In my last article Got a Rush Job Before the End of the Year? We had a look at how laser scanning helped one of our clients achieve the completion of a small urgent job in record time for a tiny cost. In a continuation of that article we will take a look at how large complex jobs can have weeks of time and potentially 10’s of thousands in costs to the client cut off them by using 3D laser Scanning.
Earlier in the year we were involved in a job where there was a requirement to do some modifications to existing processing equipment on a farm in a remote part of Victoria. The equipment was all very large (up to 13m tall) and complex.
While performing the scans I spent a bit of time thinking about what it would take to manually measure and remodel all of the information required to do the job with any kind of accuracy.
The client brief was as follows;
- There are 6 types of equipment that need to be modified. The 2 different sized silos, the large pieces of equipment to the far left in the image above and 3 other smaller pieces of equipment not visible in this image. (But still all over 4 meters tall.) Although there were multiples of the one type of equipment, no two were the same due outlet and support equipment sizes and locations.
- Capture the details of the upper level platforms and all supporting steel work for all equipment as the modifications may require some of it being used for support or being modified to suit.
- Capture all openings on the equipment. In the case of the silos this was to include the ports running the full height on the walls in multiple places as well as the vents on the roofs. (The large equipment to the left of the image is 9 meters high and vented up both sides.)
- Capture the surrounding equipment and any guardrails or bollards to ensure clearances and maintenance access is maintained.
If you were to attempt to measure this job “the traditional way” you would require (at least) the following;
- An 8m tape
- A 100m tape
- A Laser measure
- Chalk lines
- String lines
- A dumpy level
- A 9 meter scissor lift (1 day)
- A knuckle boom (3 days)
- 2 people with the appropriate skills/tickets to operate EWPs and perform measure ups
- 1 person for 3 days as spotter for EWP works
My best guess is that it would take a total of 264 personnel hours to measure and model the site. That would be broken down as follows;
3 people for 3 days to do work at heights work = 72 hrs
2 people for 5 days for ground based measurements = 80 hrs
2 people 7 days to produce 3D model = 112 hrs
If we assume that it is only an 8 hour day worked while on site and that each person only stays on site for the minimum required time to complete their respective tasks, what does that look like in a similar cost comparison to the one in our first article?
(In the interests of full transparency, I didn’t have time to check the cost of the knuckle boom and scissor lift hire to the site we were on. In lieu I have used the cost of getting a knuckle boom in Brisbane for both bits of equipment and assumed double the pick-up and delivery cost. However I would imagine this would only make a difference of a couple of hundred dollars either way.)
So again a clear win to the scanner at nearly 1/3 the cost to the client to get a point cloud vs a 3D model the “traditional” way. Even if we assume that the EWP and scissor lift were on site and that the site supplied a spotter at no charge to the client, this would still work out to be a total cost of just under $28,000. That means that scanning is still under half the cost.
What Else Should You Consider?
Aside from the things mentioned in the first article like Skills/Accreditation, no special training required other than the scanner operator. Personnel Requirements, two people required for scanning vs 3 the traditional way. Equipment, nothing other than the scanner required for the job, and site access, scanning doesn’t hold up site operations at all. It is worth thinking about some of the following points.
Detail
Using the “Traditional Method”, the 3D model produced wouldn’t be very comprehensive; it would just have the bare minimum required to get the job done based on the original client brief. Meaning, if there was a change to the scope for any reason that would possibly require another trip to site to get more information. This is highly unlikely to be a problem with scanning as it captures almost every detail of almost everything around it producing a very detailed 3D model.
Total time to get a 3D model
In this example it would take 264 personnel hours (about 3 weeks) to produce a basic 3D model using traditional methods. That doesn’t include the day each way wasted on travel for those involved. To do this scan it took us a total of 68 personnel hours including travel to and from site.
If we were to go to this site to do this job, leaving Monday morning from Brisbane, travelling to site and then returning to Brisbane to complete scan registration; the point cloud would have been ready to go to the client in a format to be used in any program they wanted by that Friday afternoon. We could then have it on a Hard Drive and in the mail that afternoon, or uploaded over the weekend ready for the client to be using Monday.
8 Weeks of Work in 6 Weeks
As we can’t disclose the full details of the design and detail of this job, if we assume that there is only a total of 5 weeks to do the remainder of this job (before the end of the year); to do this using “Traditional Methods” would take 8 weeks. Under the same assumption, using 3D scanning would only take 6 weeks based on the 2 week time saving in capturing the existing site.
So what is stopping you from taking on that one last job before the end of the year?
