It's a flat versus hilly thing. I stake sewer, drainage, curb, all the time with mine. I use it for hardscape topo as well. The only thing I don't use it for is pinning a foundation. I do use it for staking the excavation of the footers just not the pins in the footers.
I agree with Adam here. I've used GPS for years for sewer, drainage, etc. The knock has always been you can only get within "a tenth", but I myself have always seen much better than that,
especially with this Javad system.
The last control I set for a construction company on a subdivision site we designed was five iron pins - 4 around the outside edges and one in the center. I took 600 epochs (2 minutes) of data on each point. My next visit to the site the foreman who'd localized to my control (with a Trimble system) specifically told me he'd never tied into control this tight. His residuals were 0.006 h and 0.016 v!! He even joked and asked, "can you guys follow us around and set ALL our control"? Now, obviously this was a bit of an anomaly, no way anything can typically repeat those kinds of numbers, but my "standard" error, in the open, in the vertical with this Javad is about 0.04' - at most. Now, add in any type of obstructions and it will definitely increase to a tenth quite quickly.
As far as horizontal, there's not even a question. I, like Shawn don't even get my total station out anymore. I, for one, would actually reverse the "check". Use the LS to "check" your total station points. The LS is much, much more accurate. It is quite amazing,like Ct said above, of the "doubters" in the survey profession who still truly don't believe in RTK. We actually ran into that very scenario last week. We were out on a job (wide open flatland by the way) and a local competitor's guys came trudging up the road with nothing but a metal detector and shovel, doing the "old time" type of recon even before they got the gun out.
They looked interestingly at our rover and asked what it was. We told them and they said "you mean you guys use GPS on
boundary surveys"?
I honestly had to hold back from busting out laughing. I just replied, "yeah, we use it quite a bit".
So glad I don't ever have to go back to the "old days".
Wouldn't trade our LS's for ANY other equipment out there!!