How RPC Land Surveyors saved 200 hours a year by making survey job data easier to find

The Challenge

RPC averages around 400 jobs a year and has more than 7,300 jobs archived across decades in business. As that archive grew, finding the right job information became increasingly difficult. The team was relying on Excel spreadsheets to search records, but this was inefficient and limited, especially when jobs had to be identified by long street names and then sorted manually by number.

On average, it took around 10 minutes to find the right job data, and with jobs being searched roughly three times per job, RPC estimated it was spending around 200 hours a year searching for information. That equated to approximately USD $15,000 a year in lost billable time.

The business also faced broader information management issues. Data stored in Windows Explorer had no clear structure or standardization, emails remained in individual inboxes, and the network drive was slow and inaccessible outside the office. For surveyors in the field, that often meant calling the office to request files to be emailed, which created duplicates and further disorder.  

The Solutions

RPC implemented 12d Synergy to create a more centralized and searchable project data environment. The platform brought emails, documents, and data into one location, with standard folder structures, job templates, permissions, tasks, and template files. This gave the team a more reliable and accessible source of current project information.

A major part of the improvement came from Spatial Search, which allowed users to search jobs visually on a map by zooming into an area, drawing a rectangle, dropping a pin, or entering an address. This replaced the limitations of spreadsheet-based searching and gave staff a much faster way to retrieve job information.

RPC also integrated 12d Synergy with Abtrac, its job management software. This connector automatically created jobs in 12d Synergy with project, contact, and company data, along with folder structures, tasks, contacts, attributes, and templates. That removed a repetitive layer of double data entry and improved consistency across the business.

The Result

• Saved around 200 hours a year searching for job data
• Recovered approximately USD $15,000 a year in billable time
• Reduced search time by up to 95%, from around 10 minutes to under 30 seconds
• Saved up to 190 hours and approximately USD $14,100 annually through Spatial Search alone
• Eliminated around 5 minutes of double data entry per job through Abtrac integration, saving up to 33 hours a year and around USD $1,200
• Avoided unnecessary rework, with Blair estimating up to 50% of a job could sometimes be saved when relevant nearby data was found early
• Supported 1,200 jobs in 12d Synergy, 980 12d Model projects, 393,279 files, 859,213 file changes and 284 GB of managed data.

A growing archive had turned finding information into a daily cost

For RPC, the biggest problem was not collaboration in the abstract. It was the everyday cost of trying to find the right information in a growing archive of work. With hundreds of jobs each year and thousands already archived, even small inefficiencies in search and retrieval had become expensive.

Turning job search into a competitive advantage

The biggest transformation for RPC came from Spatial Search. Instead of searching by spreadsheet row and manually narrowing long road names, the team could now find jobs visually on a map using location-based search methods. This made the process dramatically faster and more intuitive, particularly for a cadastral surveying practice working across many nearby sites and repeated locations.

Blair Jackson said Spatial Search quickly became the office’s go-to search tool. Search time dropped from around 10 minutes to under 30 seconds, cutting annual searching effort by up to 95% and unlocking significant time and cost savings.

Reducing rework by making historical job data usable

Another major gain came from making past job data easier to retrieve and reuse. Blair estimated that when the team could quickly find relevant data from nearby or related work, up to 50% of a new job could sometimes be saved. On a typical cadastral job, that could equate to around 7 hours and USD $900 or more per job.

That changed the value of RPC’s historical information. Instead of sitting in hard-to-access archives, past work became a practical resource that could save field time, reduce duplicated effort, and help staff get new jobs moving faster.

Standardizing data and automating job creation

12d Synergy also gave RPC a cleaner and more standardized system for emails, documents, and project files. Folder structures and job templates were standardized, email management improved, and any team member could locate what they needed more easily if the usual project lead was unavailable.

The Abtrac Connector added another layer of efficiency by automatically creating jobs in 12d Synergy with the right project, company, and contact data. By eliminating roughly 5 minutes of double data entry per job, RPC projected a further 33 hours a year saved and around USD $1,200 recovered.