Specialists at Wade Trim have to work in some of the largest and most complex environments on the planet. The Detroit-based infrastructure engineering firm is the engineer of record with the design-build team for the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA), the largest water authority in Michigan. And that means they’re responsible for inspecting dozens of water facilities throughout the region, including underground water storage.
These facilities all present unique challenges – some are very old, some are deep underground, most are hazardous. Achieving 100% coverage and retrievable data for a high-quality inspection was extremely labor intensive. Before Wade Trim bought their first NavVis VLX mobile mapping system, inspecting them took a lot more field hours, cost a lot more money, and involved a lot more risk.
Going underground
GLWA oversees three kinds of water facilities: clean-water facilities, which hold drinking water in for delivery to different municipalities, wastewater from non-residential sources, and combined sewage overflows (CSOs), which process both rainwater and sewage for treatment.
A clean water facility can be quite large. Each one is made up of multiple buried concrete tanks that are about 155,000 square feet and store up to 20 million gallons of water.
CSO facilities are even bigger. According to Wade Trim’s Advanced Design Technology Lead Neil Wakeman, one of the larger examples is over 1,500 feet long, and a few hundred feet wide. Others sprawl across 15 levels that are offset from one another, like a jungle gym. Each one features sloped floors, elevated benches, and “everything you could imagine in terms of a 3D space.” These CSOs are also dark, and quite often slippery with sewage.
For the complete article on underground water storage CLICK HERE.
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