— StrataLogic Blog

Field-to-finish, written down.

Notes on coordinate-reference systems, the cost of the re-visit, and how PointScout + FieldIntel actually work in production. New posts roughly weekly.

#crs (4) #gotchas (3) #field-workflow (2) #qc (2) #cost-and-roi (1) #data-centers (1) #datum (1) #fieldintel (1) #landledger (1) #local-grid (1) #market (1) #mobile (1) #pnezd (1) #product-tour (1) #re-visit (1) #row (1) #state-plane (1) #transmission (1) #verification (1)
— crs

Reading a CRS Verification Report: A 3-Minute Walkthrough

When a customer hands over an archive sample for FieldIntel profiling, the deliverable on Day 7 is a four-page PDF with a status breakdown, a basemap-overlaid cohort, a per-point table, and a caveats section. Here's how to read each part of it -- what each status means, where to look for systematic problems, and how to know whether the configuration is ready to deploy.

June 2026 · 7 min read
— row

What 2.2 GW Means for Land Rights

AWS announced an Indiana data center campus that needs 2.2 gigawatts -- roughly half the electricity all Indiana households use combined. That power has to come from somewhere, and it has to travel over wires that don't exist yet. Behind the data-center buildout sits a transmission expansion of historic scale, and behind that sits a less-talked-about bottleneck: every mile of new line requires parcel-by-parcel land rights work. The shape of the market that's about to need ROW software is not the shape the incumbents were built for.

June 2026 · 8 min read
— qc

Field-Side QC vs Office-Side QC: Why Catching Errors at the Truck Beats Catching Them in CAD

The traditional surveying QC model puts the heavy lift in the office, after the crew has packed up and gone home. There's a better-shaped split: real-time, automatic checks at the truck for the predictable busts; office-side review for the subtle and the legal. Here's the specific QC menu worth running on the field side, why it earns its keep, and what's still office-only.

May 2026 · 8 min read
— cost and roi

The Hidden Cost of the Re-Visit: A Math Walkthrough

A re-visit is not just the half-day a crew spends back at the site. It's the surveyor's time, the truck, the schedule slip, the customer relationship, and the job that didn't get done that afternoon because everyone was at the wrong site. Here's the math on a typical 10-person firm and where the cost actually concentrates.

May 2026 · 7 min read
— crs

Datum-Free PNEZD: When the Numbers Look Like State Plane But Aren't Declared

A PNEZD CSV lands on your desk. The northings are in the 500,000s. The eastings are in the 1,800,000s. It looks like a clean state-plane file -- except nobody declared which state plane, which datum, or which units. Picking 'looks about right' from a dropdown can put your final coordinates 30 to 100 feet off the truth. Here's how to read the file before you import it, what assumptions you can and can't make from the magnitudes alone, and when to pick up the phone instead of guessing.

May 2026 · 9 min read
— crs

Local-Grid Coordinates: When 'Northing 5000, Easting 5000' Means Nothing

Older boundary surveys often use an arbitrary office origin instead of a real coordinate datum. The PNEZD looks fine. The numbers add up. But there's no way to put those points on a map without a ground-truth anchor. Here's how to recognize a local-grid archive, what you can and can't do with it, and how to pull it into a real CRS when you have to.

May 2026 · 7 min read
— crs

When 'State Plane' Isn't State Plane: The Custom-Scale-Factor Trap

Some surveying firms apply a custom scale factor or rotation to their state-plane work to align with a local monument. The PNEZD output looks like normal state plane to any downstream tool -- but verification points land 5 to 50 feet off. Here's how to spot it, diagnose it, and fix it.

May 2026 · 6 min read

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