KEM | Summer 2018 Newsletter
40th Anniversary Open House Celebration Announcement
The K.E. McCartney Team invites you to help us celebrate our 40th year in business by attending an Open House on Friday, August 3rd from 3pm to 6pm at our Mansfield office location. Established in 1978 by Kenneth E. McCartney, KEM has stood the test of time because of loyal clients and a great staff that cares. This open house is our way of saying thank you, and it's also a great opportunity to illustrate KEM's commitment to provide highly efficient services. We accomplish this by investing in state-of-the-art equipment, which will be on display during the event.

Light hors d'oeuvres and soft drinks will be served, along with an abundance of hospitality. Please mark your calendars and help us celebrate this momentous occasion. It should also be noted that the First Friday Shop Hop will take place in downtown Mansfield on the same evening. If you have time, plan to visit some of the great shops, taverns, and restaurants. We can't wait to see you and look forward to an enjoyable evening together!

OPEN HOUSE
DATE: Friday, August 3rd, 2018

TIME: 3:00pm - 6:00pm Rain or Shine

LOCATION: 52 North Diamond Street, Mansfield, Ohio 44902
New 3D Scanning Capabilities Takes KEM Underground
Shortly after Cypress Hill Winery owners Rick and Carol Taylor began renovations on their new property, the former National Electric Supply building at 51 E. 4th Street, they discovered there was more to the space than first meets the eye.
 
Rumors exchanged by Mansfield locals of caverns below 4 th Street and a suspicious crack cutting across the alley behind the property led the curious business owner to conduct his own investigation. Several hours later and a hole twenty feet deep, Taylor and the small group he enlisted for help found the legendary stone caverns.
As an entrepreneur, Taylor immediately began to envision potential uses for the unique underground space. But first inspections needed to be done and blueprints needed to be drawn; the space was far from functional. For surveyors, a project like this poses unique challenges. Covering uncharted and difficult-to-access spaces is no easy task.

Yet, K.E. McCartney & Associates, Inc. saw the project as a way to integrate new technology into the field.
The company had recently purchased a Riegl VZ-400 3D Terrestrial Scanner (Static), which uses Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology, meaning the local surveying company now has the ability to do 3D scans of any site. The scanner uses the same imaging technology as Google Earth.
Brian McCartney, president of K.E. McCartney & Associates, Inc., is a firm believer in keeping up with the growing technology available to engineers and surveyors. An associate of the McCartneys, David Bodo Jr. of the surveying company David Bodo & Associates in Carrolton, Ohio introduced KEM to the scanner.
Mounted on top of a tri-pod, the 22-pound scanner looks like a droid straight out of a Star Wars movie. The scanner even has its own wireless connection, enabling Chad Owens, K.E. McCartney Survey/Engineering technician, to control the device from an app on his phone. With a few calculations and the press of a button, the scanner slowly spins around using light technology to pick up everything in its path—even objects 3,000 feet away. In one scan that Owens did of the outside of the building, you can see the former Chase bank building, several blocks away, looming in the distance.
“It’s kind of like when you drive a car; you understand the general process and the end result, but the whole science behind it is…,” Owens trailed off as he marveled over the complex technology.
 
Before they had the Riegl, a project like this would easily take Owens and his team 40 hours of manually plotting coordinates and recording elevations. With a project this size, they’d end up with around 15,000-25,000 coordinate points.
With the Riegl scanner, they were able to record 184 million points in just four hours of field work. This not only saves Owens and his team considerable time, it also saves the client money. Office time spent interpreting and dissecting the scans is a lot more affordable than field work.

On his computer monitor, Owens can zoom out and look at a 3D replication of the entirety of the two caverns beneath Taylor’s property.
The image looks like a mold of two cylinders, but as he zooms in, taking the viewer inside the tunnels, the outlines of stone and brick begin to take shape. Owens even points to a difference in patching along one wall, evidence of another entrance that may lead to more tunnels.
The scanner records so much detail, that even aspects Owens didn’t intentionally scan show up. For example, after they had already returned to the office, Taylor asked for information about the finished floor (above ground that is). Normally, they would need to go back out to the site to plot the information.
Now all Owens had to do was return to the scans of the outside of the building, move his cursor through the building’s open doorway, and suddenly he had access to the data he needed.
 
The 3D scanner is without a doubt a game changer. The company is already coming up with creative uses, like mounting the scanner on top of a four-wheeler in order to get images from higher vantage points. They’re also doing everything they can to learn about the technology and stay up to date in the industry. A few weeks ago, KEM sent Owens to a national conference in Florida to learn more about utilizing the 3D capabilities. 
“I’ve been in civil engineering for 18 years, and it’s amazing to see how much it has changed,” says Owens.
 
Yet, the aspects he loves—the tangibility of the work, the behind the scenes design processes, and the front row seat to watching raw spaces evolve into polished businesses—still remain the same. It’s these passions that drive Owens and his co-workers at K.E. McCartney & Associates, Inc. to serve their clients and community with the best technology and resources available.
K.E. McCartney | 419-525-0093 | [email protected] | kemccartney.com