Seeing the entire picture in detail

Author: Katherine Lehmuller, May 2016

Nelson Surveys, based in Seaford, Australia, offers surveying services for some of South Australia’s largest infrastructure projects. Whether steel or concrete bridge constructions, building or road setouts, as-built reporting or volume surveys, Nelson Surveys can tell you exactly what is on-site, supplying vital information for construction projects.

When significant upgrades are being made to infrastructure, Nelson Surveys knows how difficult it is to make sense of how the new design will fit with already existing features. Today’s infrastructure is extremely complex, and surveying tasks need to be done quickly, reliably and with precision to remain on budget.

Surveying on such construction sites is no easy task. 2D line drawing plans offer little guidance to understanding structural complexities. Quite often jobs are delayed because of the need to check paper plans on-site. To be absolutely sure work is completed properly, surveyors and construction crews usually walk the site in order to understand what changes are going to be made. Such on-site visits add additional unnecessary costs and delays to already complicated projects. 

Adding insight to today's complexities

It was little wonder, then, when Leica Geosystems released the new Leica Captivate software, Nelson Surveys was eager to use it for their time-consuming and complicated construction projects. With Leica Captivate, they could easily view measurements on interactive 3D point cloud scans. These scans are clear representations of infrastructure sections taken on site. These scans provide reality capture 3D design visualisations to better understand and verify construction projects in real time. Measurements can also be superimposed onto 2D colour images and linework can be assigned different colours for quicker identification of complicated plans.

All measurements taken can also be simultaneously viewed by both crews and surveyors on the display screens used by any instruments on site, such as Leica Geosystems total stations, handheld tablets or field controllers. All work on site is referenced to just one plan that automatically links any data as it is collected, saving valuable time.

With these new features, Nelson Survey completed surveying tasks much more efficiently and increased productivity immensely.

Explore next chapter: Simple as a smartphone

Story: Seeing the entire picture in detail
Chapter 1: Adding insight to today's complexities
Chapter 2: Simple as a smartphone
Chapter 3: Fewer trips, bigger savings