBITUARY

LEON HUIA ARMSTRONG 1923–2014

Compiled by Noel L. J. Armstrong Leon was born on 1 August 1923 at a Maternity Home in Epsom, Auckland. As was the style of the times his middle name of Huia was taken from his mother’s birthplace.

Primary schooling was had at Onehunga Primary where as recently as 2012 Leon was one of two surviving members of the 1936 class at the annual reunion. High School years were spent – a tram ride away – at Otahuhu Technical High School.

In Leon’s final year at school, he achieved fourth place in the National Public Service Entry exam and having shown aptitude at mathematics was guided into a cadetship, in 1940, with the notable engineer and surveyor Ralph Worley as a foundation employee.

A delightful back story to this career choice is that A. M. L. Armstrong, a cousin of Leon’s father, was a surveyor with Lands and Survey in the years immediately following WWI and Peter McInnes of Papakura is a second cousin. Marriage to Gwen Ayling yielded a further connection, in this case the notable Institute historian the late Nola Easdale who is a second cousin.

As a cadet, extended periods were spent in the field on assignment, notably, in the order of three months at Marton and, as a registration project, the sewer reticulation for Wairoa. Closer to home, more time was spent in Dargaville with infrastructural design and construction.

The transport options of the times were somewhat challenging. In the case of accessing Dargaville the train from Auckland to Helensville, followed by steamboat on the overnight cream run around various harbour settlements was the preferred option.

Other survey assignments included land acquisition surveys at the Karapiro dam development under the watchful eye of the redoubtable Tristran Speedy.

World War II interrupted Leon’s developing surveying career. Experience was had with both the Onehunga and

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Cambridge Home Guard before being called up in 1941. A year in the Army was followed by two years in the Air Force that featured practical engineering and airfield surveying and construction in Northland. Upon release from service Leon rejoined Worley Consultants.

In 1951 Leon accepted a surveying position at the then Waitemata County Council where an early task was work to generate the first North Shore district-planning document. Leon’s career moved with the evolution of the Council from field survey work to City Surveyor processing subdivision consents.

Contributions to professional surveying life included writing the chapter of Local Government in New Zealand for the 1984 edition of Surveyor and the Law and serving time as Secretary to the Institute of Surveyors Professional Development Committee.

Community life was full with Leon playing a seminal role in the formation of the Mangere Bridge Resident and Ratepayers Association. He was a long-standing member of the St James Church Committee and associated Urupa Management Committee. Boyhood adventures with the St Peter’s Onehunga Scout Troop were reciprocated in adult life with a total of some 20 years service to the Scouting movement.

Well respected by colleagues and fellow surveyors alike, thorough, reliable, a man for measured consideration and subtle diplomacy and a gentleman to the last.

Leon is survived by wife Gwen, 2 children, 4 grandchildren and 1 great grandchild.

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