Don’t Let Rain Stop Play

We’ve all heard of the saying ‘a little bit of rain won’t hurt’, but when it comes to your land survey kit, is it true?

Being the stats nerds that we are, we decided to run the numbers to see how much your soggy survey kit is really costing you.

Picture the scene. You’re out on a land survey or set out job with your total station, when the skies darken, the wind picks up, and the heavens open. You’ve got two choices – you fashion a DIY cover out of spare bits and bobs, or, if you’re like us, you make a dash for the van, grab a coffee to keep warm and dry, and wait for the rains to subside.

If we lived in the Med this may not be such an issue, but here in the UK it rains an average of 161 days of the year – that’s almost half of the time!

That’s a lot of days wasted sitting waiting for the skies to clear – or risking damaging kit that you know isn’t too fond of water ingress. We’ve even heard tales of folk desperately drying off their kit with hair dryers in the back of the van!

Running the Numbers

So, we decided to run the numbers to see exactly how much all of this wasted time could be costing you.

Over the last two decades, the UK has averaged 161 rainy days each year, 44% of the days. When it comes to working days (assuming you’re not a workaholic and enjoy the odd weekend and holiday each year) there’s roughly 240 days of working per year, which means a potential for 106 ‘rainy’ working days.

With the average land surveyor costing around £120 a day*, and assuming that on the rainiest of days you’re losing around 3 hours of productive time packing away kit, returning to the van, sitting in the van (not to mention getting the hair dryer out) we reckon the daily loss is around £48 per rainy day.

But, it gets worse. That ‘lost’ 3 hours of work still needs to be completed on a dry day, meaning another trip to site, another mileage expense, and another £48 gone. This second trip to site also means that other survey work, for other clients, has to either be rearranged, pushed back – or worst of all, lost.

All in all, we reckon that ‘bit of rain’ could be costing you the best part of £10,000 per surveyor over the course of a year!

Of course, the financial cost is just one element.

Every time rain stops survey, it shortens the timescale for getting the job done. Not only does this add time pressure to the job, it cause severe reputational damage to your business, straining relations with your client, as well as threatening your competitive edge when it comes to bidding for other work.

Dry your Eyes

If those figures brought a tear to your eye, don’t be concerned – there is another way!

We’ve put together the #WinterReady land survey package which has everything you need to get your survey work completed – come rain or shine.

Featuring the robust Trimble S5 with active tracking, the new TSC5 controller, a license for Trimble Access (General Survey) and more, our #WinterReady bundle gives you all you need to keep on working thru’ the wind and rain.

If you’d like to find out more about this bundle, contact your local KOREC consultant, or use the details below;

info@korecgroup.com

Call UK Sales: 0345 603 1214

Call Ireland Sales: 01 456 4702

For anything else, view our contact page.

*Based on figures from Reed.co.uk, assuming an annual salary of £30,518 and a working week of 37.5 hours, we obtained a figure of approximately £117 per day for a land surveyor, or £16 per hour.