Cogswell Surveys wins Excellence Award

February 16, 2015 – At the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors’ 2014 Excellence Awards, a Silver Excellence Award was presented to Cambridge-headquartered Cogswell Surveys Limited, which has been utilising a Topcon HiPer II receiver and base station for the last two years.

The Silver Excellence Award was for Cogswell Surveys’ entry showcasing their involvement in a successful project to underground 110KVa Transpower cables through the centre of the St. Kilda subdivision near Cambridge.

The undergrounding of 1.3km of mains power cables provided the developers the chance to design and fully utilise the land without the obstruction of large transmission towers, but first involved Transpower accepting the proposal.

Cogswell director and St. Kilda surveyor Pete McLachlan believes that without the combination of Topcon technology onsite – Topcon machine control software on civil works company C&R Development’s excavator and dozer, as well as Cogswell Survey Limited’s own HiPer II rover – detailed aspects of the St. Kilda site couldn’t have been completed so quickly.

The HiPer II receiver allows Pete to capture survey data onto an SD card which he’s then able to hand to the excavator or bulldozer operator to be uploaded to the Topcon machine control equipment, giving them their work parameters.

“Because we have a permanent Topcon base station set up onsite, I can click it on and go; the Topcon gear speeds everything up and just makes everything so much more straightforward.”

The three member judging panel for the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors’ Excellence Awards (which is now in its 6th year) noted that the success of the 110KVa Transpower cable undergrounding project at St. Kilda should have a positive impact on future developments nationwide.