As far as business challenges go, it’s not a bad problem to have—too many laser scanning projects, and not enough scanners. “We do a lot of work across the country,” says Joseph Romano, PLS, vice president of surveying and mapping for Langan Engineering & Environmental Services. “Moving the scanners around from location to location is a time-consuming endeavor, and wasting three days shipping it back and forth creates an issue.”

The Elmwood Park, N.J.-based firm already owns four laser scanners. In 2006, the surveying group purchased one of the early Leica Geosystems ScanStation units, and they’ve been steadily building their collection as new scanners have been introduced, adding a Leica ScanStation 2, then a Leica HDS6000 and finally a Leica ScanStation C10. At any given time, all four of the scanners are in operation on various projects, from large infrastructure surveys to building information modeling (BIM) of a historic structure; sometimes Langan has even had to rent scanners to meet project deadlines.