A year after Hurricane Helene flooded local waterways, Lissa Turner, an alumnus of the A-B Tech Geomatics Technology program, has been busy behind the scenes helping engineers repair rivers and streams damaged in the storm. In her role as a Professional Land Surveyor (PLS), she helps create maps that engineers use to repair damaged streams.
Turner has worked as a surveyor, or geomatics technician (the terms are interchangeable), since she graduated from A-B Tech in 2001. Her current employer is Resource Environmental Solutions (RES), one of the country’s largest firms focused on conservation projects.
Turner is a PLS overseeing field surveyors who work throughout North Carolina, collecting data. She takes the data and drafts maps using AutoCAD. Her work clearly displays stream and wetland boundaries, many of which have shifted since the hurricane.
Civil engineers use the maps to help design infrastructure, including new buildings, roads, and dams. The data collected by surveyors also helps protect water quality in area streams and wetlands. Surveyors are called in to gather data before construction projects can begin.
“Say they have to put in storm pipes for a road and that impacts the water quality of a stream,” Turner said. “We offset the impact of the pipe. (Engineers) change the path of the stream and dig out flood plains so the water has more area to flow, which reduces the height and speed of (rising) flood waters.”
Turner enjoys working independently, analyzing data, and creating maps. For over two decades, she has specialized in land conservation projects, though she points out that many surveyors focus on boundary work, helping to determine a piece of property's legal boundaries.
“I enjoy the variety (of conservation work). No one job is the same,” she said. “I like stream restoration.”
Turner, 53, has enjoyed an interesting and varied career. After graduating from A-B Tech in her early 20s, she started as a field crew surveyor and spent three years working for Vaughn and Melton Consulting, an Asheville-based engineering company.
The job required working outdoors in the woods and in the water. “You have to wear waders,” she said. “It’s very physical work. Until you get licensed, and that’s what a lot of field crew surveyors work towards.”
In 2003, Turner took the state PLS exams and received her license. Her A-B Tech degree helped her become a PLS, she said. “Having a degree gives you an advantage over someone without one. I wanted educational knowledge of the field before I got into it to make sure that’s what I wanted to do,” she said.
Turner put her knowledge to good use, starting Turner Land Surveyors with her husband, David, in 2008 in Raleigh. Having her own firm gave her the freedom to focus on the projects closest to her heart: mostly land conservation, along with some road and waterline construction projects.
Two years ago, the Turners decided to sell their company to RES, the firm they both currently work for. “Now we have less of the administrative aspect of work, the insurance and payroll,” she said. “RES is so big, they have all the work we need.”
Turner said she rarely misses putting on her waders and going out into the field. She likes that her career is flexible and that she’s been able to switch to inside work as she’s gotten older.
“I like the variety of my job,” she said. “And the more you advance in your career, the more you get paid. There was a time in my life when my job would be to go collect data and come inside and process it; both things. Now I’m in the office full-time.”
The best part of her job, Turner said, is always learning something new. Each survey job she gets requires specialized knowledge, which is used by engineers to plan and design construction projects.
Turner has recently been working closely with municipalities that are checking dam safety after Helene to ensure structures are secure. “I feel like we’re doing something valuable for the public and the environment,” she said.
With the increased local demand for surveying jobs, it’s a great time to enter the field. “It’s never been hard to find a job in this profession,” Turner said. “(But) now there’s a shortage of surveyors. There are always things to be surveyed. If you have a road to drive on, or a building to walk into, there was likely a surveyor involved.”
Learn more about A-B Tech’s Geomatics Technology program at Geomatics Technology (Surveying).