Each month we shall be answering the most common questions that we are asked by our clients. #1 – What is your earliest availability?

In many cases, speed of delivery outweighs value for money for some potential clients.

Before we can review our schedules and offer a suitable date we need to determine the following:

Size of survey and therefore how long it is likely to take

A 1 day survey is easier to accommodate at short notice than a 3 or 5 day survey so if you have an urgent enquiry, it may be prudent to offer us a priority area

The output required – we predominantly provide an AutoCAD DWG and PDF drawing as output

This details our Underground Mapping Survey findings and is overlaid onto a Topographical Survey Drawing, either provided by the client or produced by our surveyors.

For smaller projects or where clients are only looking at a number of specific locations, our findings may be spray painted onto the ground surface only and not recorded. This option also offers results instantly and is easiest to accommodate at short notice.

Personnel Required

Our survey staff are multi-disciplinary and as such are all trained, to a high standard, to use Radio Frequency Detection, Ground Penetrating Radar and Topographical Survey techniques. Some of our team are more experienced than others and some survey environments & specifications may require more experienced or differently trained staff.

Some sites need specialist training, such as within Substations, Water Treatment Sites, Highways or on the Railway and as such the correctly trained members of staff will be required.

Traffic Management

Whilst we have NRSWA Streetworks trained surveyors, the majority of safety measures requires permission from the local authority to implement (which takes 2-3 weeks to arrange). We can use our own short duration, mobile, traffic management measures in some cases, however the appropriateness of this requires review. This will delay how quickly we can complete survey works.

Night Work

This goes hand in hand with the Traffic Management requirements and can also relate to sites such as car parks or the railway. Surveys which require out of hours night-time working are harder to mobilise quickly as rest days need to be factored in.

Access

We have had numerous occasions where we have rearranged our schedules to accommodate an urgent survey, only for the client to come back and say that they cannot get us on in time. This is usually down to the operational nature of the site, site contacts or key people being unavailable or the site being unsuitable for survey works; parked cars cannot be moved, the site requires vegetation clearance or other works are taking place such as demolition or excavation works.

Weekends

If you have an urgent survey requirement then we can usually source a survey team to work on a weekend, so just ask and we will see what we can do.