GEO Business 2021

Highly accurate survey of rail track geometry is vital as it is determines the speed at which trains can travel safely. Understanding the relationship between the track and its immediate surroundings is also extremely important to ensure the necessary safe clearance between trains and the infrastructure. Due to time constraints and other limitations when accessing the track, the ability to measure as much detail as quickly as possible is key. To improve measurement speed in the field, Inertial Measurement Units (IMU’s) have been added to conventional Track Measuring Devices (TMD’s), giving up to five times productivity increase over using TMD’s with conventional Total Stations alone. Additional sensors like Laser Scanners can be added to TMD’s enabling precise high-definition pointclouds to be created very efficiently, allowing in-depth analysis to be carried out in the safety of the office.

Want to know how 3 people monitored and are still monitoring the largest construction site in Europe? Hinkley Point C took full advantage of the Leica Monitoring Solution provided by SCCS. At its height the Monitoring System had 40 TM50s, 6 GNSS, 2 MS60s working in an integrated bespoke system. Using the fully automated monitoring solution to aid the team in managing the monitoring system and how Covid-19 aided a shift to an automated approach to system management to help mitigate the effect of Covid-19 on a small team. This seminar will provide first hand experience from the monitoring surveyor on a once in a lifetime project.

Sustainability is a new Value and Focus for the Construction Industry and Hexagon are committed to making a real change at a local and Global level to embrace the changes that will result in a more Sustainable future.

First came GPS, then multi-constellation GNSS, followed by tilt-compensated GNSS where the user can forget the bubble and measure or stakeout points with the speed and comfort of a tilted pole. Despite these innovations pushing the boundaries over the last three decades, it could be argued the technology has only been through an evolution. Measured points are still an individual contact point, at the tip of the pole, constrained by the overhead satellite coverage, or where can be reached.

Tunnel survey doesn’t always need a dedicated surveyor on-site. On a three-shift construction site, the tunneling engineers can do routine stake-out and measurements on their own without interrupting the excavation process. How to save / reduce waiting times to a minimum and simultaneously reducing costs and labour time is key. To find specialised tunnel surveyors to support a project has become difficult. Hence, we need a new solution to enable the people working at the tunnel face to execute simple profiling and set-out tasks. Tunneling crew trained in the use of Amberg Tunnel and Navigator can easily transfer their knowledge to other members of the tunneling team. This presentation will feature a case study from the HS2 project where tunnel engineers perform daily routine tasks.

Climate change is bringing an increase risk of slope failures to railways around the world. Landslides cause danger and disruption, and established means of monitoring and warning rail operators are inadequate. Network Rail has made the biggest investment yet in wireless remote condition monitoring of slopes to detect movement and warn stakeholders in near-realtime. Following two years’ of trial deployments, a large-scale deployment at 36 of the most at-risk sites in Kent and Sussex took place in 2020. A wireless intelligent monitoring system was used, with close to 6000 tilt sensors and 200 cameras installed and linked using the FlatMesh™ wireless mesh communications platform. Now, if the earth moves the trains don’t.