This past week COMPASS was involved in a variety of survey activities, from Topographic surveys, to 3D Scanning, and even as-built works. We take pride in being able to offer a variety of services in the survey field as it empowers us to continue growing and ameliorating our knowledge base as a service provider. It is important for us to continually consider the way we do things and operate as it not only empowers us to improve the process, but also better understand our core identity along the way. The blog will depict activities performed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as well as the State of Qatar.
For Saudi, we have a few ongoing survey projects currently, namely in Riyadh as well as in the Eastern Region. In Riyadh, we have a multitude of as-built survey works for our interior design partner who currently operates in the UAE. They are a regional designer who is established in the market, working with COMPASS as their leading survey provider in order to adequately assess the existing condition of the villas they design. For Saudi, we have begun using 3D Laser Scanning technology (SLAM) in order to Reality Capture the interior of the villas in a time-efficient and cost-effective manner. Currently, we are developing four villas as-built drawings for the architectural discipline, enabling the designer to make informed decisions about their mood board, spatial constraints, among options for the doors and windows. The 3D Laser Scan data collected, in the form of a point cloud, is then processed to remove excessive noise as well as areas picked up that are outside of our scope, into a final cloud that we can use for our drafting requirements. Once the cloud is ready, it is imported into the drafting software, whether it be Revit for 3D requirements and Civil 3D for drafting 2D Plan Drawings. The as-builts are then prepared by tracing the cloud data until we have the basic linework set out for the structures, windows, floors, and ceilings. Since our designer doesn’t necessarily require the data to be in the coordinate system, we can assume a ground level of SSL=0.00 for our purposes and move forward with a relative coordinate system in the drawings. Lastly, we can provide the client with CAD and PDF versions of the as-builts with sections and a door & window schedule to appease their requirements and enable them to perform their design. Please find the follow photos appended of the process and final output drawings:
As for the Qatar office, we are currently performing a topographic survey of the DSWMC Compost and Waste Management plant in Mesaieed. The site consists of a three-hundred-hectare plot area dedicated to the processing of domestic solid waste, which is a function of Qatar’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. Our scope is to cover the three-hundred-hectare facility (3 Sq. Km) for the area’s surface with spot heights at a specific interval to generate contours of the entire facility. Additionally, the extents of all structures in the site were captured in order to develop a master plan of the facility, which entails covering more than 100 large structures with various purposes. The range of buildings captured include office spaces, accommodation areas, administration buildings, plant area, machine operations, anaerobic digestion, and much more. Furthermore, we also covered all external aboveground infrastructure such as roads, sidewalks, guard houses, entrances/exits, manholes, septic tanks, among others that were prevalent in the site. All in all, the external works required two weeks of continuous work, while the second portion of the project involved internal layouts. Internal layouts were performed to incorporate detail of the floor layouts inside of the buildings and a general layout of doors, windows, walls, and other vital features such as machinery locations and types. These layouts are covered in the site via raw data which is then drafted in AutoCAD in order to develop floor layouts for all structures in the stie. The final deliverable includes the external and internal plans which the client intends to use for their future planning in the design and expansion of their facility as they see fit. Unfortunately, we are unable to share any documentation or images related to this project due to the sensitivity of the client as well as their operations in the plant.