Lord Technical 10 Years iCON

Since 1986, Lord Technical Ltd has been the North East’s leading supplier of all types of surveying equipment for sale and hire to customers all over the UK and beyond.

Chris Potts, Sales, Training and Technical Support at Lord Technical, spoke about his history in the Construction industry and his experiences with the iCON range from Leica Geosystems.

What is your background in the construction industry?

“My experience in the construction industry started as a trainee technician in the workshops at Lord Technical eventually becoming workshop manager. I then moved into a sales role as well as carrying out training and looking after technical support for our customers. I have also, in my spare time, worked alongside land surveyors and carried out a number of surveying and setting out jobs myself.”

First experience of iCON

“We were first introduced to iCON by our Leica account manager who visited us with the iCR50 total station and CC60 controller. He demonstrated the kit and left one with us so we could familiarise ourselves with the product and its operation. We were initially very interested in the iCON concept and thought it would open up some new sales and hire opportunities. At this point we agreed to purchase a demo unit and present it to some of our civil engineering and setting out customers.”

What was your opinion of iCON when it was launched 10 years ago

“Looking back to some of the earlier demonstrations, I remember the general concept was well received but there were some significant limitations which put potential users off. I remember one customer who generally liked the concept but was not prepared to take a demo unit as the design data could only be uploaded to the unit.”

“He had the valid point of “What if I need to input a point or two on site?” We did temporarily address this by creating a blank text document on the desktop that could be edited then upload but this wasn’t an ideal solution.”

Improving the technology

“As the field software was developed and became far less ocked down, we started to present iCON more often which led to some early sales and the introduction of some units to our hire fleet. Following the early software improvements we found many of our earth works and civils customers keen to adopt iCON as there preferred solution with many now saying they wouldn’t use anything else.”

“The ease of use, sketching app, simplicity of the as built function and the ongoing improvements in the layout interface are now opening up opportunities in the agricultural and small builder market sectors that we would not have seen with other systems available. We have even had iCON requested for measured building surveys due to the coding and line-work being so easy to use along with the 360 deg map interface. We have had comments from customers such as “it’s like this system has been designed by engineers” for engineers. I would suggest anyone showing an interest in moving into digital construction should get a one hour demo of iCON on a live job and take it from there.