What looked like a total mess turned out to be much worse than advertised. After a lot of back and forth about possible options, a plan was finally agreed upon. Heartland was going to use a Trimble 930 total station accompanied by Trimble business center to do a design build for a long anticipated paving project. The only problem was, this was not your typical paving project. It was the entrance and exit of a feed truck loading bay, that ran every day for 10 hours a day. You can’t just shut this down, this happens to be the only loading bay on the site.

After examining the needs on the feed yard, Heartland started by building a design to get water moving away from the existing buildings. It was a unique site that sat in a hill side with very little drainage. The site loading facility had been is service for almost 10 years, with only a sand and gravel drive. There were piles of depress over 10′ tall, a drainage creek that ran down the middle and buildings that towered over 60′ high on three sides. All these obstacles would have made it impossible for typical instruments such as GPS surveying or lasers and transits. After the initial design was created, they over-layed the design with an existing TOPO map to check grades and see approximate quantities that were required for removal.

After all parties were pleased with the design, Heartland surveyed in grade stakes and rough grade was cut in. After several more days of bringing the fine grade down to a tolerance of less than 1/8” concrete was formed and poured. A high early strength mix was used that allowed the concrete to gain enough strength to allow trucks to drive across the paving in less than 24 hours.  The project turned out to be a success for everyone involved. It took some strategic planning by everyone but at the end of the day everything went off as planned.

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