Establishing reliable positions with speed

Author: Katherine Lehmuller, May 2016 

Working on a multi-family housing project in Colorado, US, covering six three-story apartment complexes, 25 townhomes and a clubhouse with a pool successfully kicked off a business relationship between Golden Construction and a local client. Leica Geosystems’ iCON products enabled the construction crews on this project to work efficiently and consequently to bring big savings in time and money.

Golden Construction, LLC provides general construction services to clients in major industries, including medical, commercial, industrial, multi-family and educational fields. Based in Birmingham, Alabama, Golden Construction has been a customer of Leica Geosystems for almost two decades.

The housing project going up in Fort Collins, Colorado, is one of the largest multi-family projects under construction in the area and consists mainly of more than 300 one-, twoand three-bedroom units, to be completed by the end of summer 2016. One of Golden Construction’s main tasks on this project, before concrete was poured, was to verify that plumbing and electrical items were in their correct positions. Another task was to establish control lines on floor slabs for the framing contractor to layout and build the wooden framework.

Reducing potential errors

Making sure all of the plumbing is in the correct location has certainly been one of the largest tasks of this year-long project. All totalled, there are roughly 1,900 pipes to be installed throughout the buildings. The complex’s plumbing and electrical contractors were using string lines and measuring tapes to carry out their layouts. With a project of this size, this method of layout is likely to contain errors leading to substantial problems in the building process, leading to higher costs.

In order to be certain everything is built as designed, Golden Construction opted to use Leica iCON robots. Golden Construction has confidence using Leica Geosystems iCON products because the results are very reliable. Since this was the company’s first business venture into the state of Colorado, the project played an important role and successful verifications of plumbing, electrical lines and framework control lines were important to the completion of this project.

The vast amount of items to be checked and laid out represented a major challenge. Not only accuracy was important – speed was, too. Should the concrete contractors be delayed in pouring the concrete, it would be costly. Golden Construction decided on the Leica iCON robot 60 running the latest iCON field software. Also, the Leica iCON CC80 controller was used to facilitate point collection and transfer the data back to the office.

Explore next chapter: Speedy verifications with cost savings

Story: Establishing reliable positions with speed
Chapter 1: Reducing potential errors
Chapter 2: Speedy verifications with cost savings