Connect the dots, color between the lines, and share. These lessons we learned in kindergarten can be applied throughout our lives and even on the jobsite. Taylor Ball, San Diego, recently applied the first lesson by taking a simple connect-the-dots approach to the layout of footing excavations and foundation concrete for the $22 million Rancho Del Rey Middle School in Chula Vista, Calif. Spread over 26 acres, the school includes 18 distinct buildings of various shapes and sizes housing 120,000 square feet of classrooms, administration offices, an auditorium, and physical-education facilities. Because of the enormous number of layout points and amount of survey data that had to be calculated and input, Taylor Ball used a handheld graphing calculator along with data-collection and field-computation software for surveyors. By combining this data-collection system with an electronic total station, the layout crew was able to save time and minimize worker uncertainty and errors on this complex job.
