Sector
- Municipal
- Energy & Utilities
Client
- Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago
Services Provided
- Survey
Location
- Chicago, Illinois
Awards
- Winner of a 2015 ACEC-Illinois Engineering Excellence Merit Award
As a subconsultant to Rubinos & Mesia Engineers, Inc., EDI provided laser scanning and modeling services in connection with RME’s contract with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) to provide Civil, Structural and Architectural Engineering services to the District, and in particular for the design of the Calumet TARP Screens.
EDI performed laser scanning of the ground floor of the TARP Shaft building along with laser scanning of the east and west wet shafts of the drop shaft connecting to the Deep Tunnel system. While the ground level scanning was traditional in nature, scanning a shaft 360 feet deep with no real access points except from above presented a logistical and procedural problem.
Normal terrestrial laser scanning is performed with the scanner mounted on a tripod with easy access to and from the site. For this project, EDI mounted the scanner on the bottom of a man cage, inverted, and braced the cage against the walls of the drop shaft in order to stabilize the scanner prior to each scan. The scans were carried out every 20 to 25 feet vertically down the depth of the shaft. After completion of the scanning process, the scans are registered in order to match the point clouds together, and from the registered point cloud, a 3D model will be produced in AutoCad 2013, along with horizontal cross-sections of the drop shaft taken every 10 feet vertically.