Case studies

• Customer: Cowlin Construction
• Project: Bangor University
• Date: 2009

The Challenge

When Cowlin Construction were awarded the prestigious contract for erecting eleven student accommodation blocks at Bangor University, they knew that detailed planning for the work would be key to the projects’ success.

The Solution

Bangor is a busy University with 10,000 students, 26 academic schools and over 600 teaching staff on campus, this is a site that needed continuity of operation whilst any construction work took place. Yet with a University that was first opened in 1911 there were incomplete records of services or up to date site plans which meant that Cowlin Construction would have to start with a thorough survey of the site, both above and below ground to gain the best possible understanding of what they would have to work around before commencing the build.

Geotec Surveys were instructed to undertake the underground mapping survey across the site, looking for both utilities that already existed on historic plans to check for positional accuracy of both depth and location, as well as searching for all the unknown services below ground too.

The Result

The survey revealed a number of unlisted services, which were live and important for the smooth running of the University. Colin Clarke of Cowlin Construction said “Once we had a map with all underground services on it, we could pick out individual utilities and plan our works around them to maintain continuity of supply of the vital services that are in constant use by the various faculties of the University”

For almost all sites where ground works are planned, the benefits of seeing an overview of all that is hidden below the surface, yet could cost time, money and reputation if not searched for at the planning stage, can result in location of utilities that can now be managed, protected, and ensure uninterrupted supply of services to the end user during construction works, as Cowlin Construction successfully achieved at Bangor University.

Testimonial

Colin summarises, “This strategy, not only improved the onsite safety for our staff and the students when we undertook excavations, but allowed us a better deployment of manpower and equipment to streamline tasks where we had previously believed there to be no utilities present”.