June 2023 Newsletter

Looking to the horizon

Can you believe it we are halfway through the year and the shortest day of the year has passed, time to plant your garlic in the garden. Our team is continuing to expand with the addition of a new planner but you will have to wait until next month to find out more.

Our staff spot light this month is Antoine Franck a highly regarded member of the team. Antoine hails from France and has been working in New Zealand for more than eight years. Antoine joined the team in 2021 and has developed a talent for drone surveying.

Staff profile" Antoine Franck – Senior Surveyor

Antoine is an experienced senior surveyor and holds a Diploma of Surveying from Lycee Professionnel du Nivolet.

Antoine has taken a keen interest in drone surveying and is fast becoming an expert in this field.

Antoine is a passionate foodie and loves to cook. He is perfecting his skills at cooking T-bone steak.

Project Focus: Whangaripo Valley Rd

Our client was looking at multiple house locations across their rural property. As a result, they needed a topographical survey plan to explore their options. Due to the size of the site and topography, a conventional topographical survey would have been costly and would have taken a considerable amount of time. By using drone surveying we were able to fly the drone over the site, taking hundreds of images.

The drone can cover a large amount of terrain in a short amount of time, it's great for a preliminary design but not as accurate as a topographical survey, as it can only survey what is visible from the sky. If some areas are considered critical we can then undertake additional survey work using regular survey methods and merged the two surveys.

Once processed our software uses photogrammetry methods to generate a 3D model of the site. This model could be used for many different purposes, it could be used to create a 3D surface for example.

Because of the size of this project, it would not have been relevant to conduct a topographical survey of the full site with conventional methods. With a drone survey, we were able to provide our client with a high-resolution aerial image as well as a 3D model.