Dr Bruce Harvey

Senior Lecturer in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Dr Bruce Harvey is a senior lecturer in Surveying in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Dr Harvey is highly regarded both in Australia and internationally as the author of two surveying textbooks widely adopted and accessible as teaching aids for surveying courses in universities around the world. Dr Harvey’s academic teaching career has coincided with stints as a practising surveyor enabling him to bring the real-life experience of the profession into the classroom with a unique depth and rigour.

Dr Harvey is a teacher who cares deeply about enriching his students’ learning experience and encouraging their ambition so that they can excel in a profession pivotal to all stages of planning and construction from creating legal land boundaries and sub-divisions to measuring deformation and potential risk in the post construction stage. His hands-on teaching approach extends to a custom-built software package, FIXIT that guides students through course content. The fact that Dr Harvey produced and coded the program himself allows for continual optimisation of the system taking into account student feedback, current trends and the latest technologies.

Acknowledging education as an ongoing process for both student and teacher, his ethos is best summed up in the following words, “Involve students. Involve yourself. Consider aims and objectives. Reflect. Evaluate. Respect each other. Be efficient. Know the technology and consider innovations.” Dr Harvey has been recognised for his teaching excellence having been selected in the first cohort of UNSW’s Education Focussed academics.

Education

Grad. Diploma in Higher Education, UNSW, 1993
PhD (Geodesy), UNSW, 1985
Former Registered Surveyor, NSW Board of Surveyors (1981)
BSurv (Hons.1) and University Medal, UNSW, 1980

Teaching

Dr Harvey has developed and taught more than 30 courses.  The main courses cover the following topics:

• Surveying Computations and CAD
• Data Analysis by Least Squares
• Surveying Applications and Design
• Field Projects (includes survey camps)
• Deformation Monitoring Surveys

Research Interests

Dr Harvey’s expertise and research interests include:

• Least Square analysis of surveying measurements
• Alternative surveying measurement analysis methods (L1 norm and grid searching)
• Surveying education
• 3D laser scanning
• High accuracy surveying
• Surveying calculations and computing

Grants

B. Harvey; Computer Based Learning for B. Surveying students, CAUT National Teaching Development Project Grant, Committee for the Advancement of University Teaching, 1993.

Awards

• Teaching Staff Excellence Award, Faculty of Engineering UNSW, 2010
• Noel Svensson Faculty of Engineering Award for Teaching Excellence, UNSW, 1998
• NASA Group Achievement Award - Southern Hemisphere VLBI, 1992

Professional Affiliations/Organisations

• Member, Institution of Surveyors NSW
• Member, Australasian Association for Engineering Education
• Member, Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute Australia