Ground coverage and the value of explicit uncertainty 6 min read
The practitioner
Farhad Qezmavi
The image looked convincing enough that I repeated the wrong claim. Its three-centimetre ground sample distance described the spacing represented in the imagery. I allowed that number to become a statement about positional accuracy in a proposal. Arun Jezmavi asked for the evidence against independent checkpoints, and seven of the twenty-four examined results fell outside the practice's predefined criterion. The problem was not that imagery lacked value. It was that I had let a visible level of detail stand in for a different property of the product. Correcting that claim required expenditure and a less comfortable conversation with the commercial team.
₹ 12.2 crore FY 27 expense; development programme separate
Survey processing, software and client-side delivery
31 years
Career beginsJuly 1995; CTO sinceApril 2022
Provisional annual board capacity
25 days
Employer consent, relationships and calendar still to examine
The sharpest image in the room still needed checking
I endorsed a proposal that treated three-centimetre ground sample distance as though it established three-centimetre positional accuracy. The image was detailed, but detail did not settle where a feature sat against the project's reference. Twenty-four independent checkpoints later produced seventeen results within the practice's predefined criterion and seven outside it. I had allowed a convenient specification to carry a claim it had not earned.
I am Farhad Qezmavi, fictional CTO of Qelzami Survey Technologies in Rajkot. We provide surveying technology and geospatial services for infrastructure projects, with 380 employees and₹ 158 crore FY26 revenue. We neither own the assets nor build them. My 61 technology colleagues work through five leads within₹ 12.2 crore FY2026–27 expense and a separately approved₹ 4.5 crore development programme. Qualified survey and engineering owners retain their professional decisions.
My career has crossed from preparing survey data to building software and then to receiving spatial products inside a civil-advisory business. Returning to the supplier's side changed the questions I asked about a completed delivery. A surface can look continuous where the ground was never observed. Heights can share a column while using different references. A dataset can be technically usable while its licence does not permit the proposed client deliverable. Those distinctions belong in the product and the executive account.
The accuracy claim was withdrawn
The twenty-four-checkpoint review did not support the statement I had endorsed. We funded₹ 68 lakh of investigation and additional acquisition work, with release held for the relevant acceptance decision. No corrected positional-accuracy result is asserted in this account.
Ten heights remained outside the common view
Among 900 height records,780 had the required reference account and 120 needed examination. Qualified review reconciled 110 of those 120, leaving 890 supported records and ten held. The₹ 47 lakh exercise did not authorise an arbitrary offset or an engineering design conclusion.
The map retained three hectares of uncertainty
A sixty-hectare image footprint contained 48 hectares of observed ground and twelve obscured. Further authorised work supplied observations for nine additional hectares; three remained inaccessible. We spent₹ 59 lakh and kept those areas unknown rather than draw a measured surface through them.
Current focus
Making the claim attached to a spatial deliverable as deliberate as the processing that produced it. I want clients to know what was observed, what was reconciled, what remains unavailable and what rights support the proposed use.
Conversations I welcome
A possible first external board role after employer consent, relationship review and a realistic calendar assessment. This fictional record includes databank registration in March 2026 and assessment completion in August 2026; neither represents a real credential or automatic appointment eligibility. Twenty-five days are provisional.
Beyond the page
The record behind the perspective.
Formation
Bachelor of Survey TechnologyYelqemi Institute of Survey Technology · 1995
Farhad withdrew the accuracy claim he had supported and put the correction cost in the executive account. He did not ask the commercial team to defend a number the evidence could not support.
Nandita VezqoriChief Executive Officer, Qelzami Survey Technologies; fictional colleagueThe full record ↗
Contact
A possible first external board role after employer consent, relationship review and a realistic calendar assessment. This fictional record includes databank registration in March 2026 and assessment completion in August 2026; neither represents a real credential or automatic appointment eligibility. Twenty-five days are provisional.
