PLSO Oregon Surveyor July/August 2020

8 The Oregon Surveyor  | Vol. 43, No. 4 Member Spotlight SPOTLIGHT Member By Vanessa Salvia Earl Ming The Man Behind Dozens of Iconic Northwest Buildings Fewpeople can say that they have had the impact on skylines across the Northwest that Earl Ming can. His vertical surveying work impacted theSpaceNeedle, Portland’s Bonneville Power Administration build- ing, the Oregon Convention Center, and a Goldendale, Washington aluminum plant built by Kaiser Engineers. He’s worked on multiple industrial chip plants, OHSU Do- ernbecher Children’s Hospital, Eugene’s Hayward Field, Portland’s 30-story PacWest Center, 20-plus- story buildings on Port- land’s waterfront andmany other 20-plus story buildings such as OneMain Financial, 1000 Broadway, Park Place condos, plus dozens more. As a vertical surveyor, Earl, now 71, would take the boundaries from the owners’ land surveyor, and stake the grids, layout foot- ings, columns, pile, windows, and siding on complex angular buildings. He also mon- itored the settlement of structures and surrounding buildings. Earl and his team played a huge part in laying out extreme- ly curved iron, walls, siding, and finishes on jobs such as Museum of Pop Culture (previously known as the EMP, Experience Music Project) in Seattle. Multiple complex, curved, and angular buildings havemade it imperative to work alongside other trades assisting in their layout. Ming has assist- ed carpenters, iron workers, electricians, plumbers, window glazers, pile bucks, etc. Earl has worked on buildings all over the country and even in Israel. He’s licensed in Oregon, California, and Arizona. Over 50 years of surveying, Earl has been around to seemany advancements in technology. At first, calibrated chains using temperature correction weremore accurate than the la- sers that shot only within .03 hundredths of a foot. But now the lasers outperform, and chains are a thing of the past. Ming employees have been driven to keep up with the latest technology and training. “At first, lasers couldmeasure within three eighths of an inch,” he says. “And then they got it down to the quarter inch, then an eight, and now they’re pretty much with- in a sixteenth of an inch. Ming Surveyors used survey instruments, but we took it to the next degree of accuracy.” The iconic Space Needle, which was built in 1962, underwent a makeover in 2018, turning the floor to glass and updating siding glass. TheMing Surveyors teamper- formed the scanning andmodeling, which monitored the construction as the build- ing moved around. “As they would take supports out and put new framework in, the two cores of the building wouldmove independently of each other,” Earl says. “So, we had to keep track of that while they were building it and make sure that the windows and the glass floor would still fit. The Bonneville building, which he worked on in 1984, was “very difficult,” with curves and granite on the facade. “I would do the math down to the 1/16 of an inch and then lay it out,” he says. “We did that with transits and tape measures and our cali- brated charts. We had to get it within the tight required tolerances. Back in those days, vertical surveyors were called tech engineers because theywould take the sur- veyor’s control and do layouts. “It was too difficult for the subcontractors to do, like on the skin of the building, when complex angles and curves were involved,” he says. The 1989 convention center was to be constructed with no cut bricks, per Zim- mer Gunsul Frasca architects. Since the building was on a curve, adjustments of the brick and grout had to be calculated down to the thousandth of a foot, pain- stakingly done before computers. The first portion of the convention center was per- formed with theodolites, calibrated tapes, and calculators. New additions were com- pleted using total stations and computers. Earl and his wife, Karen, now married 51 years, grewupenduring theroughwinters in NorthDakota. Out of high school, he didn’t know what to do for a career. He attend- ed college for surveying in North Dakota through theManpower Development and Training Act of 1962, which endeavored to provide skills for unemployed workers. Af- ter working inMinnesota for sixmonths as a surveyor in 1969, Earl and Karenmoved to Oregon, where Karen’s parents settled after selling their farm. Earl went to work in downtown Portland for one of the old- est survey firms, Booth & Wright. “I just Earl Ming and his wife, Karen, have been married 51 years. Karen worked in the surveying field and did the books for Earl’s firms. Photo courtesy of Earl Ming continues on page 10 T