New Plymouth District Council (NPDC) is committed to providing sustainable, efficient and cost-effective services. Sewage collection and treatments services are essential for the maintenance of the public health, economy and affordability of the region. As part of its review of its sewer asset data NPDC engaged WSP to investigate and gather information on its sewer pump stations.
CLIENT BRIEF/PROJECT CHALLENGES
With a large number of sewer pump stations built over a long period of time, NPDC had a substantial information gap in information on its assets. What information existed on many of the pump stations was unknown, inadequate, or incorrect. This made planning for upgrades and general maintenance of the existing infrastructure difficult, particularly as there was scarcity of information on capacity. WSP was engaged to gather as-built information and verify any existing information on 35 sewer pump stations.
OUR SOLUTION
A typical approach to this would be labour-intensive and risky traditional surveying. However, WSP identified this as an ideal project to test out an innovative new methodology. Laser scanning these sites and transforming the information into 3D point clouds would not only created very detailed "as-built models" of each pump station, it resulted in significant cost savings and mitigated the safety risks of people entering confined spaces to carry our surveys. WSP conducted the laser scans and created spatially accurate 3D point clouds of each site and these models were used to determine all the current as-built queries that NPDC had. These models will also be used to develop the maintenance and upgrade planning in the near future.
OUTCOME/CLIENT BENEFITS
NPDC is in a strong position to make informed decisions about its existing sewer assets, prioritise upgrades and continue deliver to the needs of the region. WSP’s innovative approach to the project provided excellent value for money, costing only a fraction of the traditional methodology, and mitigated safety risks for staff.
WSP laser scanned each of the pump station sites and created spatially accurate point clouds that were used for asset identification, measurement, condition assessment and operation verification.
