CASE STUDY: Advanced Land Surveying
Customer:
Land Registry (LR) UK
Background:
As part of its policy to improve the professional qualifications held by staff within their regional offices, LR decided to put together a programme of training which would lead selected candidates to achieve the world recognised Tech RISC membership. This could be obtained using different routes. Land Registry choose the route of gaining an NVQ level 4 in Spatial Data Management and combined this with gaining ATC base competency standards, both linked to a final interview. In 2005 as part of this route PBTDS won a 4 year contract to train their candidates on advanced methods of surveying. These events are now in their 4th year of operation.
Objective:
PBTDS together with its partner Geolink Consulting Ltd would work together with LR to design a 5 day course which would fulfil all the surveying requirements laid out in both the NVQ and ATC routes to membership of RICS. Topics which needed to be included on the course included accuracy and scale, together with data content, collection and quality. The candidates would use total station as well as "state of the art" equipment including dual constellation Topcon GPS (i.e including GLONASS), and CadCorp GIS for data integration, manipulation, and presentation. Candidates would build up their practical and theoretical skills and knowledge as the week progresses.
Solution:
Having worked out what was required to ensure everything relating to the NVQ survey units were covered in the course prospectus, PBTDS designed a very "hands on" course which provided the candidate with all the evidence and documentation required, including witness statements, photographs, survey instrument output, station descriptions, data transformations and maps. This was supported by detailed survey theory in written modular format. The course met all the criteria for both the NVQ and the ATC competencies. This very practical course provided a step by step learning approach for survey methods including Graphic Survey, Levelling, Total Station and RTK GPS (using OSnet). A final day long survey exercise allowed the candidates to survey a park, download the data captured and merge this with mapping layers using the CadCorp GIS to produce a printed map which provided the evidence required to complete the survey element of their Tech RICS applications.
Benefits:
These were aimed not only at teaching the candidates some advanced methods of land surveying but also allowing them to achieve the NVQ Spatial Data Management units and/or ATC competencies covering mapping, measurement, and spatial data capture and helping them on the road to completing their route to becoming TechRICS members .
