If you ever talk to our machine-control technician Kobus, you will discover how passionate he is about GPS technology and its ability to save time and costs. We are currently utilising our GPS machine control systems in several ways on the QAS Drayton project for QBuild to provide greater efficiency and accuracy. Here are some of the ways it is being put to use on the job.
The grader uses mm GPS which links to laser sensors that not only measure horizontally, but vertically. This allows us to get mm-accuracy for our road base.
Kobus checked three different areas of road and found that we were within 5mm accuracy – well within our tolerance range.
The benefits of this are that we don’t have to have someone manually checking levels (saving time), and we don’t have to backfill to adjust our depths, which of course, saves money for us and our client.
Real-time feedback means there are no interruptions to check the grade.
Our pipe-layers are using our hand-held GR5 Rover survey instrument for accurate trench stake-out work. This means we don’t need to employ a surveyor to measure from boundaries.
The system gives our pipe-layers very accurate start and end position alignments for each pipeline allowing them to perfectly lay the pipes on the design alignments. On large drainage jobs, seeing the long straight lines of pipe side by side is very satisfying!
Kobus has been working with the Topcon Robotic Total Station doing as-constructed surveys to make sure we are accurately complying to the design. He also created the designs and modelling for the stormwater and electricals.
All our excavators are equipped with full machine-control. This eliminates the need for a surveyor on site, or the use of old-school lasers and string lines. Thanks to their onboard computers, our operators know exactly how to dig to grade. Just yesterday, our operator Wade was asked to dig down to 600mm. He simply punched that figure into the onboard computer, and started digging. The system helped to identify when the level was achieved.
Last but not least, our Level Best is being used to do the final trim in the tighter spaces. Very maneuverable and robust enough to push large loads of dirt around, it also gives us the mm accuracy we need for each road pavement layer.
