Accuracy essential in setting out
With any discipline that involves dimensions, a very high degree of accuracy is essential when setting out buildings or infrastructure projects. Digital equipment and data recording allows little margin for error. Our professional site engineers ensure that all setting out is carried out with precision and efficiency, using a combination of experience, commonsense, Leica robotic total stations and GPS equipment.
All our total station equipment is calibrated annually. This is carried out by a professional and certificates of calibration are issued. All our other equipment, such as our levels, are also subject to rigorous quality checks. To this end, all our equipment is continually working at its optimum range, to make sure that accuracy is not compromised at any stage of the setting out process.
Digitally sharing
While nothing can match experience, data sharing and digital design has also helped greatly with the accuracy of our work. Digital sharing across a variety of platforms, across multiple formats, ensures that we always have the most up-to-date version of a site plan at our disposal. This high level of accuracy ensures that the building or infrastructure coordinates are calculated correctly and uploaded onto our Leica Total Stations.
Where we have been involved from an early stage, the compatibility between design and construction methods means that the proposed site layout is based on exactly the same grid as the original topographical survey. Using this grid system, we can plot exact coordinates for the building’s corners, as a basis for the site’s parameters. We’re literally laying the groundwork for the project at this point, so the degree of accuracy is absolutely paramount.
Inception to completion
Our engineers can be involved in the entire construction process. It’s not simply a case of the initial stages of a project, the foundations, layout, invert levels and dynamics of the site – such as drainage and services. It’s also about the setting out of the project, heights to windows and sills, interior wall layouts and other ongoing activities that will be required by operatives and tradesmen on site.
Drawings are checked and overlaid on top of our topographic survey data, to ensure that any discrepancies are easily detected prior to a site visit, a lot of our thinking is done before we leave for site. Using the total station with uploaded coordinates, our land surveyors can easily establish a network of control stations and reference objects, to set out the primary, secondary and tertiary control points required on site. By employing professionals with training and qualifications to the highest standards, our clients ensure the project delivers a selection of key benefits. These include a guarantee of a high level of accuracy in setting out. It is also reflected in our meticulous record keeping, which provides an accurate historical picture of how a site was developed and a timeline of work from inception to completion.
Setting out the foundations for success
Once construction work has been completed, our surveyors will check the position of the building is exactly in line with the design and layout of the plans. As a further failsafe against inaccuracy, the building’s coordinated points are checked by tape measure at random intervals, to make sure the size and shape of the building is correct.
On-site setting out can be used in a multitude of scenarios. Our technicians can be involved with setting out for individual building plots for residential clients, or complex multiple plots for house builders. We can also set out large-scale apartment blocks, commercial property, multi-apartment hotels and office buildings.
The fundamentals of each of these projects are the same, but each will have its own specific requirements and challenges. Our site engineers can also be deployed in other construction scenarios, including the planning and plotting of road and highway infrastructure, the setting out of underground sewer lines and drainage schemes, and setting out and checking complex steel frameworks for precision building.
If you have a project that would benefit from the assurance and accuracy a specialist site engineer will bring, then get in touch with one of our professionals today.
