he ability to assess, adapt, and overcome the many challenges surveying in Alaska can present—and do so safely—are just a few of the qualities in which F. Robert Bell & Associates employees and staff take pride.

The company’s unparalleled safety record attests to that: zero lost time accidents this millennium and no recordable injuries for more than seventeen years.

Not only has technology changed in the forty-plus years since Bob Bell founded the company in 1974—so has the terminology.

What started out as a purely land-survey driven company quickly evolved into offering civil engineering services as well, says Frank Bell, chief executive officer and son of the company’s founder.

The employee-owned company has since built on that base to offer land and construction survey, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, 3D laser scanning, ground penetrating radar, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) photogrammetry and inspection, and geotechnical services.

“Without question, the two most significant changes in technology in our history have been the advancement of Global Positioning System (GPS) survey systems and, more recently, the application of UAVs or drones,” Frank Bell says.

“GPS systems allow one man to do what used to take three, in significantly less time and at a much lower cost,” he adds. “Similarly, UAVs can be extremely cost-effective, compared to conventional surveys in certain applications, and also provide a much safer way to complete certain work, such as a bridge, powerline, or flare tip inspections. Plus, they are just cool.”

Ground Penetrating Radar and 3D laser scanning also get an honorable mention, as they have proven to be extremely useful technology for F. Robert Bell & Associates by providing clients with living data sets that can be constantly updated and modified—something that could not be fathomed twenty years ago.

“We are primarily known as a firm that specializes in remote and/or oilfield surveying, particularly our forty-plus years stint and counting as contract surveyors in Prudhoe Bay and Point Thomson,” says Bell, who began working for the family firm in his early college years. “But we have increased our presence in residential and commercial surveying in the Anchorage, Matanuska-Susitna Borough area, and countless villages as well.”

With offices in Anchorage and Prudhoe Bay, F. Robert Bell & Associates also works in every corner of the state and occasionally internationally, providing dimensional control for module fabrication oilfield projects in Russia, South Korea, and Canada.

F. Robert Bell & Associates averages between twenty-five and fifty employees. However, staffing tends to ebb and flow with oil exploration and production, from as few as to as many as 200 employees.

“We’ve had numerous challenging projects over the years that have included everything from 232-foot-deep piling in the Arctic Ocean to high mountain trek surveys in the Brooks Range,” Bell says.

One challenge overcome by new technology in early 2000 involved utilizing 3D scanning and survey services to provide quality assurance on oilfield facility modules constructed in Ulsan, South Korea to ensure they would fit when they were shipped and installed on Sakhalin Island in Russia, Bell says.

Crews returned to Ulsan in 2013 to 2015 to perform similar work for eight modules produced and shipped to Exxon’s Point Thomson Unit on the Arctic coast of Alaska.

But for this project, Bell crews were also contracted at the Alaska construction site, which allowed for a smoother process in tying as-built data from the module shipyard in Korea to the pile and module setting crews in Alaska.

“Having held the survey and 3D-scanning contract for British Petroleum’s entire Prudhoe Bay field [now operated by Hilcorp Alaska, LLC] for more than thirty-five years, we have decades of experience navigating the challenges and intricacies of what it takes for large scale oil and gas modules to fit correctly when arriving after a long journey,” Bell says.

Not all of F. Robert Bell & Associates’ work is that complicated.

Signature Land Services in Anchorage turns to the company for a wide variety of projects because it’s a one-stop-shop for everything from engineering to permitting and survey, according to the company’s vice president, Tim Schrage.

F. Robert Bell & Associates crews worked with Signature on Olive Lane snow disposal site improvements; excavation, paving, and concrete drainage improvements at the Bering Straits Native Corporation’s Potter Warehouse; Wasilla’s Wells Fargo Bank; and Mellen Investments’ parking lot rehabilitation.

“These are all typically renovation projects where the original installation has failed and a new design is needed to meet today’s code requirements,” Schrage says. “It’s great to work with an established employee-owned firm that does everything from engineering to construction staking. They always make time for our projects and deliver on time and within budget.”

F. Robert Bell & Associates has teamed up with Matanuska Electric Association, Inc., or MEA, to pioneer a new way to obtain right-of-way access from state agencies for lake cable installations.

“Lake cable installation is a critical component in remote areas where on-land access can be cost prohibitive to an MEA member,” says Manny Lopez, MEA land services manager. “The new method of surveying sections of the lake and dedicating them for MEA facilities has helped streamline the process and provided both agencies and MEA with accurate as-built locations.”

“Bell’s talented survey team has a keen sense of recognizing the challenges for unusual project needs and to develop strategies to match the scope,” Lopez says. “Bell & Associates is adaptive and goes the extra distance.”

Bell says being a member of AGC is beneficial in numerous ways, particularly utilizing the online plans room.

“We’ve been an AGC member for many years. In fact it’s been so long nobody here seems to remember when we joined,” Bell says.