Surveying and Mapping (except Geophysical) Services — U.S. Industry Primer

NAICS 2022 code 541370

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1. Overview

Every property line, road, bridge, pipeline, wind farm, and subdivision in the United States rests on measurements made by a surveyor. This is the profession that establishes where things legally and physically are: it fixes boundaries, maps terrain, stakes out construction, and turns the physical world into the digital coordinates that engineers, developers, title companies, utilities, and governments build on.[1] It is old (property surveying predates the country) and quietly essential — closings, permits, and construction cannot proceed without it.

The industry is fragmented, local, license-dependent, and labor-intensive. For anyone deciding how to get exposure to it, the central fact is that the two ownership worlds look very different:

• Public markets offer liquidity and disclosure but almost never pure exposure to NAICS 541370. Access is indirect — a diversified engineering firm where surveying is a core discipline (Bowman Consulting), the geospatial arms of larger engineering/testing groups (TIC Solutions after its 2025 NV5 merger, Fugro), or the equipment-and-software vendors that arm surveyors (Trimble, Hexagon).
• Private ownership is where most of the industry actually lives — thousands of small licensed firms, employee-owned engineering houses, and a fast-growing set of private-equity-backed regional platforms (SAM Companies is the largest) rolling them up.

The appeal is a steady, non-discretionary service tied to construction and infrastructure, protected by state licensing, sitting on a fast-improving technology base (satellite positioning, drones, laser scanning). The catch is that it is small, deeply fragmented, and hard to own directly.

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2. What it is and how it's structured

Scope. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) defines 541370 as establishments primarily engaged in surveying and mapping the surface of the earth, including the sea floor.[1] In practice that means:

• Boundary / cadastral surveying — legal property lines, easements, subdivisions, and ALTA/NSPS surveys (the American Land Title Association / National Society of Professional Surveyors standard used in commercial real-estate closings).
• Topographic and construction surveying — mapping ground elevation, construction layout, and as-built surveys that stake out where structures go.
• Hydrographic surveying — mapping water bodies and the sea floor.
• Photogrammetric and LiDAR mapping — building maps from aerial/drone imagery and laser scans (LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging).
• Cartography, GIS base mapping, and utility-corridor / right-of-way work — producing map products, geographic-information-system (GIS) data layers, and subsurface-utility maps.

What it excludes (these sit in adjacent NAICS codes):[1]

• 541360 Geophysical Surveying and Mapping — mapping the subsurface for oil, gas, and minerals. Explicitly carved out (hence "except Geophysical").
• 541330 Engineering Services — where a large share of surveying labor actually sits, because most surveyors work inside multi-discipline engineering firms (see §3).
• 541310 Architectural and 541320 Landscape Architectural services; 541340 Drafting Services.
• 511130 / 519130 atlas and map publishing; 541512 computer systems design; 541620 environmental consulting; and construction itself (Sector 23).

Ownership mix. Overwhelmingly small, private, and owner-operated. The 2022 Economic Census counted 7,225 firms against roughly the same number of establishments,[2][4] meaning most firms are single-location shops. The work is gated by individual professional licensure, so the classic unit is a licensed Professional Land Surveyor (PLS) running a local practice with a few field crews. Above that sit employee-owned engineering firms, regional private-equity platforms, and the surveying/geospatial divisions of national engineering firms. Because one firm can own several establishments, establishment counts do not equal company counts.[2][4]

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3. How big it is

Using U.S. federal statistics for NAICS 541370. Two different federal programs are combined here, so note the vintages: County Business Patterns (CBP) covers employer establishments and is the 2023 vintage; the Economic Census is a separate 2022 survey. They should not be read as one same-year dataset.[2][4]

Concentration is very low. The four largest firms took just 8.7% of receipts, the top eight 11.6%, the top 20 16.8%, and even the top 50 only 25.4%.[4] The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, a standard concentration gauge on a 0–10,000 scale where 10,000 = a single-firm monopoly) is 26.5 — one of the most fragmented service industries you will find.[4] The Small Business Administration's (SBA) $19 million size standard means the vast majority of firms qualify as small businesses.[5] Fragmentation supports a consolidation thesis, but it does not by itself imply high margins — it can equally mean intense local price competition.

The undercount caveat (important here). The ~$10.97 billion figure materially understates total U.S. surveying activity, for three reasons:

1. Surveying hides inside engineering firms. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that roughly two-thirds of surveyors work at architectural and engineering firms — most classified under 541330 (Engineering Services), not 541370.[6] Their surveying revenue never lands in this industry's receipts.
2. Government does huge volumes in-house. County surveyors, state departments of transportation, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, hydrographic charts), the Bureau of Land Management (federal cadastral survey), and the Census Bureau all perform surveying and mapping that is never billed as private-industry revenue.[6][7]
3. Many operators are below the employer threshold. CBP excludes self-employed individuals, businesses without employees, and most government workers — meaningful in a market full of sole proprietors and individual licensed surveyors.[3] The supplied federal file contains no reconciled 541370 nonemployer total, so none is asserted here.

The occupation is bigger than the industry: BLS counts roughly 56,000 surveyors plus about 13,000 cartographers and photogrammetrists nationwide, with median pay near $73,000 for surveyors and $78,000 for cartographers/photogrammetrists.[6][7] Counting only pure-play firms, this looks like an ~$11 billion niche; counting all the surveying labor embedded in engineering firms and government, the true footprint is larger.

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4. The investable universe

There is no large, pure-play, publicly traded U.S. surveying company. Public exposure comes through diversified engineering firms that treat surveying/geospatial as a core discipline, and through the equipment-and-software vendors that arm the industry. The names below are proxies or enabling businesses, not identical exposures to the federal definition.

Listed companies with meaningful surveying/geospatial exposure

Other large diversified AEC (architecture/engineering/construction) names — Jacobs (J), Tetra Tech (TTEK) — likewise run surveying and geospatial practices inside much bigger engineering businesses, giving diluted exposure.

Major private and other owners

• SAM Companies (Surveying and Mapping, LLC) — Austin-based, ~$329M revenue, 1,000+ employees, 38 offices; the largest dedicated U.S. managed-geospatial-and-inspection provider. Built into a platform under private-equity firm Peak Rock Capital; New Mountain Capital took a majority stake in July 2026 and has said it expects further strategic acquisitions.[17][18]
• Woolpert, HDR, HNTB — large private, largely employee-owned architecture/engineering firms with substantial surveying, mapping, and geospatial practices.[19][20][21]
• Esri — privately held GIS-software giant (~$1.3B+ revenue); it makes ArcGIS, the dominant mapping platform surveyors and governments run on. A platform supplier, not primarily a survey service provider.[22]
• Thousands of local/regional licensed firms, increasingly targets of PE roll-ups (see §8).

The honest takeaway: buying "the surveying industry" on the public markets is not really possible. You buy an engineering firm that surveys (Bowman, AECOM), a picks-and-shovels supplier (Trimble, Hexagon), or you go private.

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5. How the money works

This is a billable-professional-services business, so the economics look like a law or engineering practice, not a product company. Owners make money on the spread between what field crews and licensed surveyors cost and what clients pay for their time and deliverables. The basic engine:

billable hours × billing rate + reimbursable expenses + subcontractors + data/software revenue.

The core levers:

• Billable utilization — the share of a crew's or professional's available hours chargeable to clients. This is the single biggest profit driver; idle field crews are pure cost, and because so much is field work, weather and travel drag on utilization.
• Rate-to-wage spread and realization. Survey crews commonly bill in the range of $220–$450 per hour depending on crew size and complexity, with lower rates for records research.[25] What matters is how billing-rate growth compares to compensation, and how much of the standard rate actually gets billed and collected (realization).
• Net vs. gross revenue. Firms distinguish gross contract revenue from net service billing (gross minus pass-through costs like subconsultants) — the net figure is the real measure of a firm's own work, and it can materially change the apparent growth rate and margin. Bowman, for example, reported ~$490M gross but ~$435M net for 2025.[15]
• Labor is the dominant cost. Payroll runs close to 40% of industry receipts (~$4.305B payroll against ~$10.97B receipts),[2][4] and that understates it because owner draws and benefits sit on top.
• Backlog and book-to-bill. Signed but unstarted work (backlog) and new bookings relative to current billings give forward visibility. Bowman's backlog grew ~20% to ~$479M in 2025, signaling demand strength.[15]
• Contract structure. Time-and-materials contracts are flexible but cap pricing upside; fixed-price work can earn better margins when scope is controlled but exposes firms to scope creep, weather, delays, and rework. Government work is often awarded on qualifications (see §7), rewarding credentials and past performance over lowest price.[10]
• Relatively capital-light, but equipment matters. GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) receivers, total stations, drones, LiDAR scanners, vehicles, and data storage are real outlays. Technology lets a firm map far more ground per labor hour, so productivity gains flow largely to margin. The most durable assets, though, are licensed people, client relationships, local records, and reputation.

For PE-backed platforms and listed roll-ups, the model layers acquisition-driven growth on top: buy small licensed firms at low multiples, consolidate back-office and equipment, cross-sell, and expand margins. Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) is the headline profit metric these buyers manage to — and a key diligence question is whether reported growth is organic or simply more acquisitions.

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6. What drives demand

Demand is derived — it follows whoever is building, buying, or financing land and infrastructure:

• Construction activity, residential and non-residential. Every subdivision, commercial site, and vertical build needs boundary, topographic, and construction-staking surveys. This is the largest and most cyclical driver, and it is sensitive to interest rates and development financing.
• Public infrastructure. Roads, bridges, transit, airports, water, and broadband all begin with surveys. The $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), administered in part through Federal Highway Administration programs, has been a multi-year tailwind; U.S. transportation construction is projected to hit a record ~$209 billion in 2026, its peak execution year.[13][14]
• Utilities and energy. Transmission lines, grid expansion, pipelines, and solar/wind sites (including offshore, where hydrographic survey matters) all need extensive mapping, rights-of-way, and underground-utility work — much of it recurring.
• Real-estate transactions. Property sales, refinancing, and title insurance frequently require ALTA/boundary surveys, tying a slice of demand to transaction volume and rates.
• Government mapping, GIS, and resilience programs. Floodplain remapping, cadastral updates, digital-twin and smart-city work, and the USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) — which supplies topographic data for flood management, hazards, and infrastructure — sustain a steady public-sector book.[12]
• Data centers and critical infrastructure. New large facilities require land, utility, transmission, transportation, and site-condition surveys before construction.
• Technology-driven scope expansion. Cheaper, faster drone-LiDAR, mobile mapping, and AI feature-extraction create new deliverables (3D models, digital twins, asset inventories) that expand what clients buy. The land-survey-equipment market is projected to grow from ~$5.5B (2025) toward ~$8.1B (2033).[26]

Public infrastructure, utilities, defense-related mapping, and resilience work tend to be steadier than private land development — though none is immune to budget, labor, or project risk.

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7. Regulation

Surveying is a state-licensed profession, and that licensure is the industry's central regulatory feature and its main barrier to entry.

• Professional Land Surveyor (PLS) licensure is state-by-state. Candidates typically pass two national exams from the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) — the Fundamentals of Surveying (FS) and Principles and Practice of Surveying (PS) — plus a state-specific exam, and must document years of supervised experience under the NCEES model standard.[9]
• Education requirements are rising. Most states are moving toward a four-year degree, and a number already require an ABET-accredited surveying program specifically.[6] This raises the bar to enter just as the workforce ages.
• A licensed surveyor must "sign and seal" legal survey products; boundary determinations carry legal weight, which is why the profession is protected and unlicensed competition is limited.
• Interstate friction. Requirements vary by state, so mobility across state lines requires comity/reciprocity — a real constraint for national firms and a frequently cited drag on relieving labor shortages.[9]
• Federal procurement is qualifications-based. Federal architect-engineer contracts, including surveying, are awarded under the Brooks Act (40 U.S.C. Chapter 11), which emphasizes demonstrated competence and qualifications before price negotiation.[10] The SBA's $19 million size standard governs small-business set-aside eligibility.[5]
• Drone and airspace rules. Drone-based survey work falls under Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 107 for commercial UAS — remote-pilot certification, aircraft registration, airspace authorization, and Remote Identification.[11] Hydrographic and federal mapping work intersects with NOAA and USGS standards.
• Professional liability and data security. Boundary errors, inaccurate utility locations, or faulty elevation data create litigation and insurance exposure that scales with project size; utility, defense, and critical-infrastructure maps can carry contractual security and access restrictions.

Licensing protects incumbents and supports pricing, but it also throttles the supply of new professionals — a double-edged feature that shows up directly in the risk section.

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8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

The industry is historically mom-and-pop and now consolidating. With an HHI of 26.5 and the top 50 firms holding barely a quarter of receipts,[4] there is enormous room to roll up. National supplier power is minimal, but local competition can be concentrated, because licenses, agency relationships, local property records, and knowledge of jurisdictional requirements all matter.

• Private-equity buy-and-build is the defining trend. Fragmented professional-services sectors with recurring, non-discretionary demand are prime roll-up targets, and surveying fits the profile — sellers often face succession problems, while buyers add geography, licensed staff, equipment, clients, and cross-selling. Platforms like SAM Companies (now New Mountain Capital) and listed acquirers like Bowman have been steadily buying small licensed firms.[15][17][18]
• Why roll-ups work here: small firms sell at low multiples; a platform can centralize equipment, software, safety, and back office, share scarce licensed surveyors across a wider footprint, and win larger multi-state contracts a solo shop cannot.
• The counterweight is integration risk. These are relationship businesses; losing a principal, license holder, or local team can destroy the value of an acquisition. The 2025 NV5–Acuren/TIC combination illustrates the alternative path — geospatial capabilities folded into a larger, more diversified services platform.[16]
• Technology is a scale advantage. Drone-LiDAR, mobile mapping, and GIS/AI feature-extraction reward firms that can afford the equipment and specialists, tilting the field toward larger, better-capitalized players. Equipment/software vendors (Trimble, Hexagon, Esri, Topcon) hold real power over field firms, increasingly through subscription hardware/software-as-a-service bundles that convert one-time equipment buys into recurring costs.

The likely direction of travel is a barbell: a growing tier of regional and national consolidators, with a long tail of local licensed firms serving nearby clients.

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9. Risks

• Cyclicality. Demand tracks construction and real-estate activity and is sensitive to interest rates. A construction slowdown hits utilization fast, and idle field crews are expensive.
• Structural labor scarcity. The average licensed surveyor is around 58, and only ~14% of the workforce is under 34.[8] Rising degree requirements, few university programs, and slow interstate licensing keep the pipeline of new PLS holders thin. This constrains growth and pushes up wages — a margin risk and a hard ceiling on capacity.
• Fragmentation and price competition at the small-project end keep margins modest for undifferentiated firms.
• Scope and claims. Fixed-price work can turn unprofitable through errors, delays, weather, or poorly defined scopes.
• Technology disruption cuts both ways. Drones, LiDAR, public geospatial data, and automated/AI processing raise productivity but also commoditize routine mapping and demand continuous capital reinvestment; firms that under-invest fall behind.
• Budget and funding dependence. Public-sector work depends on infrastructure budgets, utility capital plans, and permitting. The IIJA authorization runs through fiscal 2026; the pace and shape of any successor program is a genuine uncertainty for infrastructure-weighted firms.[13]
• Roll-up execution risk. Debt-funded acquirers face integration, goodwill, and interest-cost exposure if growth or margins disappoint — overpaying, excessive leverage, or loss of acquired talent can destroy returns. Bowman, for instance, has posted quarterly net losses even while revenue and backlog grew.[15]
• Measurement risk. Employer-only federal statistics may understate the true number of small and self-employed operators, so top-down sizing should be treated as a floor.[3]

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10. How to invest and the outlook

Public routes.

• Diversified engineering firm with surveying at the core: Bowman Consulting (BWMN) is the closest listed proxy, though it is a broad civil-engineering business, not a surveying pure play.[15] For diluted exposure, large AEC names (AECOM, Stantec, WSP, Jacobs, Tetra Tech) all survey inside bigger engineering practices.
• Picks-and-shovels: the equipment-and-software vendors — Trimble (TRMB), Hexagon (HXGBY) — sell to every surveying firm regardless of who wins the project, and are increasingly recurring-revenue software businesses.[23][24] They trade on their own construction-tech and software-cycle dynamics, not purely on surveying.
• Testing/geospatial conglomerate: the former NV5 Geospatial now sits inside TIC Solutions (NYSE: TIC).[16]

Before comparing tickers, size the exposure: how much revenue actually comes from survey and mapping work, how much is recurring, and whether growth is organic or acquisition-driven — then look at utilization, backlog, book-to-bill, days sales outstanding, write-offs, debt, and retention of licensed professionals. Reserve any decision on share prices, dividends, or valuation multiples for that security-level analysis; these are diversified businesses whose surveying exposure is one line among several.

Private routes (where the industry mostly is):

• Buy or back a local licensed firm. Owner-operator practices trade at modest multiples and generate steady cash, but value is tied to a few licensed individuals — key-person and succession risk is acute.
• Invest alongside a roll-up platform or employee-owned firm. PE consolidators (e.g., New Mountain Capital's SAM Companies) and large employee-owned engineering houses (Woolpert, HDR, HNTB) are the institutional ways to play consolidation of a hyper-fragmented, recurring-demand niche.[18][19][20][21] Core diligence questions: Who holds the licenses and client relationships? How concentrated is revenue in land development or a single government customer? Are contracts T&M, fixed-price, or recurring? Is growth coming from productivity or just acquisitions? Are data/software/analytics becoming higher-margin recurring products?
• Direct real-asset owners and developers consume surveying as an input rather than owning it.

Outlook — constructive but measured. The near-term setup is favorable on demand and constrained on supply. Infrastructure, utilities, resilience, and digital asset mapping should support demand, with spending expected to peak around 2026 as IIJA money is executed, even as housing and commercial development stay cyclical.[14][26] The binding constraint is people: a shrinking, aging pool of licensed surveyors is likely to keep wages rising and capacity tight, which supports pricing for firms that can staff the work but caps how fast anyone can grow.

• Bull case: stronger infrastructure and utility spending, improved labor productivity, and successful conversion of field work into recurring data and software revenue.
• Bear case: budget cuts or a delayed IIJA successor, development delays, wage inflation, commoditization of routine mapping, or acquisition failures.

That combination — durable demand, protected licensure, structural labor scarcity, and a wide-open consolidation runway — is why the most credible value creation here is likely to come from private roll-ups and technology-enabled scale rather than from any single public stock.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau. 2022 NAICS: 541370 Surveying and Mapping (except Geophysical) Services. https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=541370&input=541370&year=2022
2. U.S. Census Bureau. County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 541370. 2025. https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2023/econ/cbp/2023-cbp.html
3. U.S. Census Bureau. County Business Patterns Methodology; 2023 Nonemployer Statistics. 2025–2026. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation/methodology.html
4. U.S. Census Bureau. 2022 Economic Census — Concentration of Largest Firms for the U.S., NAICS 541370. 2025. https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN?codeset=naics~541370&y=2022
5. U.S. Small Business Administration. Table of Small Business Size Standards (NAICS 541370). 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
6. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Outlook Handbook: Surveyors (May 2024 data). 2025. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/surveyors.htm
7. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Outlook Handbook: Cartographers and Photogrammetrists (May 2024 data). 2025. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/cartographers-and-photogrammetrists.htm
8. Land Surveyors United. Vanishing Lines: Confronting the Surveying Workforce Shortage. 2024. https://landsurveyorsunited.com/articles/vanishing-lines-confronting-the-surveying-workforce-shortage
9. National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES). Licensure; Model Law Surveyor Standard. https://ncees.org/licensure/
10. Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 40 U.S.C. Chapter 11: Selection of Architects and Engineers (Brooks Act). https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid%3AUSC-prelim-title40-chapter11-front
11. Federal Aviation Administration. Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Regulations: Part 107. https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/small-unmanned-aircraft-systems-uas-regulations-part-107
12. U.S. Geological Survey. 3D Elevation Program (3DEP). https://www.usgs.gov/3d-elevation-program
13. Federal Highway Administration. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). https://highways.dot.gov/infrastructure-investment-and-jobs-act
14. Bond Buyer / U.S. DOT. Transportation Infrastructure Rides Into Final Year of IIJA With Record Spending Expected. 2026. https://www.bondbuyer.com/news/transportation-infrastructure-rides-into-final-year-of-iija-with-record-spending-expected
15. Bowman Consulting Group Ltd. Form 8-K / FY2025 Results (gross revenue, net service billing, backlog, Adjusted EBITDA). U.S. SEC, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1847590/000162828026015252/bwmn-20251231.htm
16. Acuren Corporation / TIC Solutions. Rebrand and Q3 2025 Results — Merger with NV5 Global (Geospatial segment). 2025. https://ir.acuren.com/news/news-details/2025/Acuren-Announces-Company-Rebrand-to-TIC-Solutions/default.aspx
17. Lincoln International. Peak Rock Capital Affiliate Has Acquired SAM Companies. 2024. https://www.lincolninternational.com/transactions/peak-rock-capital-affiliate-has-acquired-sam-companies/
18. SAM Companies / New Mountain Capital. New Mountain Capital Partners with SAM. 2026. https://www.sam.biz/events/new-mountain-capital-partners-with-sam-leading-geospatial-and-inspection-solutions-company-for-next-phase-of-growth/
19. Woolpert. About Woolpert. https://woolpert.com/about/
20. HDR. HDR Annual Report (employee ownership). 2025. https://www.hdrinc.com/about-us/2025-hdr-annual-report
21. HNTB. About HNTB (employee-owned infrastructure firm). https://www.hntb.com/
22. Esri. Esri Fact Sheet. https://www.esri.com/en-us/about/media-relations/fact-sheet
23. Trimble Inc. 2025 Form 10-K; Geospatial segment. U.S. SEC, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000864749&type=10-K
24. Hexagon AB / MarketsandMarkets. Geospatial segment revenue by leading vendor (2024). 2025. https://www.reportprime.com/geographic-information-systems-r16276/company
25. Angi. How Much Does a Land Survey Cost? (2026 Data). 2026. https://www.angi.com/articles/how-much-does-land-survey-cost.htm
26. SkyQuest Technology. Land Survey Equipment Market Size (2025–2033). 2025. https://www.skyquestt.com/report/land-survey-equipment-market
27. WSP Global. Surveying, Mapping and GIS. https://www.wsp.com/en-us/services/surveying-mapping-and-gis
28. Stantec. Geospatial Services. https://www.stantec.com/en/services/geospatial
29. AECOM. Geospatial Services. https://aecom.com/services/planning-consulting/geospatial-services/