{"id":107444,"date":"2024-09-26T10:59:16","date_gmt":"2024-09-26T14:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/\/?p=107444"},"modified":"2024-09-26T11:00:55","modified_gmt":"2024-09-26T15:00:55","slug":"think-your-surveys-are-perfectly-accurate-you-might-still-be-missing-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/\/2024\/09\/think-your-surveys-are-perfectly-accurate-you-might-still-be-missing-something\/","title":{"rendered":"Think Your Surveys Are Perfectly Accurate? You Might Still Be Missing Something"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Takeaway:<\/strong> Even if manual surveying methods work today, they may not work tomorrow (or any day your star Surveyor is sick, takes vacation, or burns out). Rather than rely on overly conservative measurements or setbacks, use technology to keep the accuracy you currently have while improving safety and reducing bodily wear-and-tear. You\u2019ll also benefit from streamlining your project workflows and information handoffs from Surveyors to Designers, Procurement, and Installers.<\/p>\n

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If your manually-measured surveys are \u201calways accurate,\u201d it\u2019s likely that one of a few things is happening:<\/p>\n

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  1. Your surveys take a very long time <\/strong>and are costly in terms of salary hours for two Surveyors per job.<\/li>\n
  2. You only measure the proposed roof planes<\/strong> and might miss better areas for solar or overflow space in case of a change order.<\/li>\n
  3. You\u2019re using conservative measurements <\/strong>like overly-large setbacks to accommodate for errors or not capturing every obstruction and roof detail.<\/li>\n
  4. You\u2019re using remote imagery<\/strong>, which means your Designers are working overtime to correct mistakes or your Installers are fixing issues on install day.<\/li>\n
  5. Your installers aren\u2019t telling you<\/strong> what actually happens on install day and have accepted a revision as just \u201cpart of the job.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In all cases, your process is not as efficient as it could be and you\u2019re delivering a suboptimal output for customers\u2014for instance, installing artificially small systems to compensate for setbacks. What\u2019s more is your stellar Surveyor becomes a central person risk if they are sick, go on vacation, or quit after being physically worn down by the job<\/a>. Perhaps your Design and Installation teams are wasting a lot of time fixing measurement errors that didn\u2019t need to be there in the first place.<\/p>\n

    The solution is to look at new technologies, like drones and mobile apps, that can deliver equal accuracy and consistent outputs regardless of the surveyors across all projects.<\/p>\n

    The Little Ways To Derail A Manual Survey<\/h3>\n

    Manual surveying is, at its best, unsustainable long-term. At its worst, it physically wears out your surveying team and wastes time throughout the project.<\/p>\n

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    Issue 1: You\u2019re burning out your people and creating key person risk<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Only doing manual surveys limits who can be a Surveyor. And even those folks won\u2019t stick around for too long if they get burnt out or injured.<\/p>\n

    One Contractor faced this issue head-on when a Surveyor tore his ACL during a recreational soccer game. This occurred out of work – life happens! But as a smaller shop, he was the only Surveyor in the region \u2014 suddenly, every project got delayed by weeks. Had the Contractor used drones, the Surveyor could have safely continued his work from the ground.<\/p>\n

    Even without these big risks, there are little issues that compound. For example, sweat on the page can make it impossible to read. Depending on who is writing, a \u201c4\u201d can look a lot like a \u201c9\u201d. Training new surveyors on your exact methodology is time consuming. And even if that\u2019s not happening, the handoff from manual paperwork to digital design platforms is time-consuming and error prone.<\/p>\n

    Issue 2: \u201cAccurate\u201d based on shortcuts still causes problems <\/strong><\/p>\n

    Being conservative with measurements (like large setbacks) to overcome the ineffectiveness of satellite imagery results in a suboptimal system for homeowners, lowering your overall ability to grow through word-of-mouth from happy customers.<\/p>\n

    Saying not everyone needs a max fill is fair, but only for a subset of the market. Not measuring all roof planes means you miss opportunities if a homeowner wants to make a change for aesthetic or lifestyle reasons (e.g. expanding the system to the garage because they want to buy an EV).<\/p>\n

    Conservative measurements could also mean money left on the table for contractors and mispricing a system for a prospect. This could lead to missed revenue or, even worse, a lost deal to competition.<\/p>\n

    You won\u2019t get full property context unless you take hundreds of pictures, which is almost impossible to stitch together manually. Even if you could, you still won\u2019t have full visibility unless you take it from the air using a drone.<\/p>\n

    Issue 3: You\u2019re relying on an inefficient, unscalable, unsustainable process<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Doing things manually already has key person risk.<\/p>\n

    But more than that, it\u2019s resource inefficient:<\/p>\n