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History
John Chance Land Surveys, Inc. was founded in 1957 as John E. Chance and Associates, a Lafayette-based survey firm supporting the oil and gas industry. In 1992, Chance sold the company to Fugro, a worldwide leader in survey, geotechnical, and geospatial services. Based in the Netherlands, Fugro provided the resources and vision to bring the company into the next century. Early on, John Chance positioned the company to capitalize on the booming oil and gas market in the Gulf South. He utilized his background in civil engineering and his forward-looking approach to business to make the company an astounding success. He was instrumental in the development of STARFIX positioning system, which revolutionized the seismic data collection industry. Prior to its development, vessels had to rely on shore-based transmissions, which were notoriously unreliable. STARFIX utilized satellite positioning which was at the cutting edge of survey technology during its development in 1986. STARFIX has undergone many updates and upgrades since its inception, and JCLS surveyors still use the system for a variety of applications today. In 1999, the company reached another milestone in its evolution when it was spun off into its own seperate entity. The company was split into John Chance Land Surveys (http://www.jclsurvey.com/), FugroChance (http://www.fugrochance.com/), and FugroGeoservices (http://www.fgsi.fugro.com/). This allowed the company to focus on its onshore and near-shore work, while allowing the sister companies to focus on the deeper offshore waters. |
Fugro and JCLS have been at the forefront of LiDAR hardware and software development since the technology was initially developed in the early 1990s. JCLS developed, owns and exclusively operates the proprietary FLI-MAP 400 aerial LiDAR survey system and the FLIP7 LiDAR processing software suite. JCLS fielded its first commercial FLI-MAP LiDAR system in 1995, designed specifically to map corridor features such as railways, transmission lines, etc. at high levels of resolution and accuracy. JCLS is Fugro's center for both hardware and software development related to Fugro's corridor mapping LiDAR capabilities, and supports FLI-MAP operations worldwide.