The Rogers Pass double tracking project and the associated Mount Macdonald Tunnel was the largest engineering project undertaken in North America at the time.  The engineering and survey division at CP Rail had a major problem with construction surveys.

Survey crews had captured the original ground cross sections.  The double tracking project had been designed and construction was underway.  Basically, CP Rail was cutting a new rail line through the Canadian Rockies lowering the rails by 91 meters.

This is no simple task when you consider the topography of the area as shown in the picture to the right.  Rod men were often scaling cliffs or hanging off cliffs to get the required survey data.

After contractor blasting, CP Rail survey staff would generate new cross-sections to calculate pay quantities… but if there was a discrepancy in the cross-sections, the difference in volume essentially went to the contractor.

Huge dollars were involved and a more efficient way of identifying and rectifying discrepancies was required.

At the time, all survey data was captured in field books. Survey crews not only captured the survey data but then manually reduced the notes and manually drafted cross sections – a time consuming process that could lead to one or more weeks passing between the actual survey and the production of the cross-sections.

The problem was further compounded by the physical effort it took to get to the construction site and set up for a new survey in rugged mountainous territory.

The first total station survey equipment was being introduced at the time. Geodimeter was an early industry leader. “The Geodimeter 140 (1981) introduced automatic electronic angle measuring, or what is known today as a total station. It also brought dual-axis compensation with automatic collimation and tilt-axis error correction. In 1981, Geodimeter offered the first Tracklight, a green-white-red light system that informed the rod operator whether he or she was on line, left of line or right of line.”

I had met with the local sales rep for Geodimeter and we believed hat the combination of the Geodimeter total station, AutoCAD, a personal computer, a plotter and some customized software to automate cross-section generation would improve survey efficiency and minimize turnaround time for cross section generation.

We jointly made a presentation to CP Rail resulting in AESL receiving a contract to perform the system integration. I was the project manager… and so the journey began.

In 1983/84 Western Canada was in the midst of the crisis created by the Canadian National Energy Program (NEP). The bottom line was that dozens of oil development projects were cancelled – the boom days were over.

AESL was only one of many engineering firms in Alberta that was in crisis. Stan Lawrence, AESL’s CFO took control to save the company. The Intergraph system was sold; the computer division was collapsed to the group maintaining the financial system; I had to lay off most of my staff or find them positions in other offices. Similar actions were taken in every department as the company moved into survival mode.

Ron Salmon was the manager of the computer services division at AESL. Ron’s position was being eliminated and I was about to lose my development team. I recommended that Ron consider setting up his own business and becoming an AutoCAD dealer.

Stan Lawrence agreed that AESL would sub-contract the development work for the CP Rail project to Ron.

With those decisions made, Rosal Systems became the first AutoCAD dealer in Alberta and one of the first in Canada.