Digital Stationing vs. Physical Stationing
Stakes get mowed. Stakes get knocked down. Stakes don't document anything. Getting lost is margin loss — and the cost of not knowing where you are is never zero.
Digital stationing turns every phone on the jobsite into a live station and offset reader. Open the app, see where you are on the alignment, and document what you did with location and time stamped automatically.
Physical stationing relies on stakes, signs, and paint set by survey crews. It works until the stakes don't survive construction, the field crew can't agree on what a stake is telling them, or the documentation can't be tied back to where the work actually happened.
Two ways to find your location. One builds a record.
Both systems answer the question "where am I?" Only one answers "where was I, and can I prove it?"
Digital Stationing
Every phone on the jobsite reads station, offset, mile marker, lat/long, and LRS in real time. No rover, no waiting on the survey crew.
Photos, flags, and notes are stamped with station, offset, date, and time the moment they're captured. The closeout package writes itself.
Contractors, CEI, DOT, and subs all work from the same project data. Field activity is visible to the whole team in the Data Portal.
Roughly 10 minutes. No hardware to buy. One license covers unlimited projects.
Physical Stationing
Stakes get mowed, run over, pulled, and weathered. Multi-year projects re-stake again and again at $2,000-$8,000 per occurrence.
A stake tells you where you are. It doesn't record what you did. Photos and notes have to be tied back to a station manually, if at all.
Stakes sit at intervals. Between them, crews wheel, tape, or estimate. When the super, the PM, and the contractor disagree on what a stake is saying, the source of truth has failed.
$8,500 average to survey and stake a highway project. Re-staking adds up across the life of the job.
STA: 1786+45 14R
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MM: 461.991
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LL: 30.380179,-95.067204
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LRS: 461.458 2L
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STA: 1786+45 14R = MM: 461.991 = LL: 30.380179,-95.067204 = LRS: 461.458 2L =
The cost of not knowing where you are is never zero.
Stakes feel free until you count what they cost. Here's what teams spend, lose, or save once they switch from physical to digital stationing.
A fraudulent pavement claim defeated using depth-check flags tied to specific stations and time-stamped photos. The dispute ended before it became a fight.
One contractor eliminated survey staking entirely on a single stakeless job. Multiply that across a season and the math gets serious.
Time saved finding station and offset adds up. A density tech saving 4.5 minutes per action across four actions a day puts back an 8-hour day's worth of work every week.
When stakes get mowed, knocked down, or weathered out, the survey crew comes back. On long-duration projects, that bill arrives more than once.
The most expensive thing on your project is the work you can't prove you did.
From the Field
Honest answers to the questions every team asks.
How accurate is digital stationing compared to a survey crew?
Digital stationing in OnStation typically reads within 3-5 feet horizontal accuracy using your phone's GPS. That's accurate enough for QC testing locations, inspection records, photo documentation, and daily field operations. For survey-grade grading work (sub-inch), a traditional survey setup is still the right tool. Most field work doesn't need that precision; it needs to know where it is and prove it.
Do I need any special hardware?
No. OnStation runs on any iOS or Android phone or tablet. No rover, no base station, no external antenna. The phone in your crew's pocket is the equipment.
What happens when there's no cell service on site?
OnStation caches project data for offline use. Crews keep working in dead zones, and everything they capture syncs to the Data Portal once they're back in coverage.
What design files does OnStation work with?
CAD, DGN, DWG, XML, KML, DXF, ALG. The standard formats your design team already produces. If the project isn't engineered, OnStation still works.
How long does setup take?
About 10 minutes. Upload the design files, OnStation processes them, and your team has live station and offset on every device. One license covers unlimited projects.
Can the whole project team work from the same data?
Yes. Contractors, CEI inspectors, DOT staff, and subcontractors all work from the same project. Photos, flags, and notes captured by anyone on the team are visible to the whole team in real time through the Data Portal.
Does digital stationing replace physical stakes entirely?
For grading and earthwork that needs survey-grade precision, no. For QC testing, inspection records, daily reports, photo documentation, locating where work happened, and the closeout package, yes. Most field documentation never needed a stake to begin with. It needed a record.
What does it cost?
Licenses start at $468 per person per year for live station, offset, and design layer viewing. Capture and Data tiers add documentation, flagging, and export capabilities. One license covers unlimited projects. See current pricing.
Stationing 101, written by people who do this every day.
If you want to understand what's happening on your plans, in the field, and at closeout, start here.
What Is Stationing in Construction?
Stations, offsets, and why the plus sign is in there. The explanation that should have existed when you started.
Read the guide →How to Find Your Station and Offset Without Survey Equipment
The workarounds every team uses, what they actually cost, and how digital stationing changes the equation.
Read the guide →Want a video walkthrough? Watch the free OnStation stationing training series.
Turn field work into the records that get you paid.
Setup takes about 10 minutes. No hardware to buy. One license covers unlimited projects. See OnStation on your own project files, or start your access period today.