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PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: Lounsbury and Associates’ unique knowledge of civil engineering in Alaska based on decades of experience Company projects range from planning Anchorage subdivisions to surveying gas pipeline routes Alan Bailey PNA Contributing Writer
Lounsbury and Associates Inc. enjoys the unique distinction of designing the first traffic roundabout in Alaska. That project, however, represents only a fraction of Lounsbury’s vast experience in the state. The Anchorage-based company provides a wide range of services, including boundary surveys, highway design, construction site design and construction project management.
“We’re the oldest firm in the state that does surveying and engineering,” said Craig Savage, president of Lounsbury and Associates. “We started out in 1949.”
Highway and town development During its early years, company founder Hewitt Lounsbury and his colleagues did survey work around the Anchorage area. More notable projects included designing housing layouts at Fort Richardson and designing numerous subdivisions in Anchorage.
Since that time the company has continued with the highway and town development work that triggered its initial growth.
“We do a lot of planning and subdivision work in Anchorage,” Savage said. “We opened an office in March in Wasilla, so we’re also active out there.”
The bulk of the company’s work for the municipality of Anchorage is street reconstruction and facilities design, Savage said. The Wasilla office has provided surveying and civil engineering for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and the cities of Palmer and Wasilla.
Lounsbury and Associates also designs highways for the state. Highway design includes studying traffic flows, making recommendations and designing intersections.
“We designed and built the first traffic roundabout in Alaska,” Savage said.
Beside working for the state and local governments, the company does civil design for commercial buildings. Projects include designing the site for the former Eagle Hardware store (now Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse) in Anchorage. “Our job is often to locate the building on the site, so that the traffic flow and parking facilities are in the right configuration,” Savage said. “We’ll design the driveways, that sort of thing, and get the permits from the agencies.”
Oilfield surveying Lounsbury and Associates’ first foray into oilfield work came in 1957, with a contract to survey roads and wells in the Swanson River area on the Kenai Peninsula. The Swanson River work continued for a decade.
Following its experience on the Peninsula, the company landed some survey projects for oil development in Prudhoe Bay.
“In 1969, right after the (Prudhoe) discovery, we did the layout and original work on the Deadhorse airport,” Savage said. The Lounsbury surveyor had to meet the challenge of aligning the Deadhorse runway between the myriad of lakes on the North Slope tundra.
Since those early years, Lounsbury and Associates has enjoyed almost continuous oilfield work on the North Slope. “We did the layout work for all the spine roads, work pads and drill sites (in Prudhoe Bay),” Savage said.
In addition to Prudhoe, the company has become involved in development work for Phillips Alaska Inc. around the Kuparuk field. “The road and the pad for Meltwater is one that we did last year,” Savage said. Lounsbury and Associates also did the layout design for Tarn, he said.
The company also surveyed the Colville Delta for the development of the Alpine field.
In its work on the North Slope over the years, Lounsbury and Associates has expanded its services from surveying to complete civil engineering design. “We’ve gotten into the civil engineering — we’ve done some of the designs (as well as the layouts) for the pads and roads,” Savage said.
Environmental issues For civil engineers, protecting the environment is the greatest challenge on the North Slope. “In all your design work you’re always taking into consideration all of the wildlife and all of the water bodies,” Savage said. “Everything has environmental considerations, as far as what you build and what you design.”
In a project like Meltwater, for example, Lounsbury surveyors map out a broad corridor of land that can contain the required facilities. Careful planning and routing eliminates any impact on the most critical and sensitive areas such as nesting sites. “You try to avoid water bodies; you’ll route things that have the fewest stream crossings,” Savage said.
The agencies assess and permit the corridor.
Detailed design follows the initial permitting process. “So then you come back in and design the facilities, showing culverts and stream crossings and all the different things you’re doing,” Savage said. “Once that’s approved, you go to construction.”
Gas pipeline routes The company’s other major involvement with the oil industry has been surveying possible gas line routes across Alaska.
In 1980 the company surveyed the route of the proposed gas line — the originally conceived route for a gas pipeline to follow the Alaska Highway. “We did a control survey for the aerial photography for that line, which I guess now they’re calling the southern route along the highway by Tok,” Savage said.
“We also did the control for the (pipeline) corridor mapping of the Yukon Pacific Route (down to Valdez),” Savage said.
These control surveys involve setting panel points to calibrate the aerial photography of the route. “What we do is have points on the ground that they can identify in the photographs, and the surveyors tell the photogrammetrists what the positions of those points are,” Lounsbury said. “Then they adjust those photographs to fit the control points. That way they can make sure the photographs are to scale and not distorted.”
The pipeline route surveys were huge projects, involving surveyors on the ground making precise measurements of elevations and locations along hundreds of miles of terrain across Alaska.
Improved technology Over the years, Lounsbury and Associates has taken advantage of major advances in technology.
Computers perform the calculations that were once done using reference tables. Electronic data collection systems and computer-aided drafting have slashed the time required to process and plot survey results.
Global positioning system receivers have revolutionized surveying techniques, especially for measuring large distances. This technology uses satellites to pinpoint an exact position on the ground. Savage said that a survey grade GPS receiver enables positioning within a centimeter. “You can set a point and go back a month later, and sure enough it’s a repeatable point,” Savage said.
The technology is especially valuable in forested areas, enabling surveyors to take measurements without cutting survey lines through the vegetation.
“That’s really nice for photo control (where) you’re just setting a number of points along the route,” Savage said. “You go to the point you want, clear the immediate area and get a position with GPS.”
Savage sees a bright future for Lounsbury and Associates, with its extensive and unique knowledge of Alaska.
“We have a huge resource base and I think that’s going to continue with ups and downs,” he said. “We’ve been from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez several times with several different surveys. We know the territory.”
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