TALLAHASSEE - Jeff Fillion, U.S. Navy Veteran and National Forest in Florida Land Surveyor and Boundary Manager demonstrates his cutting edge surveyor grade GPS system and electronic transit in Tallahassee, Fla. The equipment mounts on a single pole and is connected via Bluetooth. U.S. Forest Service photo by Susan Blake.
“If you’re from a single parent household like me, your parent is not always there to give you direction. Some are busy working all the time just to pay the bills. That’s the reality. The military gives you, direction, opportunity and discipline,” said U.S. Navy Veteran Jeff Fillion of the U.S. Forest Service.
Born in Michigan, Jeff Fillion grew up in a working class family. At the time, he certainly didn’t have any expectation that he would eventually be working for the National Forests in Florida as their Land Surveyor and Boundary Manager.
In high school he went to vocational training to learn collision repair. By his senior year Fillion found himself working in a collision shop 30 hours a week.
“The collision shop just didn’t pan out so well; working a lot but not really going anywhere . . . I didn’t have any direction or mentorship. So that’s what prompted me to join the military,” recalls Fillion.
After completing his initial processing for the U.S. Navy, Fillion served aboard the USS Frederick as a pipefitter, maintaining and repairing mechanical piping systems.
Fillion recalls as a 22 year old second class petty officer, supervising as many as 80 people during naval operations as conditions warranted.
“In the civilian world you just don’t get that kind of opportunity early in your career,” said Fillion. “They think you’re just a young kid. The military gives you a lot of responsibility very quickly and people respect that.”
While Fillion traveled all over the world and enjoyed his adventures with the Navy, eventually he decided it was time to settle down and chart a new course for his life.
With the GI Bill in hand, Fillion decided to go back to school entering junior college and then transferring to the University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla.
Eventually, Fillion ended up majoring in Geomatics, a discipline that incorporates traditional techniques of land surveying along with many other disciplines of spatial data management.
After graduating from the College of Engineering at the University of Florida in 2000, Fillion landed a surveying job in the private sector. It looked like his career was on track until the housing bubble burst. After almost 13 years surveying Fillion found himself without a job in 2008.
“Things were going good and then everything just crashed and burned,” recalls Fillion.
It was only one year later in 2009 that Fillion landed his position with the U.S. Forest Service as Land Surveyor and Boundary Manager. Since then he has tried to be at the top of his game in every aspect of his field.
Today, Fillion stands on the cutting edge of surveying technology with his surveyor grade GPS system acquired by the National Forests in Florida and the benefits are enormous. The surveyor grade equipment includes unit correcting GPS data from cell towers and a dedicated web data service for real-time accuracy.
“When it comes to monumentation and boundaries, feet are not acceptable. You have to be within a few 100ths of a foot,” said Fillion.
The icing on the cake is Fillion’s GIS pole. A GPS receiver can be mounted on the GIS pole, connected via Bluetooth, eliminating the need to carry around individual components such as a Total Station used for measuring angles and distances, tripod legs, prism pole, and bipod.
“You got your boots, safety helmet, snake chaps and machete walking through the swamp. You can only carry so much safely,” said Fillion.
Often property monuments or boundary line markers cannot be located in thick vegetation with canopies of overgrowth blocking GPS signals. With his GIS pole, Fillion can stand in a clearing, target objects in severe overgrowth, measure angle and distance and pinpoint a coordinate without even getting his shoes dirty.
In addition, the surveyor grade GPS and GIS pole eliminate traditional surveying techniques such as prolonged repetitive steps that require traversing or cutting through heavy woodland areas measuring angles and distances to establish landlines.
“Traversing a mile in the woods could literally take you days to pinpoint coordinates. With GPS I just collect the data points and I’m done in couple of hours,” according to Fillion.
Establishing and maintaining the National Forests in Florida boundaries is a daunting task. The National Forests in Florida has about 1,200 miles of landlines to date with further growth in the future. Landlines can be obscured by vegetation and over time paint can degrade until the original markings are lost and the area must be surveyed again.
“Once a landline is gone, it’s very expensive to have it resurveyed,” according to Fillion. “If you had to contract surveying landlines it could cost up to $10,000 a mile to have that boundary survey put in place. Two miles and you’ve paid for this equipment.”
“This new equipment is accurate and efficient, and the long-term cost-saving benefits for the taxpayer and Forest Service are huge,” said Fillion.
Fillion also serves as the Veteran’s Special Emphasis Program Manager, organizing the Forest Service participation in the 2011 Veterans Day Parade here in Tallahassee, Fla.
30. Nov, 2011 
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