Using GPS to Stake out Lighting Locations.................

Musco Lighting is a leader in developing sports-lighting technology — including solutions for permanent and temporary lighting, and sports facility management.  Their clients require lighting of outdoor facilities for such applications as horse and auto racing, as well as the 2010 Olympic Venue in Vancouver.

Musco uses sophisticated design software to plot out the ideal locations and direction of specific lights in order to have maximum coverage of the facility.  In order for the design to work, the lights must be placed within a foot of the plotted location.  Otherwise, there will likely be dark spots and a possible safety hazard.  Survey-grade GPS would work since it more than meets this requirement, however this requires a separate base station and radio or a VRS infrastructure.  Since much of their work is done overseas or in rural areas, this was not a desired solution.  The Trimble® GPS Pathfinder® ProXRT with integrated OmniSTAR was the perfect solution.
There are different beams from satellites spaced throughout the world with current applications in North America, Korea, and Dubai and are serviced by OmniSTAR.  A big plus for purchase consideration for Musco was the cost factor – a ProXRT unit is less than half most survey-grade receivers and requires less training for the field user.

The ProXRT with OmniSTAR XP service is specified for subfoot accuracy in the field throughout most of the world and the service was purchased by Musco under a convenient subscription plan. 

According to Patrick Robinson, Project Manager at Musco, “By using GPS technology and the ProXRT with OmniSTAR we have been able to speed up the process immensely and have greater confidence in the location of our light fixtures.”

Prior to utilizing the ProXRT, Musco had to hire private surveyors from various firms across the country and other areas where they work. Each time the work flow processes had to be explained and reviewed with these various firms, which was time consuming.  Bringing the work in-house and utilizing the ProXRT provided their field workers with a great deal of knowledge about the application and reduced the learning curve down time.  Additionally, Musco is also building topology into their solution, especially for golf courses.  By using the ProXRT with vertical accuracies better than 18 inches, it is possible to design pole heights to light depressions.  Using the ProXRT on a golf cart, Musco staff throughout the course gaining an elevation profile that is them fed into their design software.

There is a greater demand for temporary lighting structures and Musco is ready for this due to the speed at which the ProXRT can be deployed with internal staff.