CompassData: Taking Location Awareness to the Next Level
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CompassData: Taking Location Awareness to the Next Level

W. Brant Howard, Co-Founder & CEO, CompassDataW. Brant Howard, Co-Founder & CEO
From responding quickly to outages; managing equipment repair and maintenance; and mapping gas lines, water pipelines, and electric distribution grids, accurate mapping has never been more important for the utility sector. With the help of professional and accurate GIS data, it is possible to plan more efficient repair and maintenance programs, make better decisions based on the location of assets and, ultimately enabling faster and simpler updates. However, most of the utility companies still rely on inaccurate paper maps, hand-drawn notes or worker recollection on where assets as crucial as water or gas mains, valves or hydrants are located. Bringing in modernization into this process is Centennial, CO based CompassData, that helps utility companies map assets by providing GIS tools and solutions. “We also have extensive experience in underground utility locating and mapping,” states W. Brant Howard, Co-founder and CEO, CompassData. A trailblazer in GIS industry, Howard has worked as a hydro-geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Division where he has supervised well drilling and completion, pump tests and field inventory efforts.

With an industry presence of more than two decades, CompassData primarily is a survey company doing ground control surveys for the remote sensing, aerial and satellite imagery business. The company offers extensive professional experience in GIA and GPS utility surveys, field data acquisition and conversion services, along with best of the breed software application capabilities. The company has GIS tools and solutions to manage utility or pipeline and provide organizations with professional, accurate utility maps. “We have collected ground control for some of the largest commercial internet map provider and make their product better by using the ground control to QA/QC enhancements of their products,” says Howard, the Indiana grad.With the use of CompassData’s new Trimble UAS, the company can quickly image and map utility corridors, pipelines, well pads, and other features of interest to the Oil and Gas sector and provides professional underground pipeline locating services.


We aid clients to make better decisions based on comparison data, and create user-friendly access to information through GIS mapping of data for the field crew’s use


CompassData also offers rapid-response ground control retrieval virtually anywhere in the world at the customers’ desired level of accuracy, and in a timely, cost-effective manner.

CompassData can provide inventory surveys and complete asset mapping that allows organizations to develop more efficient project planning across the property, and logically store locations and attributes of assets in a digital format. The company also aids clients to make better decisions based on comparison data, and create user-friendly access to information through GIS mapping of data for the field crew’s use. Further, the company offers complete global coverage, with more than 36,000 photo-identifiable Ground Control Points available. The control points residing in the CompassData archive have readily viewable metadata indicating the date of collection, the positional quality, and additional supporting data including a control point sketch and photographs of the point taken during collection.

The company has been in the forefront of the Geospatial industry since inception and is one of the sought-after in the geospatial community. CompassData’s ability to collect precise ground control information in remote and difficult to access areas to support required image or mapping requirements sets it ahead in the competition.

With clients like the USDA, USGS, CompassData is ready to disrupt the utility space with its best of the breed GIS technology solutions. Further, CompassData aims to continue to serve its customer and enhance its product offering.