McKim & Creed Wins Major Award and Purchases Optech’s State-of-the-Art Lynx™ Mobile Mapper Technology

Toronto, Canada, November 25, 2009

Toronto, Canada – November 25, 2009 - Optech Incorporated, the leading provider of advanced lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) instruments, would like to congratulate our newest customer, McKim & Creed, on winning the top honor for engineering excellence by the American Council of Engineering Companies of North Carolina.

McKim & Creed, an engineering, surveying and planning firm, was presented the “2010 Henry A. Stikes Grand Conceptor Award” for its use of cutting-edge mobile scanning technology along five sections of roadway and three sections of railway in “Mobile Scanning Projects” throughout North Carolina. The top honor was presented to company officials at an awards gala held recently in Cary, NC. It marks the second time in three years that McKim & Creed has won the Grand Conceptor Award.

Brent Gelhar, Optech’s Vice President of Sales and Product Strategy, mentioned “it is a pleasure to be affiliated with engineering and surveying professionals that have been honored and recognized for projects that demonstrate a high degree of achievement, value and ingenuity. Partners such as McKim & Creed are what drive the lidar business.”

Subsequent to the completion of the award-winning projects, McKim & Creed launched its MoDaC™ Mobile Data Collection system, which features the Lynx Mobile Mapper. Using MoDaC Mobile Data Collection, the company has scanned sections of an airport roadway in Tampa, a streetscape area in Ormond Beach, FL., a beach area in Daytona Beach, and has conducted an experimental survey in Atlanta for a Subsurface Utility Engineering project. McKim & Creed has also performed a test scan for GDOT and three pilot scans for FDOT District 1. McKim & Creed has won the Grand Conceptor Award.

Martin Stoughton, PLS, McKim & Creed’s business development manager for mobile scanning, has estimated that “this method of data collection can potentially save 30% on costs when compared to helicopter photogrammetry. Data collection time is drastically reduced proportionally to the size of the project. When the Lynx instrument was purchased, cost control in surveying was a high priority to the company.”

The Lynx Mobile Mapper boasts a revolutionary new lidar sensor head that leverages Optech’s extensive experience in surveying development in addition to iFLEX–the latest in lidar innovation–to collect survey-grade lidar data at over 200,000 measurements per second with a 360º field-of-view, while maintaining a Class 1 eye safety rating.

About Optech Incorporated.
Optech is the world leader in the development, manufacture and support of advanced laser-based ranging & imaging instruments. We offer client-driven lidar solutions in airborne terrestrial mapping, airborne laser bathymetry, laser imaging, mine cavity monitoring and industrial process control, as well as space-qualified sensors for orbital operations and planetary exploration. For more information,visit www.optech.ca

About McKim & Creed
Mike Creed and Herb McKim joined forces in 1978 to provide exceptional engineering consulting services, and the partnership has since grown into one of the top engineering, design and geomatics firms in the country, with offices in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida. eorgia and Florida.
The firm has won numerous awards and accolades, and has been named one of the top architectural/engineering/contracting firms by Public Works magazine, one of the top design firms in the Southeast by Southeast Construction magazine, and one of the top 200 environmental firms in the United States by Engineering News-Record magazine.
For more information, visit www.mckimcreed.com