Published: 18 Nov 2014
Introduction
The Survey Liaison Group (SLG) held its latest meeting in London at the end of October. For those of you that are not aware of the work or even the existence of the group, it is perhaps worth starting with a few words of introduction.
The name of the group was originally the Industry Liaison Group and was set up in the 1980’s by RICS, ICES and TSA with the intention of becoming THE voice for the UK Survey Industry. After a few meetings however it rather lost its way and nothing happened for a number of years. In 2006, with the advent of a new Secretariat at TSA, the group was reformed and named as the SLG or Survey Liaison Group. It was felt that this name better reflected the aims and intentions of the group. Since that time, the group has met twice a year and continues to do so.
It is fair to say that many organisations and individuals are blissfully unaware of the group, other than the members of the group, so at the recent meeting it was decided to issue a regular newsletter for relevant partners and groups and this is the result.
So what are the main aims of the group? The Constitution of the SLG states:-
Provide transparency as to what the three different organisations are doing to ensure we were not overlapping, duplicating or carry out conflicting activities,
Endorse each other’s documents where relevant,
Work together on industry events such as exhibitions and/or conferences,
Collaborate on endorsing survey education and training courses,
Collaborate on survey industry training and education activities.
You will note the use of the word Survey in the title of the group which it is felt more accurately describes the work of the majority of 3D data collectors. Geomatics and Geospatial Engineering are also used worldwide but are less well known, especially by clients which must always be the focus of any promotion.
The SLG as before with the ILG still comprises RICS, Chartered ICES and TSA with TSA running the secretarial services and hosting the website. It has achieved many things in the past few years such as endorsement of each other’s guidance notes and client guides and this was the ethos behind the group originally to avoid duplication of effort in the survey industry. Cooperation is vital within such a small work sector and the best example of the cooperation has been the introduction and joint promoting of the very successful Geo Business Show 2014 held in Islington last May. The group was joined by the AGI for the show and that organisation continues to have an interest in the work of the SLG.
Latest meeting
The latest meeting discussed a number of issues affecting all the parties involved which included future events, education issues, joint conferences, policy and a host of other matters. James Kavanagh on behalf of RICS has been visiting the accredited Universities to update them on the work of the RICS. Bill Pryke on behalf of ICES spoke about the recent award of the Richard Carter Prize given to Alison Watson for her sterling work in Schools. Graham Mills on behalf of TSA spoke about the recent takeover of The Survey School in Worcester by TSA which everyone in the market agrees is a very positive step forward for survey education in the UK.
One of the hot topics in the UK now is BIM and a number of conferences are being run on this topic. The RICS and ICES are both running BIM conferences in February and March respectively and it is hoped that in due course the SLG will be able to promote a joint conference on the topic. There is also slight concern about the proliferation of conferences and shows on the topic of UAVs/SUAs, or Drones as the media is determined to call them.
The last few weeks have seen two important launches. The RICS has released its latest Measured Surveys of Land, Buildings and Utilities 3rd edition. For this and other guides produced by RICS go to: http://www.rics.org/ TSA has totally redesigned its educational website for budding surveyors. To see this go to: www.becomeasurveyor.com
And finally
As stated above, the SLG wishes to get its message out there. So this is where you join in. If there are any issues that are having an impact on your organisation and that you believe the SLG could help with, please let us know. For the time being you can contact us at office@tsa-uk.org.uk Once the website is up and running, the full contact details will be on there.
Feel free to distribute this newsletter to anyone that might be relevant to the work of the group and we hope to hear from some of you, if not all, in due course.
Current participants:
TSA – Graham Mills, Rory Stanbridge and Rachel Tyrrell
RICS – James Kavanagh and Chris Preston.
ICES – Ian Bush and Alan Barrow.
