ABOUT THE AWARD

The Engineering Excellence Awards Competition has been held by the Texas Council of Engineering Companies since its inception in 1975 to honor and recognize outstanding achievements within the engineering community. The distinguished panel of judges from around the state selected projects from a broad field based on uniqueness, originality, technical, value to the engineering profession, complexity and how successfully the project met the needs of the client.

SAM, Inc.'s entry, entitled "The Complete Surveying Toolkit - Loop 1604 / US 281", which was submitted to the Surveying and Mapping Technology category, described a project completed for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), San Antonio District. SAM , Inc.'s participation in this project was as a sub-consultant to HDR Engineering, Inc., providing traditional surveying, Quality Level B and Quality Level A Sub-surface Utility Engineering, aerial photogrammetry services, and HDS Laser Scanning of bridge structures utilizing the Leica® HDS3000 Laser Scanner.

The complete list of winners is available on the Texas CEC website

SAM, Inc. Awarded Gold Medal in Texas CEC 2006 Engineering Excellence Awards

The Complete Surveying Toolkit: Loop 1604 / US 281

Congestion on current roadways and the high costs of building and maintaining new facilities has raised public and government expectations for the design and construction of transportation systems to a new level. In addition to the traditional cost constraints involved with design and construction, project owners are pushing for extremely quick and effective response from professional providers to bring new transportation systems online faster than before.

To meet the demands of these new expectations, compressed schedules for the completion of new roadway projects have added the necessity for innovation from individual and team transportation design professionals. The capability to employ the most current technologies available enabled Surveying And Mapping, Inc. to provide unconventional solutions, within one company, as part of a professional design team faced with these current challenges. Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE), Land Surveying, Aerial Mapping, and HDS Laser Scanning services were provided.

Proven experience in the use of each of the tools currently available enabled SAM, Inc. to evaluate and choose the most suitable application to achieve not only the required level of accuracy in capturing the requested information but also successfully address the compressed project schedule while remaining within budgeted costs. Benefits of the use of these surveying and mapping technologies for transportation design include minimal to no impact on the use of the system by the public, as well as the reduced safety risk to both survey personnel and the public, due to the ability to capture information from remote locations. The complete surveying toolkit was instrumental in delivering an enormous amount of survey data within a compressed and rigid deadline.

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