High Level and Accurate Laser Scanning at Nottinghamshire County Hall

High Level and Accurate Laser Scanning at Nottinghamshire County Hall

At Survey Hub we believe that surveying solutions should be hassle free, with a strong dedication to complete service satisfaction on all their surveys, from the moment clients request a quote, down to the surveyor who carries out the work. They work with property professionals, owners, agents, investors and developers to provide as many surveys under one roof as possible to the highest possible standards. Their main in-house survey disciplines consist of teams for Measured Building Surveys, Land Surveys, Underground Utilities & CCTV Drainage, Revit and 3D Modelling, EPC assessments and Asbestos Management Surveys.

Nottinghamshire County Hall, located on the south bank of the River Trent at West Bridgford in Rushcliffe, Nottinghamshire, England, serves as the headquarters of Nottinghamshire County Council, the upper tier local authority with jurisdiction across the whole of Nottinghamshire, with the exception of the City of Nottingham itself.

During much of the 20th century, the county council was based at the old Shire Hall in the Lace Market in Central Nottingham. After deciding that the existing premises were inadequate for their needs, county leaders decided to procure a new building, the site they selected had previously been occupied by the Castle Cricket Ground. The foundation stone was laid in 1939, with construction completed in 1954 due to delays caused by the Second World War.

The Council approached Survey Hub with a project scope to create a highly detailed digital 3D Revit model of the County Hall building. The model needed to be both accurately measured via laser scanning techniques, as well quickly captured within a window of opportunity for access whilst the building was scheduled to be vacated. This included the building modelling, topographic survey and underground utility information within our services, to give the client had a full digital representation of site within Revit Software.

We knew the project specification was to provide a Revit model of the Nottingham County Hall building in high detail. This included the Architrave beams and material finishes; thus, they required laser scanners that not only had the ability to colour the point cloud, but also to capture detail in good quality to enable our modelling team to extract the required detail. They also needed a solution to capture the required data as quickly as possible, working to the tight time frames set by the council to work whilst the building would be unoccupied.

To overcome the challenges of the project, Survey Hub utilised a pair of Leica ScanStation P-Series laser scanning solutions. Two members of the Survey Hub team completed an external traverse loop around the building perimeter with traversed stairwells and cross braces throughout the building floors. Whilst this was being completed, extra team members proceeded to capture the bulk of the detail within the building at each floor level with more mobile scanning units in the form of RTC 360 scanners.

Once all the traverse was complete and registered using Leica Cyclone CORE, the team linked the scan data back to the original traverse system to ensure accuracy remained high. We then continued to add in the detail capture scans obtained using the RTC 360 scanners to complete the registration in full. We used the P-Series Dual axis compensated scanners with I-Star equipment to capture the cloud data in full colour. We knew the accuracy of the cloud needed to be top notch. To ensure we captured the data quickly to the level of detail we required, we utilised the I-Star bolt on.

At Survey Hub we believe there is pride to be taken in the precision we can provide a client on any given project. We believe it is important to undertake the works in a methodical manner and prioritise accuracy to prevent issues further down the line. With this in mind we will continue to utilise our existing Leica P-Series scanners for the purposes of external and internal traverse loops and cross braces, whilst infilling data capture on large projects with the Leica RTC360 LT.

The featured image shows a sliced portion of the complete 3D Revit model undertaken by our in-house modelling staff. The model was completed directly within Revit from the point cloud information we gathered on site.