Digital communication on the construction site with the aim of full automation of civil engineering processes: In 2010, the two companies TOPCON EUROPE POSITIONING B.V. and RIB Software AG will start another year of their successful cooperation. The technology company RIB and the high-tech vendor TOPCON have already presented their new solutions for surveying and the construction industry at top international fairs all around the globe. At the world’s largest trade fair Bauma 2010 in Munich, the partners will be showing yet another innovation. And they are already giving us an idea of the direction developments will take in the near future.
Decentralised construction site access
After their digital construction machine control solution for directly connecting the office and the jobsite via the SiteLink server at the beginning of 2009, the two companies turned their attention to finding a solution for surveyors and their specific applications for the autumn. “Our solutions are designed to eliminate any holdups between the office and the construction site,” comments Andreas Dieterle, Product Manager Sales at RIB. “If there is a direct link between the office and the construction site, machinery and the surveyors without needing any extra technology such as mobile phones or other hardware on the construction site, the entire process is more tangible from start to finish. Achiel Sturm, Construction Business Unit Manager of TOPCON EUROPE POSITIONING B.V., adds: “This way, it’s not only possible to detect and assess changes in the construction process far more quickly, but also to check the whole situation at any time. The digital construction site workflow also offers the benefit of direct support. If an application isn’t working properly, it can be remotely accessed. Specific instructions can be communicated to the surveyor by transmitting them straight to the instrument using a chat function, for instance. On top of this, our control systems integrate what is probably the world’s best GNSS technology, so that it will be possible to use the European Galileo system besides GPS and GLONASS in future.“
Communicating without media breaks
What are the concrete benefits for the surveyor? According to the partner companies, survey points can be directly transferred via the SiteLink server to RIB’s STRATIS® software without any media breaks. All information of relevance for later cost accounting and billing of construction work can therefore be directly sent from the construction site to the RIB software system. This means that the office is always notified of any changes in heights and positions and is able to draw immediate conclusions on how this will affect costs and schedules. The defined service packages and their realisation can be compared and checked by control measurements. According to Achiel Sturm, the results, as well as the documentation in the plan and the derived quantity calculation, enable subsequent coordination with common project management systems with time-path diagrams such as Primavera, Microsoft Project or Powerproject.
Intelligent coding
In practice, the system measures individual points and is designed to immediately recognise the type of object. According to the two companies, objects are assigned codes according to type, which are recognised by the STRATIS® software when read in and again distinguished according to object type. The office then receives the information with this specific coding. This way, the point is directly represented in STRATIS® with its 3D coordinates and the symbol matching the code. As well as the right symbol, the engineer in the office always knows what type the points are. The aim of this is to significantly facilitate and substantially accelerate evaluation and further processing as well as the exact information for the construction site coordinators. The advantage is that if certain data is required within a short time, it can be directly included in the evaluation. Again, the chat function offers quick assistance, as if a piece of information is missing for continuing work smoothly, the office can call the surveyor on the construction site and ask for it specifically. However, the data is not permanently travelling between the instruments connected to the system and the software. As Andreas Dieterle says: “The office receives a message from the surveyor in the STRATIS® software, when new data of a particular type is available. But it’s up to him when he calls it up and processes it.“
All the data remain permanently available in the system. This way, TOPCON and RIB aim to ensure international compatibility. After all, even within the same time zones construction site working hours are not usually the same as office hours. A great number of factors such as weather, schedules, etc. influence the actual working hours on the construction site, which is why the core time that is common practice in offices tends to be the exception here.
Automated processes – new at Bauma 2010
For the Bauma fair in April, the cooperation partners add more functions to their construction site communication system to achieve even greater consistency of target-actual comparisons. For instance it will be able to directly map all the work performed by construction machinery in the STRATIS® Digital Terrain Model, again, via the SiteLink server. In addition, 3D coordinates from the surveying are to flow ad hoc into the software and enable direct comparisons of target and actual statuses on the construction site. “Our aim is to gradually automate the entire construction process. We are continuously developing our system so that time-intensive manual civil engineering processes will soon be a thing of the past,” summarises Achiel Sturm from TOPCON.
