The Concrete Pole on the Left Side of the Road, Kilometer 14
It's leaning four degrees off vertical. The base is partially exposed — descubierto en la base — which on a concrete pole in mountain terrain means the fill has eroded and the foundation is compromised. There are twelve existing cables in the span ahead, which is already at load capacity. The GPS coordinates are locked. Five photos document the lean from each angle. The landowner contact for the adjacent predio is in the record. The design team in the office, 200 kilometers away, will see all of this before they commit the route to CAD.
That's a replanteo record doing its job.
Existente o Proyectado: The Design Commitment Field
Every pole in the route is either existing infrastructure being assessed for fiber lashing, or a new pole being proposed for installation where current coverage has gaps. The existente o proyectado choice drives the entire downstream workflow. An existente pole needs a structural assessment — height, resistance rating, current cable count, condition — before the design team can determine if it will carry additional FTTH cable without exceeding mechanical load. A proyectado pole needs site approval, landowner contact, vehicle access verification, and civil permitting before it appears on the construction schedule.
Mixing these two types in a single unfiltered list is how design errors happen: a pole marked as existing that's actually proposed gets pulled into the lashing calculation and the contractor shows up to a site with no pole.
Pole Geometry and Load Assessment
Height (altura poste), mechanical resistance (resistencia poste), and material (madera, metal, concreto) are the three fields that determine whether a pole can take additional load. In the Armenia-Ibagué corridor — Andean terrain with elevation changes, wind loading, and seasonal humidity cycling — wood poles rated at lower mechanical resistance classes are frequently at or near load limits after decades of incremental cable additions from successive carriers. A pole rated at 400 daN that's already carrying twelve cables, three retenciones, and an extension arm (brazo extensor) has no margin for a new FTTH bundle without engineering review.
The cable count field (cantidad de cables) is the occupancy metric. Above a threshold — which varies by pole class and regional regulation — additional lashing requires either a structural upgrade or a new pole installation. Documenting this count in the field, at GPS coordinates, with photos, is the difference between a route design that works and one that generates field rejections during construction.
Retenciones, suspensión, raquetas (adelante and atrás), amortiguadores, and brazo extensor are the mechanical hardware inventory for each pole. Retenciones are dead-end clamps at direction changes; suspensiones are mid-span hangers; raquetas are the tensioning hardware for guywires; amortiguadores are vibration dampers on long spans in wind-exposed terrain. A pole at a route bend carrying multiple retenciones from existing operators is structurally committed in ways that raw cable count doesn't capture.
Tension Levels and Grounding: The Electrical Safety Record
Nivel tensión (voltage level on the pole) is a multichoice: 110V, 220V, 13.2kV, 115kV, or N/A. The Colombia power distribution standard includes 13.2 kV medium-voltage distribution on shared-use poles — the same poles that carry BT (low-tension) lines and, after FTTH rollout, fiber. The minimum clearance between a 13.2 kV conductor and a fiber bundle is regulated under RETIE; a pole carrying medium-voltage and fiber on the same structure requires specific hardware and minimum vertical separation that must be documented in the design.
Sistema tierra (grounding system present, boolean) is the field that matters for safety compliance. Poles carrying electrical conductors without a grounding electrode system are a liability. When the replanteo survey confirms grounding is absent on a pole that carries medium-voltage, that pole gets flagged before the design commits to lashing fiber on it.
Five Photos and a Landowner Contact
The five image fields — foto 1 through foto 5 — are not documentation theater. They are the evidence file that allows the engineering office to make decisions without sending a second survey team. One photo from the road approach, one from the base, one of the cable bundle and existing hardware, one of the pole top showing conductor arrangement, and one of the adjacent terrain. That set resolves most ambiguities without a return visit.
Propietario del predio, phone, and email are the landowner fields for poles on private property. In rural corridor deployments outside municipal easements, installation on private land requires owner consent or easement agreement before construction. A survey that documents the contact without requiring the design team to cross-reference a separate cadastral database compresses the permitting timeline measurably.
Acceso vehicular (boolean) determines whether the installation crew can reach the pole with a bucket truck or must use climbing equipment. Mountain terrain on the Armenia-Ibagué route has sections where road access to the pole base requires a vehicle with high ground clearance, and sections where the pole sits on a slope that no vehicle reaches at all. The construction budget for those poles is different from poles accessible by paved road, and that difference needs to be in the survey record, not discovered during mobilization.