"BHI’s Chris Freeman Awarded for Survey Career Video
By Kris Toth on 3/13/2008
BHI surveyor and project manager Chris Freeman has received a Presidential Award from the Texas Society of Professional Surveyors (TSPS) for his work to produce a surveying career video for middle school students. As 2006-2007 TSPS Dallas Chapter President and a member of the TSPS Public Relations Committee, Chris was able to enlist a local high school media program, organize promotional efforts, and raise donations from area surveying firms to finance the video’s production. Bohannan Huston, Inc., was among the firms that made a donation to offset the production costs of the film. Students at Lakeview Centennial High School in Garland, Texas, produced the video, which you can view via the link shown below. The video is used statewide for career day activities and school presentations, and has received “thumbs up” reviews from students. Congratulations, Chris, and thank you for your contributions to the Texas survey community. "

There are 2 videos at the Surveytexas.org site, the second one on the page is the one mentioned above. One is about 10 minutes and one is about 5 minutes geared towards a high school or mid school audience.

BHI on the Front Cover of POB

BHI made the front cover of POB (Point of Beginning) on the March 2008 issue. POB is a national professional publication for those in the geomatics (surveying) profession. The article, Tunnel Vision, is written by Tim Jackson out of our Dallas, TX office and reviews our award winning scanning project of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit tunnels. Interestingly, the other lead article pertains to a NASCAR Superspeedway scanning project. BHI has also been involved with a NASCAR project from several years ago at Talladega. Cool technology with some high tech applications. Way to go Tim!

Charter Statement Update

We had, what I thought, was a very productive meeting last week in developing our Regional Survey charter statement. Good participation from all in the group and I think we're well on our way to putting together a charter statement and vision statement that will help us move forward in our team approach. Over the next week, I will be putting together a draft of the actual language as brainstormed in the meeting and then let the group review, dissect and rewrite where necessary. I think we will go to the point of finalizing it and requesting signatures from all involved - really drawing the line in the sand as to whether or not everyone intends to play by the team rules so to speak.

Charter Statement

Although the survey operations at BHI has been operating as a regional presence over the past year and a half, I have had the realization recently that we are lacking some key items to our team. Those being a charter statement and a mission statement. When we embarked on a regional approach in 2006, we immediately jumped into an operational and administrative approach without really defining our charter. I believe this is part of our continued struggle to obtain momentum across the southwest region of the US. We're going to start today on our video conference meeting to write our charter and mission statement. It will be interesting to see how each office participates (or not) and who is truly interested in creating a unified team with similar focus and purpose. I hope there will be value in backing up to the beginning to try and work through some of these issues.

Bohannan Huston, Inc. - Where I work

Thought I'd let you see where I work ... Bohannan Huston, Inc. I've worked here since 1994 - it's been a great company to work for and we have many great projects to work on. More to follow on BHI down the road. Just a quick intro.

Kevlar Vests

According to Mark Marrujo, our Survey Operations Manager in the Las Cruces Office:

"US Customs at the Columbus Port of Entry felt it necessary due to the kind of activity over the past few weeks in this area [on the US / Mexico border] that our field crew opt for wearing Kevlar Vests instead of Surveying Vests. Since our field crew was being escorted by Customs police with M-16s they made sure not to say “shoot it” to one another while collecting field data conventionally."

Shown is Johnny, one of our Surevy Crew Chiefs ready for action...