Surveying

technical

Surveying on the
Medupi Power Station project
Information from Optron Geomatics

Confirming that structures are built correctly is a key activity in any construction project. At a new power
station in South Africa, Trimble technology was used to make quick work of a tall order.

he Medupi Power Station in

Limpopo Province is owned
and operated by Eskom and
will provide reliable electric power to
customers in Limpopo Province.
The coal-fired plant uses supercritical
boiler technology to operate at
higher temperatures and pressures
than conventional boilers. Medupi
will have six generating units and
overall capacity to deliver 4788 MW
of power to the South African grid.
To reduce demand for water, Medupi
will utilise dry-cooling technology
as part of its generation cycle. On
completion in 2015, this plant will
be the largest dry-cooled plant in
the world and will provide greater
efficiency and improved utilisation of
coal and water compared to similar
plants that utilise older, conventional
technologies.

Fig. 1: Scanning the north face of the lift shaft and the surrounding concrete piles.

Covering 883 hectares, Medupis

size and complexity called for expert
surveyors. Trail Surveys in Pretoria
was selected to serve on the projects
quality control team, and represent
Eskom in all survey matters on the
site. We conduct verification surveys
on work done by surveyors from the
various construction subcontractors
working on the project, said Trail
Surveys CEO Philip Schalekamp. We
also do contour and detail surveys,
volume verification, height analysis
on earth works and blasting, as-built
surveys and other ad hoc surveys and
reports.
One of their tasks was to verify the
construction of the lift shaft for the
boiler on Medupis Unit 6. The boiler
lift shafts, which are key structures in
a generating unit, are erected early
in the construction of each unit. Not
only must each shaft be in the correct
location, it must also be constructed
to specified dimensional and vertical

24

Fig. 2: Checking the control network for the next day's scan. From left: Danie Roelvert,
Francois Marias and Sean Dane.

PositionIT Jan/Feb 2011

SURVEYING

technical

maps of each face, plus cross

sections and 3D views of the shaft.
Schalekamp said that his clients
were pleased with the deliverables.
The scan is very helpful to analyse
each side of the shaft at any
given point, he said, and also
to visualise the shaft in general.
The heat plot made the data
user-friendly so that any person can
understand the report.

Fig. 3: 3D point cloud with comparison surface overlay of the lift shaft.

tolerances. The concrete shaft at

Unit 6 is roughly 7,6 m x 7,6 m and
120 m tall. To verify that it has been
built to plan, Trail Surveys combined
precise survey and laser scanning
technologies.
The first step was to establish
control for the scanning. The
survey crew used a Trimble S8
Total Station and Trimble CU
Controller to establish four new
instrument stations around the lift
shaft at Unit 6. They made multiple
measurements to each new station
from Medupis network of geodetic
control pillars. The fieldwork for the
control took less than half a day. The
team downloaded the measurements
to Trimble Geomatics Office Software
and completed the calculations to
produce coordinates for the new
stations. With the control in place,
the scanning work began.
Using the survey workflow in the
Trimble system, the surveyors set
up their Trimble GX 3D Scanner on
the new points and oriented the
scanner into the project control
network. From each point, they
scanned an entire face of the lift
shaft. Trimble PointScape Software
was an important part of the work,
said surveyor Danie Roelvert. We
were able to limit the scans to only
the areas of interest, which speeds up
the work in the office. The Trimble
SureScan technology allowed the
crew to achieve a more regular
grid of points, he said, which was

PositionIT Jan/Feb 2011

a tremendous help in cleaning and

processing the data.
Each setup required roughly one hour,
and all of the scanning work was
completed in about four hours. To
avoid the congestion (Medupi employs
more than 8000 construction workers)
as well as heat shimmer and dust, the
team conducted the scanning work
during early morning hours from 3h00
to 07h00.
In the office, it took about four hours
to process the scans using Trimble
RealWorks software. The registration
of the scans went quickly, with
residuals as small as 8 mm. The
technicians filtered the point cloud to
produce a 10 cm spatial grid on each
face of the shaft.

According to Roelvert, the project

could not have succeeded without
the combined Trimble technologies.
The Trimble S8 Total Station
provided accurate control, and the
Trimble GX took over from there.
If we had used only a total station,
we would only be able to determine
whether the top is within tolerance,
Roelvert said, and that would have
required a surveyor to access the
top of the shaft to place a prism.
The scanner allowed us to analyse
all four sides of the structure, from
bottom to top. There were no access
issues as the shaft is remotely
surveyed. In terms of positioning,
you can see exactly what happened
during construction.
Contact Sean Dane,
Optron Geomatics,
Tel 031 566-6221,
sdane@optron.com

With the scanning results in place,

the surveyors used the Surface to
Model and 3D Inspection tools of
Trimble RealWorks to compare the
measured data to the lift shafts
design. Each face of the shaft was
analysed independently as a complete
120 m surface, and also broken into
15 m sections. By colour coding the
differences between the design and
as-built shaft, it was easy to identify
deviations from the design.
The Trail Surveys team delivered
the data to Eskom in Trimble
RealWorks format. By using Trimble
RealWorks Viewer, Eskom engineers
could inspect the results and access
the data for further analysis.
Trail Surveys also provided colour

25