3D Scanning in North State, CA

The North State is a string of river and county-seat towns, and most of their scanning work falls into three groups. The first is water infrastructure. Oroville Dam, finished in 1968 and 770 feet high, is the tallest dam in the United States and a key part of the State Water Project; after both spillways were badly damaged in February 2017, the Department of Water Resources rebuilt the main spillway, and it was flow-tested in April 2019. At Red Bluff, the Bureau of Reclamation's 1964 Red Bluff Diversion Dam was decommissioned with its gates locked open in 2013, replaced by a pumping plant and fish screen that lift water straight from the Sacramento River. Marysville sits inside a ring of levees where the Feather and Yuba rivers meet. Agencies and engineers scan structures like these to record condition and compare them over time, which only works when every scan is on control.

The second group is processing and industry. Colusa County is one of the country's top rice producers, with more than 135,000 acres harvested in 2016, and its mills, dryers, and storage need measured layouts before equipment changes. Corning's economy centers on olives and orchard crops; Bell-Carter Foods, the largest table olive processor in the United States, operates there. Anderson, south of Redding, is home to Sierra Pacific Industries. Plants like these need plans, sections, and 3D linework of crowded equipment spaces, and on new buildings we verify anchor bolts and structural steel to 1/8 inch from the scan, with total station check shots on any bolt group near tolerance. The third group is historic buildings: Marysville's Bok Kai Temple of 1880, the 1863 Chinese Temple in Oroville, Colusa's 1905 Carnegie Library, and the 1918 Willows post office, all older masonry that rarely matches any drawing.

None of this is local for us, and we plan for that. Contour Survey is based in Lotus, El Dorado County, and North State jobs are scheduled as mobilizations: scope and access agreed in advance, control set first, and field days booked to finish coverage in one trip, often combining nearby sites. Primary control is GNSS, secondary control is Trimble S3 total station, and Trimble X9 scans are registered in Trimble Business Center in US survey feet, with control held to 0.01 US survey feet relative to project control. Deliverables are a registered, cleaned point cloud (E57, LAS, or RCP), scan-to-CAD plans, sections, elevations, 3D linework and coded points, and a report stating control basis, units, and accuracy achieved. City pages: Chico, Redding, Yuba City, and Woodland. See also 3D laser scanning and as-built surveys.