Corporate Status
Grand Terre GIS, Inc., is an S-Corporation, incorporated in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and qualifies as a small and emerging business.

Mission Statement
Grand Terre GIS was founded by Jeffrey M. Laird in November of 2003 and dedicated to providing comprehensive GIS consulting, planning, and hands-on project implementation for clients regardless of the size of their project or their budget. Grand Terre GIS offers very low rates and provides a level of service that cannot be matched by larger firms. Once Mr. Laird takes on a GIS project, he will personally work with the client in a one-on-one relationship with an emphasis on knowledge transfer so that the client does not need to remain dependent on the consultant after the project meets its goals.

Project Approach
Some clients already have mature GIS projects and may require only an application to be coded, data to be reformatted or migrated into an ESRI geodatabase. Grand Terre GIS has complete GIS resources at its office in Frankfort, Kentucky, and is able to perform many client tasks, including outsourced project support and contract custom programming from this location. In these cases hourly rates are lowest and project costs are minimal due to the absence of expenses.

Other clients may require comprehensive GIS planning and implementation services. For these types of projects it is often best to travel to the project site, meet with the GIS team, and develop a clear understanding of the project that can only come from developing a personal as well as a business relationship with the clients. At that time a determination can be made as to where the work will be performed, either at the Frankfort office, the client’s site, or both. In any case, Grand Terre hourly rates remain low and expenses are limited to per diem, transportation, and lodging. Travel hours are never billed, and neither is CPU time.

Qualifications and Personal Information
Jeffrey M. Laird is certified by the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing as a Mapping Scientist GIS/LIS, and also by the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association's GIS Certification Institute as a GIS Professional (GISP). He is a United States citizen with a valid passport. He has a B.A. in Geography and holds a university Certificate of Cartography both from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He is a PADI certified scuba diver, a USPA certified sky diver, and has participated in expeditions to the magnetic North Pole and the Mojave/Sonora deserts. He also holds a decided 1st degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do from the ITA. He has recently held a Secret level security clearance which can be reissued if necessary. He lives with his wife, Leslie, in Frankfort, Kentucky.

A&E Teaming Services
Many times photogrammetric mapping, engineering, or survey firms, particularly small businesses, find themselves confronted with an RFP that requires a GIS component or deliverable that they may not have the resources or capacity to fulfill. Grand Terre GIS can provide these companies the following services that will help them compete successfully:

• Become a project team member as a GIS subcontractor
• Provide certified GIS credentials and experience for the team
• Provide a full range of GIS consulting, planning, and implementation services
• Assistance with writing the GIS portions of the proposal
• Attend the presentation if required, and do whatever is necessary to help win the work
• Assist with project planning where a GIS deliverable is required so that a minimum of data rework and reformatting is necessary
• Hold down costs and provide the prime with confidence that the GIS deliverable will meet or exceed the specifications

Availability for Field Work
On a project by project basis, Mr. Laird is available to work on-site including remote sites under field conditions, domestic or foreign. Examples of GIS projects under field conditions could include ordnance disposal sites, wildlife and plant habitat inventories, remote village census, archaeological digs, oceanographic or underwater survey, hazardous waste or radiological site remediation, pipeline construction, landfills and waste disposal, and ecologic or geologic GIS surveys.