Golf Course Architecture - Issue 65, July 2021

55 of the bunkers in particular. “However, approvals are still a vital part in achieving the best results and, occasionally, minor adjustment to the levels designed are required. For all areas, but particularly for the greens, we are using drone techniques to allow us to make approvals from the UK. Chris Huggett is our Civil Aviation Authority- qualified drone pilot, and he has learnt mapping techniques for surveying courses to provide accurate levels of existing features or newly shaped features. Chris is able to send the project team the flight path routing for the grid pattern that the drone needs to follow to produce the survey information. “The local drone operator sends the information back and this is processed to produce an as-built green plan, which can be compared with the green design to see how closely the levels agree with each other. The contours produced also give us an excellent impression of the all-important green surrounds and approaches. This process is followed for the green base shaping and the finished rootzone preparation to ensure the closest control over the green contours.” For American architect Tom Doak, though, great courses are built in the field, not on paper. Doak has, for the last few years, been building his first course in Ireland, at St. Patricks in Donegal. Covid has made it impossible for him to get there for over a year, but, he says, his business model of having shaper- associates with whom he has worked closely for many years, has got him out of a hole. “I just trusted Eric Iverson and Clyde [Johnson] and Angela [Moser] to get it right,” he says. “Eric and I had walked it together a lot before we started, and we had all the greens shaped and seeded by October 2019, so I was happy with them doing the rest. I could have got back last summer when Eric did, but neither of us thought it was necessary.” However, Doak too is looking at technological solutions to reduce the need for travel – in his case, to allow him a slightly more peaceful lifestyle in future. “On the project to replicate CB Macdonald’s Lido course in Wisconsin, we are using GPS dozers to get the computer game grading plan in the ground, and then ‘restoring’ from there,” he says. “But the sand blows around a lot, so we have been resurveying the areas we reshape, and presumably then the GPS dozer can put it back again as necessary [before or after irrigation installation]. “If that works reasonably well, then my plan is to use the same technology for Te Arai in New Zealand – make one long trip over the winter, shape all of the greens and whatever other bits I want to see while I am there, map them all, and let Brian Slawnik use the GPS to put it back together for grassing. In the past, we couldn’t really do that because the irrigation system takes three to four months to install, and if we got too far ahead of them the shaping would just get blown away – so I would come in to shape three to six holes at a time, and then leave until the irrigation could catch up. Eliminating that step would make my work-life balance much better, with less time wasted going back and forth. And if that works, I will probably do it for most of my overseas jobs in future, so I can travel like MacKenzie – once and done during construction. Then I just need to sort out how to limit my number of trips to get the job and figure out the routing!” GCA Mackenzie & Ebert’s Chris Huggett is a qualified drone pilot, and can send project teams a flight path routing to get the survey information they need Photo: Mackenzie & Ebert