The brief
The company planned to expand its production facility, but the site contained a dense and partly undocumented network of underground utilities. Design work could not begin until the actual position of the existing networks was established.
The site also operated continuously, so the survey could not be carried out by halting production or blocking vehicle movement. Part of the utility network lay beneath surfacing that could not be opened up.
Our approach
We surveyed the entire site at 1:500 scale, recording the relief, structures and every visible utility access point. In parallel we requested data from all network operators and compared it against the situation on the ground, verifying positions on site where they disagreed.
We split the fieldwork into stages agreed against the site’s own operating schedule, surveying each zone when it happened to be clear. Where archive data differed materially from what was visible on the ground, we re-measured the access points and recorded the discrepancy in the plan notes.
The outcome
The client received a fully approved topographic plan that revealed several discrepancies between the archive data and the actual situation. Identifying them early avoided design changes during construction.
The discrepancies found were resolved with the utility operators while the project was still at design stage. The designer received the plan in DWG with each network on its own layer, so work could begin immediately.
