Our client needed to ascertain if one of their 40m-long rotational driers would fit into an existing building and if the roof structure could be altered to provide the best ventilation. They also needed to investigate its current state. The roof had been condemned, so no-one could access it, meaning that the only method left was scaffolding or crane baskets with a rescue crane required on standby.
The scaffolding would involve costly shut down of the facility, resulting in the loss of 1,400 articulated lorries of product per day, and would have to be carried out at the end of the year when the plant shut for maintenance. However, engineers needed the information long before this to plan the works.
Due to the heavily congested nature of the plant it was necessary to launch our aerial survey from a confined gantry deck above the client’s conveyor systems. Our highly-trained teams assessed the necessary hazards and, after consulting with the health and safety team, deployed the system from this confined location via hand-launching and recapturing.
Using high-resolution imagery, the team captured all aspects of the roof to give engineers the ability to view the smallest details across the roof surface and identify visual faults and failures as well as identify abandoned scaffolding which was causing damage to the integrity of the roof.
Using our precision inspection platforms produced high definition video footage where required, along with 36mp still images and thermal imaging where applicable to visualise heat loss, seal failure and non-visual water ingress.
From this imagery our highly trained digital technology team used the latest in photogrammetric software to build a 3D model of the roof, tied to existing control points in the roof location. This allowed engineers to use highly detailed point clouds to design CAD drawings and model the proposed lift operation.
