I used to think you had to hand draw every single detail on a site plan

Last month, I was working on a 12-acre commercial plot in Austin and my boss told me to just use the GIS data for the topography. I argued it wouldn't be accurate enough for grading. He made me try it, and the county's digital elevation model was spot on, saving me a full day of work. Now I start every site plan by checking for public GIS layers first. What other time-saving data sources do you guys use?

2 comments

2 Comments

tessa92222d ago

Totally get that! I used to be the same way about survey data, always thinking we needed fresh field shots for every single boundary. Then on a tight infill job, the city had a crazy accurate parcel shapefile with all the monuments already located. It matched our guy's work within a tenth. Now I always dig through the county's online mapping portal first. It's saved so many trips.

margaret_lane22d ago

Heard a surveyor say those county maps are often gold if you know how to read them right.