Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

ON Tuesday I was called in to a meeting with the project director and Carillion’s head of “Survey and Drone research” – sounds cool but it’s definitely not. Apparently my experience of GPS within the military was my golden ticket in to this little shin-dig.

With regards to an exclusion zone on this site, the PD is keen to ensure that all plant be monitored and prevented from accessing areas they could cause damage to the tunnels below.

The suggested solution is to use the same GPS monitoring that is used on plant during road construction. A system that can control the plant as well as give feedback as to the position and angle of the blade etc. This is a brilliant system, but I fear it may be overkill and it is tres expensive (£30k per system plus £10k for a box on the roof to correct all the GPS readings). Rental prices are available, but for a 2 year programme, purchasing may be the way to go.

The actual customer requirements are:

• Warn operators when they are approaching an exclusion zone
• Ability to identify location of plant to confirm if issues in tunnel are plant related
• Maintain a record of locations for legal purposes (arse covering)

Problems:

• Demolition area is an exclusion zone to all non-essential personnel – ie operators only
• Physical barriers are likely to get covered in arisings or crushed any way

Has anyone experience of anything like this, or are there any suggestions for a different system?

I’ll update with the winning solution!