Third Party Utility Searches and Composite Plan Production

Project Brief

LSTC was approached by a major Wind Farm Development company to conduct 3rd Party Utility Searches and produce Composite Plans for an onshore cable route totaling 40 km in North East Lincolnshire.

Challenges

• To deliver a complete package of drawings to cover a complex and non-uniform linear route of approx 40 km in length with varying widths.
• To deliver 3 rd Party STATS and multi-sheet Composite drawings in a timely manner.
• To liaise with Ground Penetrating Radar (site teams and hand over coherent site packs for targeted and informed surveying practices enabling them to complete a PAS 128 survey along the route.)

Our Approach

Operatives began strategically splitting the complex route into numbered sections before initiating the search procedure Third-party asset owners in the area were identified before email requests and self-search practices began Information was collected, collated, and filed in a coherent manner all captured within a bespoke Utility Search Tracker (Affected assets were then digitally transposed onto vectorised base mapping to build up the composite utility plan.) Each asset is denoted by a unique colour-coded line style in the legend.

Composite Utility plans and site packs (both electronically and hard copies) were prepared for GPR teams to assist in on-site activities.

Project Outcome / Deliverables

The client was provided with a full drawing pack consisting of:

• Detailed Composite Utility plans sheet series.
• Comprehensive Utility Report detailing responses and Affected/Unaffected.
• Original 3rd Party plant/asset plans (STATS) email correspondence of confirmation.

The scheme successfully delivered all aspects of the 3rd party Utility Searches and Composite Plans, accurately, efficiently, and within time frames.

However, further efficiencies could be made by adapting currently used macros and hotkeys to automate some aspects of the searching, storage and referencing processes.