ForConstructionPros.com

Even in good times, road building is a highly competitive industry, but when the general economy goes soft it becomes even more so. Then, experienced contractors find themselves competing for a smaller pool of projects both with each other, and with new competitors attracted to the market as a replacement for vanishing commercial work.

"We are always looking for a competitive advantage," says Ruben Cuevas, Chief Surveyor of Lake County Grading Co., LLC, in Libertyville, Ill., "and these days that usually comes in the form of advanced technology. I guess you could say we are classic 'early adopters'.

"We saw the value of GPS-based surveying technologies early on. We have had our own base stations and rovers for quite a while now. We keep jobsite information on laptops, and record things like undercuts and as-builts electronically on virtually all of our jobs.

"We also got onboard with GPS-based machine controls early on. In 2005 we equipped a pair of dozers with Topcon 3DMC systems as a test. Based on that experience, we now have nearly a dozen 3DMC-equipped dozers, and have recently added our first grader."

That background made Lake County Grading a natural candidate for the next step in the evolution of GPS-based surveying and machine control - networking. So, when their Topcon distributor, Positioning Solutions of Carol Stream, IL invited Lake County Grading to participate in a real-time Global Networked Satellite System (GNSS) machine control network they were building, the answer was a resounding "yes."