de Witt Consulting was engaged on this project in the early stages of the Stage 2 Construction of The Ulan West Project to provide Laser Scanning Services to Downer Engineering to capture existing structural elements that were to be tied into the new coal handling facilities. The structural elements required ranged from the positions of existing base plates, steel columns and beams, conveyor idler frames, conveyor pulley, coal shoots and take up pulley rails. Conventionally these types of surveys are very time consuming and intense as the surveyor must individually locate each critical point which needs to be marked up on a plan or photograph for a designer in addition to the x, y, z point data. Utilising Laser Scanning technology allows a full 3D ‘point cloud’ to be captured from any one station in minutes which can be directly provided to the designer with an overlaid photograph taken by the Scanner during the scanning process. The superior deliverable allows the designer to quickly and confidently move through a point cloud and analyse existing structural elements and indeed other details which may not have been realised in a ‘normal’ survey or visual inspection.
As with any other survey data, point cloud data can be related to site survey control (for instance MGA and AHD) and be scaled between grid and ground coordinate systems.