Meet Jake Gresham

Jake Gresham, CMT-L, GISP, is the Aerial Department Manager for Land Development and Renewable Markets at SAM, where he leads teams delivering aerial mapping and geospatial solutions for infrastructure projects across the country. With more than seven years of experience spanning LiDAR processing, aerial imagery, GIS, and project management, Jake is passionate about solving complex challenges, advancing innovative geospatial workflows, and helping clients get the most value from their data.

You recently stepped into the role of Aerial Mapping Department Manager for Land Development and Renewables at SAM. What excites you most about leading work in these growing markets?

I think the variety of projects, scopes, and clients that we work with in the Land Development and Renewables markets is what excites me the most about leading this particular market group. I joke that we are the “Kitchen Sink” market because although we have other dedicated teams for Government, Transportation, and Electric Utility we still work on projects that rub elbows and have overlap with each. To me this gives members of our team a rare opportunity to develop skills and be exposed to concepts that other groups may not get. For example, someone in the Electric Utility market will likely never be asked to extract curb features to help model hydro flow along a road corridor – just like a transportation technician will likely never have to provide a PLSCADD model of a transmission route. On our team we have done both and more as parts of the scope of various projects that we have worked on. It’s been exciting to help lead these types of efforts, and to be able to problem solve and consult SME’s from various discipline’s to develop these varied workflows.

First off, I am deeply thankful for the confidence and investment leadership has put in me during my time at SAM, and I would also be remiss to not also express the appreciation I have for the team members and peers that have helped along the way as well. The journey has definitely been both challenging and rewarding, but mostly it has been a great learning experience, of which there are two things I’ve learned that stand out the most:

1. The foundational skills developed and knowledge gained early in our industry will continue to be relevant at every single stage of your career development. It definitely takes some brain rewiring to go from the heads down, elbows deep production work to the broader 1000ft view of multiple projects across a larger unit, but you can’t reliably make solid business decisions without knowing and understanding the nature of our work, and more importantly the limitations on capabilities when it comes to client requests. Success in establishing and maintaining project schedules, budgets, logistics, staffing, planning, KPI’s and all the additional work that comes in as you progress is all inherently advised by that early experience.
   
   
2. As you advance, there is a notable and inevitable transition from being able to take things upon yourself and shoulder the work to get it done to really having to depend on and trust your team members and others to be successful. No number of late night grinds or weekend sessions can substitute a well oiled machine fueled by coordination and teamwork, especially in regards to maintaining client schedules and quality work.

For some reason, the work we do in this industry just makes sense to me and scratches some sort of itch I have in my brain on applying geospatial concepts to solve real world problems. When I was in high school I absolutely hated math, and the only discipline I was mildly successful at was Geometry and Trigonometry. I had no plans on getting into a career where I would have to regularly use math day to day and I find it ironic now that it’s something I find myself doing all the time. Even in my past career and interest in cultural resource management, you would document excavations using a line, level, and plumb bob to map in features on a sheet of grid paper and that same concept still applies to projects I work on now but instead of a 10’x10’ hole in the ground it’s can be for over tens of thousands of acres. I also loved the field work aspect when starting out and even though now I’m primarily in the office, it’s still interesting to see these locations from an aerial perspective and in 3 dimensional point clouds and models. It’s just work that I find very cool and interesting, and it allows me the opportunity to think critically and creatively when it comes to solving a problem.

Each type of project has their pro’s and con’s, but across each one I’d say a running theme on projects that I enjoy are the ones that have the odd ball or out of the ordinary request. Whether that’s identifying sinking PV arrays on solar farms by extracting the tops across 300 acres of a project, or meeting tight schedule’s on a rail reconstruction by meeting the flight team on the tarmac for a hard drive and re-tooling the processing flow to get deliverables out sooner. Those types of asks where I get to actively brain storm and consult with the client on solutions for their problems is work that I really enjoy doing.

A lot of the work we do on my team is in reference to “base mapping” which has it’s name for a reason – it largely becomes the backdrop to a lot of other work and design that takes place on project sites and presented in legal documents and information packets. People outside our industry may not realize the work that goes into accurately mapping those roads, buildings, contours, and other features that end up as the backdrop to engineering design, community discussions, and other datasets that go on long past our direct delivery to our client of the immediate need. Occasionally I’ll see a project that I may have worked on years ago either come back through with a different client, or see some mapping on some community design plans and it’s interesting to dig in and see if those lines and polygons I originally placed there has still made it’s way into the latest iteration through the years that have passed.

Of course AI and Machine Learning are the current buzz words out there, and it’s something we have already invested time and effort into and have seen the benefits of, but there is also something to be said about looking at the advancements in aerial platforms and sensors that have also been occurring. In the past two years, we have gone from 3 aircraft to 12 to keep up with demand and to help meet client schedules, which has given us the opportunity to also invest in new sensors with increased capabilities as well that has not only helped bandwidth in a quantity sense, but also in an efficiency sense as flights can occur quicker, higher, and with less turnarounds and double flights. This has directly led to down stream efficiencies with less data burden on the servers, increased processing speed, and higher quality products. For future growth, it’s exciting to see new and developing technologies in Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellites in regards to both imagery and the potential for LiDAR survey on those platforms that could lead to even more efficiencies when it comes to land coverage, and acquisition schedules that are on going challenges we face today.

The collaboration and creative approach to problem solving is one of the things I enjoy the most about working with this group. I think across the board everyone has the similar though process of “how can we do this better/cheaper/quicker” and that attitude permeates through from leadership down to the technician level. I love it when folks reach out randomly about a new article on some new geospatial technology they saw to discuss and pick brain’s on if there’s a way to implement. Just the amount of different individuals with different skillsets and knowledge bases make it easy to send a message or give a call on specific problems you may be having to help develop a solution, and everyone is willing to help each other.

Me and my wife try to meet up with friends either at the park or do other little outings where we can all bring our kids together and let them play and create some controlled chaos and have fun. We live near the Silver Comet trail here in Georgia so we like to go on walks along that and visit the downtown area of where we live in Powder Springs and check out the bookstore or go to the brewery, which hasn’t as been much lately since we are expecting our second in September. We are also pretty big home bodies so just general hanging at the house on weekends and vegging out on the couch is also a big “activity” we enjoy.

Probably way too much of both honestly, I tend to have an energy drink in the morning and coffee throughout the day so if you ever catch me talking a mile a minute or extra jittery you can blame the baseline caffeination that fuels me throughout the day.