Commercial
Finnish Group
Construction never stops, not even in a busy mall in the middle of the Christmas shopping season. As a “Noodles” Restaurant was being put into an existing mall in December of 2007, the mall management wanted to be sure that the operation of the rest of the facility would not be disturbed. But how can you guarantee that when you must core drill several holes through existing concrete known to contain electrical conduit?
David Shotwell of Commercial Finish Group called Ground Penetrating Radar Systems to solve this problem.
Mitch Ross of GPRS Virginia was able to be on site with little notice and precisely mark all potential obstructions in the concrete. Also visible during the scanning process were several steel beams that were not considered when placing the proposed core drilling locations. Many holes were moved to avoid these beams. Before the coring took place, he delivered a report to the facility owner detailing the testing methods and the results.
When the coring was performed, all of the holes went through without any conduits or support beams being hit. Thanks to GPRS, business was able to continue as usual.
GPR applications such as this one are very common for the team at GPRS. We are often called to sites to help with one problem, or one object that our customer wants to avoid when core drilling or cutting in the concrete and it is not uncommon for us to find other items that are equally as important to avoid.
Concrete applications for ground penetrating radar are the primary service we provide. These applications include mapping out reinforcing steel (rebar and post-tensioning), structural steel (I-beams), electrical conduits and other utilities prior to saw cutting and core drilling. We also perform GPR services to scan for voids below slabs and to assess concrete condition and thickness.
Mitch Ross runs our operations in Virginia and Maryland. He can be reached by phone at (703) 728-7333 or by email at mitch.ross@gp-radar.com.
