Utilities

Making The Invisible - Visible

Earth Radar - Utilities

Subsurface Utility Information (SUI) & Geophysical

Our team of SUI Locating Technicians and Survey Engineers have a combined wealth of experience working within the Utilities sector. Through a combination of Electro-Magnetic Induction (EMI) and our Latro™ 3D-Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) we are able to ‘see’ and map where existing pipes, conduits, cables and assets are below the surface.

We work with numerous utility asset owners, state government and industry partners to provide our professional services. All of our deliverables are generated in line with the Australian Standards AS 5488—2013.

A detailed and accurate understanding of the SUI present within a site offers many benefits: it enables best practise, minimises risk to employees and others, mitigates damage to third party asset owners and reduces costly time over-runs and variations from unknown service conflicts.

Earth Radar’s deliverables are designed to clearly show the level of confidence to which the SUI shown has been determined and import seamlessly into our clients existing design environment. We are happy to tailor our service to best fit your needs or adopt existing standards such as TMR (QLD), RMS (NSW), VicRoads (VIC) or DPTI (SA).

This means we offer more than just paint on the ground; we offer a tailored deliverable that we will stand behind and be accountable for.

Earth Radar offer many services relevant to the Utilities sector including but not limited to:

3D GPR Surveys
SUI Locating, Survey, Mapping, Proving and Verification
RFID Marker Balls
Environmental and Subsurface Reality Capture
Concrete Scanning
Void/Defect Detection
Mapping, Modelling, Reporting and Visualisation

Case Study:

New Trench Route

SUI Locate, Survey and NDD Proving

The Challenge:

To help facilitate the concept and detailed design phase to determine a suitable route for a new high-voltage cable trench installation along a busy road in Adelaide’s CBD. Earth Radar were tasked with coordinating the locating, mapping and verification of all Subsurface Utility Information (SUI) within a designated corridor to allow the client to create a concept design, refine this to generate a detailed design and support the civil works through to completion.

The Solution:

Earth Radar and the client decided on a two-stage approach to maximize efficiency; firstly we deployed our SUI locators and survey team to locate the existing SUI within the scope of works to Quality Level B (AS—5488) and map this information. The client’s design team then decided on a suitable route and identified any assets or potential conflicts where more accurate information was required. The Non-Destructive Digging (NDD or potholing) of these locations was then coordinated with the updated Quality Level A information used to revise the drawing to enable the design team to arrive at a final solution.

The sharing of the survey plans generated with the civil teams provided a greater confidence as to the location of any services to be negotiated during excavation works, enabling effective management of resources and avoiding any costly or dangerous strikes.