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Loyola Enterprises’ statewide network helps improve mapping accuracy
by Heather B. Hayes
for Virginia Business
April 2007
Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites can pinpoint an exact location — give or take about 10 feet. Anyone needing a more precise measurement typically has had to buy and set up an expensive reference station — a high-tech, round antenna mounted to a fixed location — to calculate a correction for the error. That situation has created a market opportunity for Benito Loyola, president of Loyola Enterprises in Virginia Beach.
Surveyors and other businesses that require mapping accuracy to the centimeter (0.39 inches) now can pay a subscription fee to access Loyola Enterprises’ RTK-Net, a statewide network of fixed GPS reference stations. Customers only need a GPS rover (which calculates its position using the GPS satellite system) and a cellular modem. Subscription fees start at $400 per month and increase from there.
Loyola, a former Navy pilot and an engineer, started Loyola Enterprises with a friend, Kent Stevens (now the company’s vice president), in 1991 to provide information technology engineering services to the federal government. The company’s customers include the Joint Forces Command and the Army Logistics College at Fort Lee and the Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base.
The company, certified by the federal government as a minority- and veteran-owned business, has 54 employees in three offices. In 2006, its sales exceeded $8 million.
RTK-Net has more than 100 subscribers, including Wetland Studies and Solutions Inc. The Gainesville-based consulting firm assists developers with environmental issues in getting permits and offers solutions for water quality problems. Richard P. Hudson, the firm’s chief of surveys, says it uses the RTK-Net service every day. “I don’t know how we would operate it without it,” he says.
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