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Industrial Concrete Layout the Easy Way
Contractors are beginning to see the value of total station technology
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 Above: The contractor is checking a point at a lower elevation than the instrument. The angle of decline is automatically taken into account by the total station in the determination of the true point. Photo: Topcon
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Why technology is importantSteve Mays has been a carpenter for 30 years and currently does all the layout work for his company, Lusardi Construction, San Marcos, Calif. His company builds factory buildings, tilt-up buildings, and mini high-rise structures. They first learned about total stations three years ago at the World of Concrete. A year ago they bought a robotic total station because Mays found that he was needed in so many places, it was difficult to keep a second person with him. He currently lays out as many as five buildings in a week. He checks the location of buildings on sites, sets point locations for footings, checks slabs for squareness, and does pre-concrete checks for the location of anchor bolts and embedded items.
Rob Johns, vice president of Helmkamp Construction, Woodriver, Ill. (near St. Louis) says they do concrete work, iron work, and interior finishes for commercial projects, recently completing work on a hydrogen refinery. “We bought a total station because the complexity of our work necessitated it,” he says. “Layout with conventional equipment was too error prone.” Their layout work includes rough excavation, foundations, pier locations, reference points for anchor bolts and underground piping, and offset work.
Lindblad Construction, Joliet, Ill., does only industrial concrete work. Their anchor bolt layouts often require templates fabricated by machine shops from CAD drawings. Brian Long, a general superintendent for Lindblad, says that they install so many anchor bolts in a year that they realized it was time to stop using batter boards and string lines and invest in better technology. Although they still make the templates needed to hold anchor bolts in position, they locate them with a total station after the reinforcement is placed for a pad. They bought a model that can be upgraded to robotic technology. He adds that they now are setting points in half the time with a third of the labor.What to buyYou need to learn more about this technology because it's changing the way we do work in the concrete industry. The improvement in productivity and accuracy that it brings to construction sites affects bid prices, skill sets of labor, layout accuracy (plus the cost to do remedial work), and speed of construction. See the table for the many choices and models of equipment, data collectors, and software to fit your needs.
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