Civil engineering schemes are increasingly part of the lexicon of Plowman Craven 3D. Recently Derby City Council utilised our laser scanning, CAD and modelling skills to record 1.5km of the Inner Ring Road, at the same time avoiding costly road closure schemes. Derby City Council, who wanted both traditional 2D and advanced 3D CAD deliverables, specified remote survey technology to save on a potential £750,000 cost for road closures. We were able to deliver to a tight schedule with added value visualisation work on a large portion of the project. This allowed plans for a new bridge to be assessed against the current cityscape and be put forward for planning permission. Besides the traditional drawings and the 3D modelling of portions of the scheme, the complete point cloud data was delivered for data preservation and future use.

The quality and quantity of data collected by the Leica HDS3000 not only saved us valuable time in the field and office, but also resulted in us being able to offer the Council full 3D models for proportions of the scheme only designated after the field work had been completed. Since job site was heavily urbanized and road safety is a key part of the our work on transportation projects, laser scanning was an obvious choice for this project. To meet the strict timeline and accuracy requirements we used 2 Leica HDS3000 scanners. Primary control was established traditionally using the GPS, and secondary control with the TPS. Overall, we estimate that using HDS technology saved 25% field time over conventional methods, and an additional 75% of the time that is usually required for field-checking of plans for QA purposes in such urban environments.

"Overall we were very impressed with Plowman Craven. Their innovative survey and visualisation methods ensured that a polished product was produced without disruption to road users on Derby Inner Ring Road's busy and complex network. The professionalism and communication skills of their team resulted in their product being delivered "right first time". David Roome - Derby City Council IRRIMS Project.