Precision
Positioning
Alva Construction Ltd. streamlines pile driving
with new visualization and control system
By Judith Powers
As Alva Construction Ltd. Of
Antigonish, N.S. began the
timber pile component of a
major project to replace the
fishing wharf at Little Dover, N.S., engineering
manager Reg Tramble was
looking for a machine control system
that would streamline the placement
of the piles.
The job involved driving 180 timber
piles – 132 bearing or vertical piles and
48 batter piles in the L-shaped pile work
wharf section. Positioning and adjusting
the angles of the batter piles had
always been accomplished by crewmembers
in a raft, which in addition
to being time consuming, presented an
element of danger to the crew.
In March of this year, Tramble was
about to leave for CONEXPO-CON/
AGG in Las Vegas when he received a
call from a local SITECH Trimble dealer,
TECHNOLOGY UPDATE
who suggested that he connect with
Lou Nash, president of Measutronics,
at the Trimble display at the show.
Measutronics is a Florida-based
marine dealer that sells Trimble and
other high-end marine sensing equipment.
It is also a system integrator that
combines any number of third-party
sensors to provide the applications
needed by its customers.
The resulting meeting in Las Vegas
set in motion a process that ended in
the creation of a positioning system
that promises to cut the time for positioning
and driving piles in half.
At the show, Trimble and Teledyne
had announced the re-branding of
Teledyne’s Port Dredging Survey (PDS)
software with the Trimble name, and
they were demonstrating the new
software package, entitled, “Trimble
Marine Construction (TMC) powered
PHOTOS COURTESY OF ALVA CONSTRUCTION LTD.
This drone view of the project taken
in mid-May shows the crane with
the leads removed and the cap
framework commencing on the
timber pile section of the wharf
PILING CANADA 9