Originally posted in Professional Services Management Journal (PSMJ) - April 2025, Volume 52, Issue 04

Kid On A Mission

When Jesse Gutierrez’s fourth-grade son Luke came home with his California mission project—an annual rite of passage for many schoolkids in the state—he did what a lot of students do: he asked his dad for help. But this wasn’t a diorama moment. Luke’s assigned mission, Soledad in Monterey County, had been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times, and there were no architectural plans available online.

So Luke asked the logical question – for a kid growing up around 3D scanners and survey gear, anyway: “Dad, why can’t we just scan it?”

Jesse is head of the 3D scanning department at Original Survey Solutions, a Modesto-based land surveying and civil engineering firm. Luke often visits the office after school and has even learned to operate scanning equipment. When Jesse brought the idea to OSS President and Founder William Paul, there was no hesitation.

“I thought it was brilliant,” said Paul, who started OSS in November 2023 and has already built it to a staff of 30 working throughout the Western states. “We put the firm’s resources behind it, gave Jesse the day to do it on the clock, and volunteered our equipment. Luke had to be part of it—there’s no way he was sitting this one out.”

The team connected with the California Missions Foundation (CMF) and quickly arranged access to Mission Soledad. Luke even got a private tour. In one day, Jesse and Luke captured interior and exterior scans, producing a complete 3D point cloud model of the site. Luke used this data to build a scale model of the mission—accurate down to the doorframes.

The story gained momentum. Luke’s teacher said that his firsthand exposure to the mission gave him the knowledge and confidence to deliver a presentation well beyond that of a typical 4th grade student. The Foundation then invited Jesse, Will, and Luke to present their work at its annual conference in February, where Luke received a standing ovation. “Luke’s model is to scale. I don’t know about the other kids in the class,” quipped Paul.

The presentation included flythroughs and other video animation, all of which was done without drone technology.

But beyond the wow factor of the technology and the heartwarming father-son angle, this story is a masterclass in culture-building. By empowering an employee to support his child’s learning in a meaningful, creative way, Paul deepened his team’s connection to the firm’s work—and showed how a small, startup company can make an impact on the world around it.

The story also has marketing and business development benefits, but this never entered into the decision. It was a simple reflex to do something positive.

“I’m just trying to build the kind of firm I’d want to work at,” says Paul. “I work hard to make moments like these for the people who work here, and I believe this is one of the reasons that our retention rate is so high. We just keep adding great people and I want to add more.”

Original Survey Solutions is exploring ways to make the Mission Soledad scan publicly accessible through an interactive digital platform. It may have started as a fourth-grade school project, but it has quickly become something more: a case study in community engagement, employee empowerment, and the surprising ways small firms can do big things.

If you’d like to check out their presentation to the CMF, visit https://youtube.com/live/uay4sCkhoAo (beginning at around the 36-minute mark).