Chisholm Trail Land Surveying: Opening Doors to New Opportunities with LiDAR

Skytec partners with land surveyors to provide high-resolution LiDAR, photogrammetry acquisition and turn-key data processing and delivery. These services support land surveyors doing vital work for clients, including flood studies and topography work.

Chisholm Trail Land Surveying, founded by Jose Garcia and Michael Kersten is a full-service professional surveying firm based out of North Texas serving the greater Dallas-Fort Worth market. As a team, Garcia and Kersten bring more than 30-plus years of combined experience in surveying with a focus on work in the civil engineering sector.

Chisholm Trail Land Surveying entrusted Skytec with providing LiDAR deliverables on four projects totaling almost 5,000 acres. As a small firm, Chisholm Trail Land Surveying partners with Skytec to capture LiDAR data that is crucial to design in projects ranging from flood studies, utility routing, single family/commercial development and construction staking. As a technology, LiDAR has altered surveying work, providing land surveyors with data sets that provide consistency, precision and topography integrity to deliverables through the development process.

“In the last decade, we’ve seen a greater transition from surveyors to rely more on LiDAR” Garcia says. “Ultimately, we were heading and arrived at a place where engineers rely on this data for design and has become the preferred method of surveying once you exceed a certain threshold of acreage."

Excellent Customer Service and Accurate Data

In working with Skytec, Garica and his team say the customer service and relationships play an important role in facilitating future work.
 

“Skytec is responsive and provides excellent customer service,” Garica says. “Skytec has exceeded expectations not only in being responsive but also with determination and putting their best foot forward to provide situational solutions”

Garcia commends the Skytec team for their continued accuracy of data.

“As part of our standards and workflow, we field verify all projects with Skytec. We have yet to observe any site areas we consider out of accuracy tolerance. Which is fascinating when we are talking about densely wooded areas and creeks,” Garcia says. “The data sets you’ve provided check out. We can sleep at night knowing we don’t have to worry about discrepancy. In this industry, there is no room to compromise on trust. Skytec is able to do that for us.”

An Extension of Your Team

LiDAR is part of the development process in surveying work for civil engineering firms. Skytec serves as an extension of Chisholm Trail Land Surveying, delivering accurate LiDAR data that can be a selling point for potential clients.

“With Skytec, the accurate data sets we received helped us reevaluate how we can continue to grow. LiDAR is becoming more of a trusted and in a lot of cases a more cost feasible tool we can lean into, and through working with Skytec, we’ve reignited our interest in delivering this to clients,” Garcia says. “We’re figuring out how to offer this to clients who want a little bit more. More data, more accuracy, less worry”

Through working with Skytec, the surveying firm can grow meaningfully and service its customers without a major investment of time, resources and management of its own drone and sensor platforms.

“When you have a partner you can trust, it makes sense to not worry about managing or running LiDAR in-house,” Garcia says. “We’re a small company. For companies like us who do a lot of civil work, LiDAR is an important part of the developmental process. We trust Skytec with these processes, who already have the technology in place and who are willing to find and resolve issues and problem-solve as the industry is changing in real time. This is beneficial for us in the sense it allows us to better plan and project our growth both tactically and financially.”

Let Skytec do the heavy lifting with LiDAR acquisition and drone solutions. Contact us to get started.