OnSite News
First French Foray for OnSite
A team from OnSite's Special Surveys Division, based in Worksop, has just returned from a brief visit to Brest in Brittany, France.
Commissioned by JFM Conseils of Paris, our team travelled to Brittany to undertake CCTV inspections of nine strategically important storm water outfall sewers serving the city of Brest, all, bar one, located within the secure and historic Porte de la Brasserie, Frances largest naval base.
Once all the stringent security formalities had been completed giving our team full access to all areas of the base, work got under way.
Most of the sewers were constructed at the time the base was established in the mid 18th century using a myriad of construction materials and styles, and, in most cases, exceeding 2m in height.
To provide the highest quality of image and detail, we used our Cues Inc. Pan tilt and zoom camera system mounted on a Pipe Ranger crawler connected to the survey unit by a 500m cable.
Because all of the storm outfall sewers were affected by the tide, our survey unit was also equipped with a high resolution sonar pipeline profiling system and a range of floating equipment just in case there were sections that remained full of water, even at the lowest of low tides. However, by working flexibly around the tides (low tides fell either very early morning or late evening each day), our team were able to inspect all nine storm sewers using only camera and crawler equipment.
With the return ferry booked for early Sunday 1st November, our team, comprising of Gavin Roberts-Downing (Team Leader), Jason Nash and Leon Brown, had been tasked with ensuring that the inspections were completed in 6 days…not an easy task, especially taking tidal factors into account.
Thanks to a lot of hard work, a flexible approach and excellent teamwork between the OnSite crew and JFM's representatives on site, Francois and Antoine, the surveys were actually completed with a day to spare.
We are confident that the successful and timely completion of this project places OnSite in a very strong position to secure further specialist sewer inspections in France, for our client. JFM Conseils, in the future.
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