The Value of the Viewer — Solving the Information Gap

How instant access to real-world spatial data improves engineering and operations workflows

Across large-scale telecommunications and infrastructure projects, real-time access to high-resolution spatial data in Mach9's client viewer is driving efficiencies and improving decision-making across engineering workflows.

OSP telecom engineers often design entirely from CAD or GIS data, without any real-world field context — it's a purely desktop-based process, and they rarely, if ever, visit the jobsite. These engineers typically have no experience working with LiDAR data. Their computers are often incapable of handling large datasets, they lack the necessary point cloud visualization software, and many are unfamiliar with geospatial data formats and software tools altogether. They're accustomed to receiving SHP files or drawings and performing all their design work within those constraints.

Managing data for a project spanning hundreds to thousands of miles presents enormous challenges. Locating, downloading, viewing, and interacting with the right datasets becomes an extremely difficult, if not impossible, task.

Mach9 Digital Surveyor is transforming how owners and engineers access, share, interact with, and leverage spatial datasets — streamlining design workflows and improving project delivery. Here are a few key ways we're supporting project teams:

Virtual Surveying — When engineers have doubts about field data accuracy or want additional context on their construction site, they can seamlessly revisit specific areas within Mach9, viewing the original LiDAR and imagery datasets behind the map. This helps quickly identify potential extraction errors or field issues, providing critical insights to support confident design decisions.

On-Demand Measurements — Designers often need quick, bespoke measurements that aren't automatically extracted — like the distance between a pole and nearby structures, or a specific clearance over a driveway. With Mach9, they can instantly navigate to the project location, view the full geospatial context, and capture precise measurements to enhance design accuracy and compliance.

Design Validation and Conflict Detection — Ensuring designs fit into the real-world environment is critical. Mach9 allows designers to overlay proposed plans directly onto geospatial data, enabling proactive identification and resolution of design and utility conflicts — reducing costly delays and rework.

Unlocking Instant Access to Spatial Data

More project stakeholders are requesting direct access to spatial information, recognizing the value of having accurate data available instantly and on demand. With Mach9, project teams can access and explore large datasets quickly — often faster than they can through their own servers, even with high-performance hardware.

For clients, this transforms how information is shared and used. Data previously confined to hard drives or difficult-to-access servers becomes readily available through an intuitive interface, allowing users to explore and interact with massive datasets without specialized software or a steep learning curve.

Ease of Use Expands Access

Project teams value Mach9's intuitive, user-friendly interface. By reducing the technical expertise and specialized labor traditionally required to work with geospatial data, Mach9 makes powerful insights accessible to more people across an organization — helping teams unlock the full value of their data.

Mach9 is transforming survey, design, and asset management workflows by making accurate information from real-world spatial and visual data accessible to more people.

Mach9 Digital Surveyor turns complex, unstructured geospatial data into clear, actionable information. With automated feature extraction tools, teams can quickly identify assets, answer questions, and produce the information they need — helping surveying and engineering professionals complete more work, faster, without sacrificing accuracy.

Looking ahead, organizations will be able to access geospatial data and use Mach9 to create maps, reports, dashboards, designs, and other deliverables directly. This will make it faster and easier to plan, design, build, and manage infrastructure at scale.