Raymac Surveys Ltd.

(By Brian Munday, on the occasion of the presentation of the Geomatics Award of Excellence to Raymac Surveys Ltd.)

I hope everyone is enjoying themselves at the Calgary Hyatt Regency this year. This is the first time that the Association has held its annual meeting here; the facility only having been built a couple of years ago. It is obviously a beautiful hotel - a great place to have our annual meeting.

When you came into the hotel you may have noticed the grandeur of the lobby area, and how the historic facades of some of the old buildings have been incorporated into this new hotel. If you have travelled around, you have probably noticed how easy it is to get from the hotel to the Telus Convention Centre or other buildings in the downtown area.

It is a great effect, but as you can imagine, one that would not be easy to achieve. From a project management point of view, there were many different elements to be supplied by the survey profession which had to be coordinated with other professions, the approving authority and trades to accomplish the desired result. These elements included a boundary survey, a survey of the limits of encroachments of the new and existing building into the adjoining thoroughfares and the location of a tunnel under one of the adjacent road ways, the preparation of a road widening plan and road closure plan which included one strata area and six conventional areas. The existing titles required careful review, a horizontal and vertical control network had to be established through eight floors of the building under construction. In all, nineteen plans were registered including the use of isometric views to clearly show the complexity of the titled boundaries and those of the registered interests.

For managing such a complex project, even much more than what I have briefly described, the Alberta Land Surveyors' Association awards the 2003 Geomatics Award of Excellence to Raymac Surveys Ltd.

Mr. Hudema addressed the audience as follows:
This project was truly a very interesting project to be working on. When you go through this building now, it is an amazing structure. Projects like this don't come along very often and you need extremely competent people to assist to get the project complete. Two of these gentlemen from our office are here with us today. Bernie Kespe was the gentleman responsible for organizing the field notes and taking all the complex points and creating them into plans that were eventually registered. If you look at some of the isometric drawings on the plans, it is mind boggling as to how he kept them in perspective. The other gentleman that is here is Mitch Nolet He did all the field work and was responsible for coordinating a lot of his efforts. I'd like to recognize these two gentlemen. As you can see, the building is a wonderful place. It gives one a lot of satisfaction to see work that you have done come out to the forefront to be enjoyed. Thank you to everybody.