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Data Prep Services
We have been in the business of preparing data for our clients since machine control began.
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"You Pay Us to Be Nervous"
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What do I pay TOPS for?
Sure we build data, we put the smoke in the machine that drives GPS layout and
machine control. At one point, a customer asked; "What do I pay TOPS for?" My answer
was spontaneous and has since become something of a slogan for us. “You pay us
to be nervous”.
We get a set of plans in the office and approach it like there are trap doors
everywhere. We are paid to build the model like it appears on the paper, and then
look for problems and work to make the job right, here is how a typical job goes;
The contractor calls us and lets us know they have a job coming out to us.
If they have not been in contact with the engineer, we will call on their
behalf and acquire the electronic files. The paper is shipped to us and we
start work.
A work order is filled out with the scope of work our customer is
responsible for, as well as any special requirements needed on the job.
With newer customers, we usually ask a few questions and make sure the
contractor gets everything they may need; you may not know what you
need from us in the beginning.
The project is managed by one of our staff engineers, and the data
process begins; making notes and adjusting the obvious errors that got
missed in plan review, such as 46 feet being typed as 64 feet.
With the data done to plan, we notes areas of concern and report them to
the engineer with proposed fixes. Never ask a question unless you know
the answer. A open question to our customers; do you seem to be getting
a new revised set of plans before the job even starts? What happened was
that we found some things that needed attention, proposed fixes to the
engineer, even sending them new points files! The changes are
incorporated and you get new paper that magically matches the data built
by TOPS, just one of the things we get paid for.
If we are doing wet utilities, we go through the same process of checking
and proposing fixes, just like we do for sites. As far as we know water
rolls downhill all over the world, if the plans don’t reflect that, we work
with the engineers and get it right.
At this point we have built, reviewed, and edited your jobsite an average
of FOUR times! What does that mean to our customer? We moved the
dirt 4 times on the screen, and did not waste your money on equipment,
fuel, labor and overhead. With this quality of data in your hands,
confidence levels go up, and productivity increases.
In regard to changes. It is important to remember that the changes to a
job that seem to occur every day, have for the most part been taken care
of by careful data preparation in the first place. When the initial bugs are
fixed, plan changes are usually true adjustments to the final look of the
site, not the repair of overlooked design issues.
This is an overview of the process requires to successfully prepare data for a site.
We are happy to report that the design community is warming to the idea of
having TOPS in the loop as it pertains to doing a project right the first time. More
and more firms around the world are doing their work as usual, and keeping open
communication with us as we prepare the data, making the process quick, and
very efficient.
We support the work done by the design engineers, and want the project to go
along without a hitch. The more we work with small and large firms, they don’t
see our work as problem finding and finger pointing, but an important part of the
design process that helps to mesh design and construction into a cooperative
dynamic effort. |
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