In order to comply with the Kansas State Board of Technical Professions "Minimum Standards", the Kansas Department of Transportation is asking for an enhancement to OpenSite Designer CONNECT Edition software for Right of Way workflows as follows:
Provide functionality in OpenSite Designer equivalent to that of PowerGEOPAK COGO input files.
The input files created in GEOPAK served the dual role of a macro file for properly relocating both used & unused points, but also that of an enduring record of which point location methods were used, the origin of source, which located points were accepted, and why they were chosen compared to alternate positions (some natively, and some via comments).
The dual nature of these files has allowed our licensed professionals to very quickly review, correct, and sign off on point location work performed by technicians, where graphical inspection of these same points would take significantly longer and convey less information of intent. These files also serve as recorded documentation in the event of a dispute before the Board of Technical Professions to justify why a particular location was selected.
| Civil Product Used | OpenSite Designer, OpenRoads Designer, OpenRail Designer |
Does Geometry Builder not meet these requirements? It provides the same functionality but in XML format.
This is very similar to the needs at Md DOT. (I support the surveyors, so I cannot speak to all the legality and other requirements.) They often need to re-establish legacy alignments and right of way with no coordinate data. This involves re-creating that ROW using assumed coordinates and then aligning and rotating those to found monumentation. This might involve multiple alignments, figures and parcels. In ICS (InRoads) the ICS input file could be used to document all of these processes and even perform the shift and rotation. The legacy data often comes from multiple sources, so each source could be its own ICS file but eventually, a single ALG would be created reflecting all of these processes.
Being able to document and defend their decision process is as important as the final product.