GPS Surveying

GPS surveying has grown in use considerably over the last few years to become an important and integral part of the tools available to the land Surveyor for carrying out his day-to-day work.

GPS is mainly used in this company to carry out surveys of large open areas of land quickly and efficiently to an acceptable standard of accuracy for normal mapping operations, and to provide survey control for mapping by total station.

GPS can also be used to locate a survey in both plan and level on the Ordnance Survey National Grid and level datum, thus allowing the designer, engineer or architect to place the survey within the context of the wider surrounding area.

GPS has also found a myriad of other roles including:

• setting out of earthworks
• establishment of levels for flood risk assessment
• establishing survey control
• checking and verifying survey control and detail.

The biggest recent advance in GPS has been the implementation of real time positioning using a network of reference stations maintained by the Ordnance Survey. Using a mobile phone attached to the GPS a Surveyor can plot his or her position on the Ordnance Survey National Grid and level datum in real time to within a few centimetres anywhere in the country.

Leica's implementation of this system is called SMARTNET and out of the three Leica GPS kits we currently have available two of these have been adapted to use the SMARTNET system so that work can be carried out directly on the Ordnance Survey grid.