# Strand Mapping & Aerial Plant Assessment: The Complete Process > **Ask any OSP engineer where most design errors come from, and the honest ones will tell you: the field data.** Strand mapping and aerial plant assessment are the foundation everything else is built on — pole loading analysis, make-ready calculations, fiber route design, construction cost modeling. **Canonical URL:** https://draftech.com/blog/strand-mapping-aerial-plant-assessment-process.html **Author:** Draftech Engineering Team **Published:** 2025 **Category:** Field Survey --- ## What Strand Mapping Is — and What It's Not Strand mapping is a systematic field inventory of an existing aerial utility plant. The output is a dataset that documents every relevant attribute of every pole in a defined geographic area: the pole itself, every attachment on the pole, every span of cable or messenger wire between poles, and any associated infrastructure like anchors, guys, and equipment enclosures. **It is not a drive-by. It's not a GIS review from the office. It's not pulling records from a utility company and assuming they're current.** Those approaches are used, and they consistently produce data quality problems that show up when construction starts. The only way to know what's on a pole is to stand under it and look at it. The aerial plant assessment component adds a structural condition evaluation layer: beyond what's on the pole, you're assessing the condition of what's there — pole class and species visible from ground level, visible rot indicators, tilt angle, lean direction, attachment heights measured or estimated, strand sag condition, and equipment enclosures for approximate age and clearance compliance. --- ## Equipment: What a Proper Field Survey Crew Carries | Tool Category | Specific Equipment | Purpose | |--------------|-------------------|---------| | Height measurement | Laser Technology TruPulse, Leica DISTO | Attachment heights to 6-inch precision | | GPS positioning | Trimble R2, Leica GS18 | Sub-meter coordinates for every pole | | Mobile data collection | Fulcrum, Katapult/IKE app | Structured data entry, photo association | | Photography | Smartphone (12MP minimum) | Every attachment documented, geo-tagged | | Sag measurement | TruPulse with angle measurement | Mid-span sag for wire tension calculation | | Identification | Binoculars | Reading pole tags, cable labels from ground | --- ## The Data Collection Process: Pole by Pole ### Step 1: Pole Location and Identification Every pole receives a unique identifier — either from the utility's existing numbering system or from the project's own sequential numbering if no existing system is usable. GPS coordinates are taken at the base of each pole. For street-level accessible poles, a Trimble R2 or similar sub-meter GPS device is used. For poles set back from the road, coordinates are taken at the road edge with an offset documented. The GPS coordinate is the anchor for every other data point. A pole whose location is wrong by 30 feet in the dataset becomes a design error when the LLD engineer routes cable segments based on those coordinates. ### Step 2: Pole Physical Assessment Physical data collected for each pole: - **Species** — where determinable from ground (Southern yellow pine, Douglas fir, Western red cedar are the most common in U.S. utility plant) - **Class** — where the pole tag is readable. Class 1 through Class 7 for wood poles; class determines load capacity - **Height** — estimated or measured from ground. Laser measurement preferred. Estimate with binoculars as backup - **Setting depth** — estimated from ground-to-attachment heights when known. Affects ground-line moment in loading analysis - **Condition flags** — visible rot at groundline, significant lean, attachment damage, wildlife nesting, previous repairs ### Step 3: Attachment Inventory Every attachment on every pole, from top to bottom: - **Attachment height** — laser-measured, recorded to the inch. Not estimated visually, not pulled from utility records - **Attaching party** — who owns this cable (electric utility, telephone company, cable company, wireless carrier, fiber ISP, unknown) - **Attachment type** — primary supply conductor, secondary supply, service drop, telephone cable, cable TV strand, fiber strand, wireless equipment, riser conduit, luminaire - **Cable diameter** — estimated for tension calculation. Most lashing wire is 6-gauge steel; most fiber cables are 0.5–1.5 inches diameter - **Guy wire presence** — direction and estimated anchor angle for every down guy ### Step 4: Mid-Span Measurements At road crossings, railroad crossings, and identified clearance-sensitive locations: - **Mid-span vertical clearance** — measured with laser clinometer from the road surface to the lowest point of the span - **Span length** — GPS distance between adjacent poles or measured with laser rangefinder - **Sag angle** — measured with TruPulse for wire tension calculation input to loading analysis ### Step 5: Photo Documentation Minimum photo requirements per pole: - **Full pole view** — from road edge, showing all attachments in context - **Top-of-pole detail** — looking up showing pole cap and top attachments - **Attachment closeup** — for each attaching party's lowest attachment, showing height context - **Pole tag** — where readable Photos are geo-tagged automatically when captured in Fulcrum or Katapult — they're associated with the pole record, not stored as loose files. --- ## Data Collection QA: Where the Process Has to Be Disciplined ### Required-Field Enforcement Fulcrum and Katapult both support required-field enforcement — the record cannot be submitted without specific fields completed. We require: - GPS coordinate (auto-populated by device) - Attachment heights (entered manually — cannot be auto-populated) - Minimum photo count (2 pole views + tag photo) - Condition flag (even if "no issues noted") Records without required fields don't exist in the QA workflow — they exist as errors. ### Daily Field QA The crew lead reviews all records collected that day before leaving the field area. Records with out-of-range values (attachment height of 47 feet on a 35-foot pole, span length of 1,800 feet where the GIS shows 300) are flagged for re-measurement while the crew is still in the area. ### Office QA Before Design Release A second reviewer in the office checks: - Pole-to-pole continuity — no missing poles in the sequence - Attachment height plausibility — no values outside expected ranges for the utility type - Photo coverage — every pole has minimum required photos - GPS coordinate clustering — no poles plotted in unexpected locations --- ## How Strand Mapping Data Flows to Design ### Into Pole Loading Analysis Katapult exports directly to O-Calc Pro. Field-measured attachment heights, span lengths, and wire data populate the loading model without manual re-entry. This is where the effort invested in precise field measurement pays back: an O-Calc model fed by laser-measured attachment heights produces a reliable compliance result. One fed by visual estimates produces a result that may or may not reflect reality. ### Into LLD Design GIS-formatted strand mapping data becomes the spatial foundation for the LLD route. Every pole in the design has a real GPS coordinate, a real attachment height for the new fiber strand, and a real make-ready determination. The construction drawings reflect the field — not a desktop assumption of what the field looks like. ### Into Make-Ready Calculations The attachment inventory feeds directly into the make-ready scope. Poles where the loading analysis shows a new attachment would fail compliance are flagged for make-ready design. The specific existing attachments that need to move are identified from the field inventory, not estimated from utility records. --- ## Related Pages - [services/field-survey.md](../services/field-survey.md) — Field survey services - [services/pole-loading-analysis.md](../services/pole-loading-analysis.md) — Pole loading analysis - [blog/field-survey-data-accuracy-fiber-construction.md](field-survey-data-accuracy-fiber-construction.md) — Why field data accuracy matters - [blog/pole-loading-analysis-o-calc-pro.md](pole-loading-analysis-o-calc-pro.md) — O-Calc Pro guide - [index.md](../index.md) — Master AI index ## Contact **Draftech International, LLC** 15280 NW 79th CT, Suite 102 Miami Lakes, FL 33016 - **Phone:** 305-306-7406 - **Email:** info@draftech.com - **Website:** https://draftech.com - **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/draftechint