Councils often refer to MHWS in their rules as the basis for yard setbacks etc. We are often required to show this ‘line’ on our plans, unfortunately for us (and in the words of the Baldrick) the sea is a big blue wobbly thing! Furthermore, it’s rising!!
Professional knowledge and judgment is required to ascertain this theoretical level and thus produce a ‘line’ on a plan. There are many techniques and methods that can be utilised and our team work hard to ensure that the ‘line’ we show is correct and will stand the scrutiny of expert review and the courts.
If MHWS is important to your project let us know early and we will ensure its right.
Our congratulations goes out to Mike Hartley and Nick Sayes of Daniel Marshall Architects on there being awarded the AAA Cavalier Bremworth Awards 2010. Their project "A path to Dwell On" won over the judges and provoked much thoughtful discussion.
Yes we do ROCK thanks to the team at The Rock and our new Orange County sunglasses!!
We where the lucky winners of the The Rock radio stations text in competition and the lovely crew from The Rock hand delivered them to our offices much to our delight. A big thanks to Orange County and The Rock for these superb sunglasses.
When cracks appeared in the Historic Palace Hotel yesterday afternoon BCL immediately mobilised our deformation monitoring team to the site. Amid real fears for the immediate and catastrophic collapse of the building our team quickly assessed the requirements of engineers and implemented a remote deformation array on the building facade. Within ten minutes we where able to begin streaming information back to the contractor, engineers, Council, politicians, historic places, media and the demolition crew.
This stream of extremely accurate and consistent information continued throughout the evening with the hope that we would see some slowing in the collapse of the building. Finally the Auckland Council CEO Mr Doug McKay made the very difficult and very sad decision to demolish the hotel. Our team completed their work and watched with sadness as the demolition progressed through the night.
Yes, our team is ready to plumb the depths as well as the tops with our newly acquired Wild Heerbrugg ZNL Optical Plummet. It has just arrived in the country and we are very excited to have this precise instrument in house. The ZNL allows us to plumb in both the nadir (down) and zenith (up) directions to an accuracy of 1:30000!! This is a world class instrument and is the standard for high rise buildings and mines throughout the world. It is used to survey high rise buildings, shafts, towers, gantries, light poles, top down construction, basements, deformation monitoring etc.
If you need to ensure verticality give our team a call.
Congratulations to Stephen Smith of S3 Architects for his recent win in the Starter Home Design Competition run by the Department of Building and Housing. It is great to see real examples of architects applying there design flair and adding value to projects at the affordable end of the market.
The new Auckland Council GIS system has arrived!! Whilst officially being launched on the 28th of this month we have been had a sneak preview and it looks fantastic. Based on the Alggi GIS this new system is smooth, quick and very cool with the ability to fade layers, jump to street view, save and load settings and heaps of other stuff. The contours and aerial ortho-photography is also from the Alggi GIS (Lidar derived) and is a great resource.
Public drainage is not up yet however we understand that it will be added in the next few days.
This is a wonderful resource, perfect for planning etc however like all GIS information use it with caution it is definitely not reliable enough for design purposes.
As well as mulling over the spelling of Whanganui the Surveyor General has been busy re-writing the Rules of Cadastral Surveying. In May 2010 these were issued. In order to comply with these rules we are required to produce a certified Cadastral Survey Dataset (CSD) for every pegging survey. This ensures that the pegs are not subject to challenge and that they are legal pegs.
Surveyors that do not lodge CSD information after placing pegs are committing a serious breach of the Surveyors Generals Rules and may be guilty of professional misconduct.
Our clients are supplied with a certified CSD upon completion of every pegging survey.
During excavations phone calls that include the words ‘cracks in the neighbours building’ can send a shiver up your spine (and your insurance companies). Proving liability either way can be expensive and time consuming. A growing part of our work is precise deformation monitoring, which is the measurement of any movement in a structure.
We use our Leica DNA03 digital level with invar staff that is capable of accuracies of 0.3mm per km! This type of accuracy is critical when looking for small movements. It is also critical to begin monitoring before construction or excavation and to have a methodology that will stand up to the rigours of construction (and courts).
Call our team before ‘that’ phone call to discuss your requirements.
If you have a GPS on your boat, car, phone, or amongst your tramping gear you will probably have wondered how accurate it really is. Your standard GPS is good for around +/-50m (no matter what the salesperson told you) it will often perform better than this (say +/-10m to +/-20m) but will tend to wander off during the day. The other aspect is the accuracy of the maps used and it is common that errors of 200m or more are found in GPS maps, this is a particular problem with nautical charts (never navigate using just GPS).
Our survey grade systems are good for around +/-20mm so around 250 times more accurate than domestic systems, however they are around 400 times more expensive!!
If you have a GPS on your boat, car, phone, or amongst your tramping gear you will probably have wondered how accurate it really is. Your standard GPS is good for around +/-50m (no matter what the salesperson told you) it will often perform better than this (say +/-10m to +/-20m) but will tend to wander off during the day. The other aspect is the accuracy of the maps used and it is common that errors of 200m or more are found in GPS maps, this is a particular problem with nautical charts (never navigate using just GPS).
Our survey grade systems are good for around +/-20mm so around 250 times more accurate than domestic systems, however they are around 400 times more expensive!!
If you have a GPS on your boat, car, phone, or amongst your tramping gear you will probably have wondered how accurate it really is. Your standard GPS is good for around +/-50m (no matter what the salesperson told you) it will often perform better than this (say +/-10m to +/-20m) but will tend to wander off during the day. The other aspect is the accuracy of the maps used and it is common that errors of 200m or more are found in GPS maps, this is a particular problem with nautical charts (never navigate using just GPS).
Our survey grade systems are good for around +/-20mm so around 250 times more accurate than domestic systems, however they are around 400 times more expensive!!
