Terra Measurement isn’t your average surveying firm. They’ve made a mission not only to deliver top-level results, but also to use the latest hardware and software available to keep improving the quality and speed of their services. The firm won a tender for a project at Dudley Castle, a hilltop fortification in West Midlands, England that is surrounded by a large and dense public zoo. Terra Measurement would capture digital documentation for the area of a scheduled monument on the site.
From the NavVis website.
They would capture this data at the highest standard — exceeding even the most exacting standard defined by the Historic England. The firm would deliver floor plans, orthometric image elevations, and a full topographical survey of the area.
In keeping with the firm’s mission to innovate, explains Managing Director Andy Beardsley, the team did something unprecedented: they generated the topo survey using data generated by a mobile mapping system.
Time’s tight on site
The team didn’t set out to use a mobile mapping system for the survey, and had initially quoted the project with a more traditional workflow. As Beardsley explains, the plan was to capture the area — a teardrop shaped limestone escarpment 300 meters long and 220 meters wide — with total stations and GNSS units.
Work would proceed over a comfortable 40-day timeline, and the team would complete the topographical survey drawings and 3D terrain model back in the office.
But then the instruction for the project came six weeks later than expected. “It was always going to be an awkward survey,” says Beardsley, “but now the challenge was even bigger.” Terra’s team would only have two to three weeks on site “before vegetation returned on a very overgrown site” and made it virtually impossible to capture the necessary data.
And even if the team wanted to capture once vegetation returned, there was the problem of crowds. The public would soon be returning to the zoo once COVID-19 closures ended, and their presence would have slowed the total station work.
With a squeeze on time, and the remit to capture at the highest level of quality, Beardsley says the team decided to take a chance on NavVis VLX.
For the complete article on Dudley Castle CLICK HERE.
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