Bayer House - Moving on with reality capture solutions

Author: Simon Hall

Bayer House, Newbury, the former UK headquarters of the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer.

Survey Hub Limited are a multidisciplinary survey company specialising in Land, Property and Compliance. Founded in 2008 under their original name Pegasus, Survey Hub has grown rapidly over the past 10 years, expanding the surveys they undertake in-house, as clients have required them to provide a more diverse array of surveys to assist them on projects big and small.

Survey Hub believe that surveying solutions should be hassle-free, with a solid dedication to complete service satisfaction on all their surveys, from the moment clients request a quote down to the surveyor who carries out the work. They work with property professionals, owners, agents, investors and developers to provide as many surveys under one roof as possible to the highest possible standards. Their main in-house survey disciplines consist of Measured Building Surveys, Land Surveys, Underground Utilities & CCTV Drainage, Revit and 3D Modelling, EPC assessments and Asbestos Management Surveys.

For a full range of their available services please visit www.surveyhub.co.uk

Taking the next step

In 2015, the life science company Bayer moved its UK headquarters to new offices in Reading from their existing Bayer House location in Newbury. With the building becoming vacant, Survey Hub were approached to laser scan the site, capturing the building in its entirety. The 2D floor plans, elevations, and roof plans produced from the resulting point cloud data of the building would then be used in office registrations for incoming tenants.

The need for quicker site capture and office processing, combined with Survey Hub’s already efficient and accurate survey practices, was critical to the project’s success.

“To be able to have what we believe is the top terrestrial laser scanner for capturing data required for producing floor plans allows us to compete when quoting for jobs.”
Lee Stevenson – Director, Survey Hub

In previous projects of this size, Survey Hub found it challenging for multiple teams to capture all the necessary data on-site confidently. The building was over 100 metres in length, with a net internal area of 13,000 square metres. Thus a new laser scanner was required to add to their portfolio that could capture the necessary data as quickly and efficiently as possible.

“Being able to collect all the data on-site quickly, as well as being able to perform on-site QA checks with the Cyclone FIELD 360 app, led us to the RTC360 LT as the optimal product. I have been in the Geomatics trade for a total of 14 years and have come across Leica Geosystems products at every stage of my development.”

Lightweight and portable solutions

A team of three surveyors spent 7 days on-site to accomplish their goals, utilising the Leica RTC360 LT 3D reality capture solution, alongside their existing fleet of Leica ScanStation P40 and P20’s. The use of multiple 3D laser scanners enabled the team to efficiently capture all the data required to meet the project specifications.

The RTC360 LT is almost identical to our existing RTC360 laser scanner, with two subtle differences. The first is the removal of the Visual Inertial System (VIS), meaning that the RTC360 LT doesn’t have the five VIS cameras which are visible on the housing of the RTC360. The second is that the RTC360 LT has a scanning speed of 1 million points per second, half the speed of the RTC360. The scan speed is still extremely fast, and despite the slower speed, the captured scan data is not compromised, and thus no time was lost by the Survey Hub team.

The ScanStation P-Series survey-grade 3D laser scanners were the ideal companion to the RTC360 LT, enabling Survey Hub to create an as-built representation of such a large complex, generating 3D data for integration into Building Information Modelling (BIM). On-site, the team were able to automatically capture, pre-register, and examine scan and image data using the Cyclone FIELD 360 app. The app linked the captured data from the field to make the final post-processing into Cyclone REGISTER 360 even easier.

“James Elson from the HDS Technical Support team at SCCS are always at hand for any query we have, be it a minor software issue or how to utilise the equipment on-site in the most effective way. Their expert knowledge in all things laser scanning gives us the confidence that any small issues we have throughout a project won’t cause us any large difficulties and that minimal time is wasted getting it right.”

Practicality and efficiency

The lightweight and portability of the laser scanner were immediately fed back from the team of surveyors. The practicality of the equipment allowed them to set up the laser scanner comfortably and safely in an efficient manner. Using the Cyclone FIELD 360 app was extremely straightforward to use, meaning no time was wasted getting used to the equipment and its nuances.

The unrivalled data capture speed combined with the knowledge that the resulting data would easily integrate with their existing Leica Geosystems products in the final office registration process, using Leica Cyclone CORE and Cyclone REGISTER 360, was a critical advantage in a project of this scale.

“The speed that the RTC360 LT allows us to work at, capturing data in just minutes and clear and simple on-site pre-registration, that flows easily into our office processes. This enables us to deliver the site work and processing on time and on budget.”

The well-being of the surveyors has also improved due to the lightweight and portable nature of the laser scanner and confidence in the data they are capturing is of the highest quality. On-site pre-registration makes it easier to process the final data downstream, allowing Survey Hub’s CAD technicians to start drawing the 2D floor plans as soon as the on-site work has been completed.

For a complex job such as this, Survey Hub believes that the RTC360 LT has produced at least twice as many scans in a day’s site work. Leica Geosystems laser scanning technology saved multiple days’ worth of registration and processing thanks to the simplicity and effectiveness of the RTC360 LT and Cyclone FIELD 360 in delivering on-site pre-registration. On top of this, multiple days’ worth of registration and post-processing were saved thanks to the simplicity and effectiveness of the RTC360 LT and Cyclone FIELD 360 in delivering on-site pre-registration.

“Our recently purchased RTC360 LT laser scanner is now an integral part of our measured building survey practice. It also allows us to confidently hire and buy-in further RTC360 laser scanners in the future when necessary, as our surveyors are all very confident and adept at operating the RTC360 and the Cyclone FIELD 360 app.”