Once again, over 20 of our directors, staff and partners attended this year’s EISSI NSW Excellence in Surveying Awards night at the Black Tie Gala Dinner held at the Sofitel Sydney Wentworth. CMS Surveyors entered a submission into the Extra Dimension and Innovation category for our work on the Sydney Metro Northwest – Steel Bridge Pylons Project. This award recognises how innovative techniques in surveying, spatial information, mapping, cartography, design, planning and software development achieve exceptional outcomes and/or solve unusual problems.

Our submission outlined the process that our Scanning Team, lead by Chris Larmour, developed after being engaged to provide specialist advice during the fabrication of 2 steel bridge pylons that were to be used in the construction of a suspension bridge for the Sydney Metro Northwest Rail line project. These pylons were almost 30 metres in length, complex in shape and once fabricated off-site, would be transported by road and erected to position on the foundations.

The fabrication process involved the accurate positioning of cable tubes and anchor plates. CMS Surveyors developed a check process utilising our 3D Laser Scanning to spatially analyse and compare the As-built position with the design. From this comparison, CMS provided adjustment advice to fine tune cable tube and anchor plate position and orientation prior to final welds being undertaken. This process was followed up by a Final As-constructed survey to again compare positions and orientation with design.