LSK Sur­vey­ing Ser­vices Guyana Inc oc­cu­pied Booth #48 at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Con­fer­ence and Ex­po held in Guyana last week.

San Fer­nan­do-based L&S Sur­vey­ing, through its joint-ven­ture com­pa­ny, LSK Sur­vey­ing was one of sev­er­al T&T-af­fil­i­at­ed com­pa­nies par­tic­i­pat­ing in this year’s in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence.

From its 10 ft x 10 ft floor plan, LSK Sur­vey­ing show­cased a host of ser­vices of­fered in­clud­ing 3D laser scan­ning, un­der­ground util­i­ty de­tec­tion, di­men­sion con­trol and pipeline sur­vey­ing (sub-sur­face sur­vey­ing), and pho­togram­met­ric map­ping.

On his re­turn, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Sasha Ad­do spoke to Guardian Me­dia about his ex­pe­ri­ence at the con­fer­ence and delved in­to this lo­cal com­pa­ny’s suc­cess­ful ex­pan­sion in­to Guyana.

Q: Who and what is LSK Sur­vey­ing?

A: L&S Sur­vey­ing Ser­vices Ltd, one of the lead­ing and largest sur­vey­ing com­pa­nies in T&T teamed up with a lo­cal Guyanese com­pa­ny, Ko­jac. With its man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ko­mal Ram­nauth, LSK Sur­vey­ing Ser­vices Guyana Inc was formed, about one year ago.

L&S, formed in 2000, of­fers a full range of sur­vey­ing and map­ping ser­vices, us­ing a com­bi­na­tion of es­tab­lished best prac­tices and mod­ern tech­niques. L&S pro­vides its clients with a su­pe­ri­or range of sur­vey­ing so­lu­tions.

Our ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tors in­clude Lenny Hanomans­ingh and Ian Grant.

Based heav­i­ly in the en­er­gy sec­tor, we have worked with many multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies, and our ser­vice in­cludes land de­vel­op­ment, and con­struc­tion for gov­ern­men­tal and pub­lic sec­tors.

We are al­so an ex­port-ori­ent­ed out­fit hav­ing done busi­ness in Bar­ba­dos, Grena­da, Guyana, and the US.

In 2016 we put down roots and es­tab­lished our L&S Guyana of­fice to pro­vide these ad­vanced ser­vices to that coun­try, with in-coun­try man­age­ment by Am­r­ish Ma­habir.

Giv­en the es­tab­lish­ment of the Lo­cal Con­tent Act in 2021 in Guyana, how would you de­scribe the ease of do­ing busi­ness for a T&T com­pa­ny en­ter­ing the mar­ket in Guyana? How was your ex­pe­ri­ence?

Get­ting es­tab­lished in the Guyana mar­ket, in­to any mar­ket is an ex­er­cise in pa­tience, plan­ning, and per­sis­tence.

Our first ven­ture com­prised three team mem­bers, in­clud­ing my­self, in 2014.

Just like how land is about re­la­tion­ships, Guyanese busi­ness cul­ture is about re­la­tion­ships. Every­one knows every­one.

Af­ter three years of ground­work in­clud­ing many trips back and forth, and meet­ing with nu­mer­ous prospec­tive clients, we reg­is­tered a com­pa­ny in 2016 and land­ed our first job a year lat­er.

L&S has been for­tu­nate that we met the right peo­ple to guide us through all the process­es, bank­ing, le­gal mat­ters, and ac­count­ing ser­vices. We teamed up with Guyanese firms that gave di­rec­tion and ad­vice which placed us on the path to suc­cess.

The right peo­ple are the se­cret.

We were the first sur­vey­ing com­pa­ny to be STOW cer­ti­fied and fol­low in­dus­try stan­dards. Hav­ing a his­to­ry with the larg­er en­er­gy en­ti­ties in T&T, was ben­e­fi­cial as it made en­gag­ing with multi­na­tion­als in Guyana smoother.

We al­so have been for­tu­nate in that what we pro­vide does not com­pete with any of the ex­ist­ing busi­ness­es in Guyana.

While we do of­fer tra­di­tion­al sur­vey­ing ser­vices, there are many land sur­vey­ors.

So we made a de­ci­sion not to fo­cus on pri­vate land sur­vey­ing and cadas­tral ser­vices.

What sets you apart from oth­er sur­vey­ing com­pa­nies in Guyana?

This is sim­ple, the ser­vices we bring to the ta­ble.

Our vast ex­pe­ri­ence in di­verse sur­vey­ing ser­vices in­clud­ing pipeline sur­vey­ing. The cross-is­land pipeline from Ga­le­o­ta to Point Fortin, a two-year project, is an ex­am­ple of what the com­pa­ny is ca­pa­ble of do­ing. This we of­fer to a grow­ing and ex­pand­ing en­er­gy sec­tor in Guyana.

At home, we have been the first in many of the ser­vices of­fered. We are unique­ly po­si­tioned to of­fer pho­togram­met­ric map­ping and 3D laser map­ping, both ter­res­tri­al and aer­i­al, bring­ing in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions to the po­si­tion­ing and map­ping in­dus­try.

Our aer­i­al map­ping ser­vices us­es drones or a plane ac­quire aer­i­al im­agery and with these im­ages, we can ex­tract re­li­able ge­o­graph­ic and di­men­sion­al in­for­ma­tion about phys­i­cal ob­jects and their en­vi­ron­ments.

The 3D scan­ning tech­nol­o­gy al­lows for ac­qui­si­tion of topo­graph­i­cal in­for­ma­tion quick­ly and ac­cu­rate­ly, lead­ing to ef­fi­cient project de­sign.

Train­ing is im­por­tant to us.

L&S pro­vid­ed train­ing to the Guyana Land and Sur­veys Com­mis­sion which falls un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Nat­ur­al Re­sources.

In ad­di­tion to in-house train­ing, L&S pro­vides sup­port to the Ge­o­mat­ics De­part­ment, Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of The West In­dies specif­i­cal­ly its en­gi­neer­ing sur­vey­ing course.

The com­pa­ny hires UWI grad­u­ates and our di­rec­tors sit on the in­dus­try li­ai­son com­mit­tee to re­view and en­sure the ge­o­mat­ics en­gi­neer­ing pro­grammes is in align­ment with in­dus­try needs.

In Guyana, our team is 80 per cent Guyanese and they are re­ceiv­ing on-the-job train­ing, as we be­lieve in peo­ple de­vel­op­ment.

Your com­pa­ny sur­vived COVID-19.

What did L&S and LSK do dif­fer­ent­ly?

We took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to plan and train our staff. One thing we com­mit­ted to was not let­ting any­one go.

We re­duced salaries and the team gave up hol­i­days. We did like many and ap­proached the banks.

In Guyana we shut down com­plete­ly. And when that coun­try closed, we hired a plane to bring our peo­ple home.

COVID was our time to re­group.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty, that should ap­ply to a com­pa­ny that works with the land. Giv­en that the en­er­gy sec­tor is a main client, how does LSK bal­ance this?

By pro­vid­ing the best in tech­nol­o­gy and ad­vanced sur­vey­ing ser­vices.

What we of­fer helps guide the de­vel­op­ment process to en­sure a project is built to spec­i­fi­ca­tions with min­i­mal en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact. We of­fer pe­ri­od­ic mon­i­tor­ing and re­port­ing as well.

Our util­i­ties pro­tec­tion ser­vices lo­cate un­der­ground lines, and scan for steel re­bars, and in-walls. Ond our tech­nol­o­gy can pro­vide dif­fer­ent route op­tions be­fore the con­struc­tion of a pipeline based on client cri­te­ria, re­con­nais­sance, and re­search.

Op­tions are field ver­i­fied and pre­sent­ed, out­lin­ing the ben­e­fits and dis­ad­van­tages of each route along with pre­ferred route rec­om­men­da­tions; pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion to­wards more in­formed en­vi­ron­men­tal as­sess­ments. Our aer­i­al Li­DAR (light de­tec­tion and rang­ing), us­es ac­tive lasers to de­ter­mine the pre­cise el­e­va­tion and geospa­tial lo­ca­tion of ter­res­tri­al ob­jects and fea­tures.

It is an ac­cu­rate and ef­fec­tive method for cre­at­ing three-di­men­sion­al topo­graph­i­cal maps and high­ly ac­cu­rate sur­veys of both sur­face ter­rain el­e­ments and man-made struc­tures.

This has a myr­i­ad of ap­pli­ca­tions in­clud­ing oil and gas de­vel­op­ment, for­est man­age­ment, en­gi­neer­ing and con­struc­tion, flood plain man­age­ment, cor­ri­dor and en­vi­ron­men­tal map­ping.

How would you de­scribe this year’s en­er­gy con­fer­ence?

This is our fourth con­fer­ence in Guyana. What was most im­pact­ful this year is the growth of the con­fer­ence and the share size of T&T’s pres­ence at the con­fer­ence.

Com­pared to last year when there was a very small con­tin­gent, this year the many booths, spon­sors and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials there to sup­port and help with Guyana’s de­vel­op­ment was more than en­cour­ag­ing.

It sets a pos­i­tive tone for all busi­ness­es and ser­vices.

What more can stake­hold­ers, cham­bers, govt do to en­cour­age the trade of ser­vices?

Over the last five years there has been an over­all boost in the sup­port giv­en by our state agen­cies to­wards the ex­port of goods and ser­vices.

Ex­porTT and the var­i­ous cham­bers have pro­vid­ed sup­port in the form of re­search, trade mis­sions en­cour­ag­ing busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al growth.

I be­lieve it is up to in­di­vid­ual com­pa­nies to use the ex­ist­ing sup­port and seek the in­for­ma­tion.

The Guyana Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dr Ash­ni Singh shared that over the past three years, the Guyanese econ­o­my has tripled in size, with even more growth in that coun­try’s fu­ture, what ad­vice would you give new busi­ness­es want­i­ng to ex­pand in­to that re­gion?

Do your re­search and ground­work, and make use of our agen­cies and cham­bers.

Make the right con­nec­tions when you get there, team up with Guyanese busi­ness­es and peo­ple.

Be that com­pa­ny that of­fers some­thing dif­fer­ent, a prod­uct or ser­vice that does not com­pete but rather en­hances the Guyanese econ­o­my.

And add val­ue not on­ly to the Guyanese econ­o­my but the peo­ple as well.