Site Data Your Engineers Can Design and Bill Against
Airborne LiDAR topography through canopy, earthwork volumes you can reconcile a pay application against, and recurring as-built capture that holds the same frame from clearing through closeout.
Arguments on a job site are almost always about a number nobody measured
How much dirt moved this month. Whether the pad is at grade. What the site looked like the week before the utility got covered. When the answer lives in somebody’s memory or a handful of phone photos, it turns into a negotiation. When it lives in a dated survey, it turns into a fact.
Aerial capture makes measuring cheap enough to do on a cycle. A LiDAR pass returns true ground even under canopy, photogrammetry returns a surface you can compute volumes from, and flying the same path each month builds a record where every visit is directly comparable to the last one.
Florida makes a few of these harder than average. Vegetation closes in fast, the water table means grading and drainage design have very little margin, and a wet season can erase a schedule. Getting the topography right the first time is worth more here than in most places.
What we fly for civil and construction teams
The right tool depends on whether you need elevation, volume, or a record. Each card links to the service page that covers the detail.
Airborne LiDAR topography
Multi-return LiDAR reaches the ground through canopy and undergrowth, then gets classified down to a clean bare-earth surface tied to control.
Earthwork and stockpile volumes
Cut and fill balances and stockpile quantities computed from a surveyed surface, so reconciliation is arithmetic rather than argument.
Recurring as-built progress capture
Repeatable flight paths flown at each milestone, holding identical framing so the set reads as a record instead of a gallery.
CAD and BIM ready deliverables
Surfaces, contours, and point clouds produced for Autodesk Civil 3D, Revit, Bentley, and ArcGIS rather than exported and hoped for.
Pre-construction and due diligence
Existing conditions, access, drainage patterns, and site context captured before design starts or before a parcel gets bought.
Covered-work and claim records
Dated documentation of utilities and subgrade before they disappear, which is the cheapest insurance on the job.
Where it shows up on the job
- Pay applications settle faster. An objective volume beats two estimates that disagree by a few thousand yards.
- Field time drops sharply. One flight replaces days of walking a wooded tract with a rod and a data collector.
- Design starts on real ground. A bare-earth surface means grading and drainage are designed against the site that exists.
- Delays get seen early. Monthly comparison surfaces a lagging area weeks before it hits the critical path.
- Buried work stays provable. The week before backfill is documented, so a later dispute has an answer.
- Lender draws move. Verifiable percent-complete evidence keeps funding on schedule.
Survey-grade formats, not screenshots
Tell us the software, the coordinate system, and the vertical datum before we mobilize, and the files open correctly the first time.
Point clouds
LAS and E57, classified, with a bare-earth DTM separated from the full return.
Contours and surfaces
One-foot or client-specified intervals, tied to ground control.
Orthomosaics
Survey-controlled georeferenced TIFFs for measurement and markup.
Volume reports
Stockpile quantities and cut and fill differentials with the surfaces they came from.
Progress sets
Dated, identically framed imagery and a time-lapse across the job.
Accuracy statement
What we actually achieved on your control, not a brochure number.
Have a site or an asset that needs documenting?Tell us the asset and the deadline. We’ll scope it and price it.
The services behind this work
Civil and construction survey questions
What engineers, surveyors, and project teams ask us most.
Is this accurate enough to replace a ground survey?
For topography, volumes, and progress work, generally yes, and we tie it to ground control so the accuracy is stated rather than assumed. What it doesn’t replace is boundary work. A licensed surveyor sets property corners and signs the plat, and no drone changes that. We work alongside survey crews far more often than we work instead of them.
How does LiDAR see the ground under heavy canopy?
A LiDAR pulse can return several times from one shot, catching the canopy on the way down and the ground underneath. Photogrammetry can’t do this because a camera only records the top surface. After capture our analysts classify the returns and strip vegetation, structures, and power line noise to leave a clean bare-earth dataset.
What coordinate system and datum do you deliver in?
Whatever your project runs on. Usually Florida State Plane with NAVD88 vertical, but we’ll match whatever the civil set specifies. Tell us at kickoff along with the control you’ve on site, because retrofitting a datum after the fact is how errors get introduced.
Can you fly an active site safely?
Yes, and coordination is a large part of what you’re paying for. We schedule around active lifts and crane picks, brief with the superintendent, clear the airspace authorizations, and fly insured. On a busy site the goal is that our visit doesn’t become the GC’s problem.
How often should we fly a project?
Monthly suits most vertical work and lines up with owner and lender reporting. Fast-moving earthwork sometimes wants every two weeks, and a slow civil phase may only need quarterly. We set the interval at kickoff and hold it, because consistency is what makes the set comparable.
Will the deliverables open in Civil 3D without a conversion step?
That’s the intent. We produce for Autodesk Civil 3D, Revit, Bentley MicroStation, and ArcGIS, and we confirm the target environment before processing. If your team needs a specific surface type or layer structure, say so up front and we’ll build it that way.
Set up site intelligence on your project
Send the site boundary, the deliverable you need, and the software it has to open in. We’ll establish control, pick photogrammetry or LiDAR, and price the schedule.
100 E Pine St, Suite 110 · Orlando, FL 32801
FAA Part 107 Certified · Fully Insured
Scope a site survey
Project location, boundary, and frequency, and we’ll come back with a plan.