Max Padovan & Associates (MPA Surveying) has built a strong reputation for delivering high-quality surveying services across Australia’s major infrastructure, mining, and construction projects. With decades of experience and a focus on maintaining consistent surveying standards, MPA has played a key role in the successful delivery of numerous large-scale developments. This project highlights MPA’s contribution to a busway infrastructure project, showcasing the expertise, precision, and innovative surveying practices that have made the company a trusted partner on complex civil construction projects.
Founded by Max Padovan in January 1988 and incorporated in November 1995 in response to increased demand for its services, continues to expand and now has offices in Brisbane, Maleny, Mackay, and Charters Towers. The firm can best be described as being in the business of providing surveying services to increase the productivity and reliability of Project environments through the assessment, implementation and ongoing support of surveyors, survey crews and in-house surveying computer services. MPA’s key strength has been the ability to provide a surveying consultancy service with particular emphasis on the standards and practices used on each project.
From initial assessments through to final implementation, MPA has undertaken and completed several medium-tolarge Mining and Construction Projects during recent years, including Projects for several large corporate clients.
Recent Projects include the Roma Street Parklands, Queensland University Convention Centre, the Gold Coast Rail Line – Civil 7, the Roy Wallace Building at Southbank Institute of TAFE, and the Southeast Transit Authority – Package 4 – for which 12d Model was used with great success.
MPA was the survey consultant to the principal contractor Henry Walker Eltin for the South East Transit project SET4. The project consisted of 6km of busway from Brisbane’s Nathan to Eight Mile plains with the addition of transit lanes to the Pacific Motorway. Associated with the construction was approximately 8km of retaining walls, 13 bridges, and two bus stations.
12d Model was chosen as the main software package used by MPA on site, a decision which was never regretted as more features were added throughout the project and greater reliability was placed on it.
As progress claims are submitted by the contractor at the end of each month, quantities are required quickly and in such a way as to allow future auditing and justification of the claim. The use of supertins in 12d Model allowed MPA to complete their field survey using predominately GPS, then produce a surface which combined all of the previous months’ surveys. Often the requirement for detail and bulk quantities to be broken down by geographical area and type meant that 80-100 separate quantities were reported that month in their survey report.
As an aid for construction planning and mass haul calculation, the remaining quantities to end of project were also reported. This entire process could be completed within 2 days from the start of the end-ofmonth process.
“Often there is a need to relate the design concept to field supervisors and Engineers,” said MPA’s Ken Cross. “12d’s three-dimensional visualisation capabilities were useful in this regard and they made constant use of dynamic sectioning and drive throughs for this purpose. The drive through method was also useful when checking for gross error in end-of-month surveys.”
On the dynamic section through the data, MPA would typically turn on models representing the original surface, the latest end-of-month surface, design to subgrade and design finished level. The ease and speed with which this information could be displayed and updated on screen made it extremely useful for design visualisation. MPA provided the quantities and geometry for traffic switches during the different phases of construction. 12d’s simple editing of horizontal and vertical geometry made this a far simpler task, as usually the designs were altered several times to suit cost, constructability and time constraints. At each change, quantities were able to be rapidly provided and costs determined for asphalt, paving etc.
Several design changes were made to the original in order to produce cost or time savings, particularly with the retaining walls, and 12d proved quite useful here for the rapid display of construction elements in the cross sections.
During the project, many times per day, Engineers or Supervisors would require spatial information pertaining to design relative to current construction, and 12d Model has several useful tools for providing quick answers to questions such as: ‘How much material do I need to order for a retaining wall backfill?’ and ‘How far down is it to the existing stormwater pipe from our current position?’ The dynamic depth between tin surfaces, flow arrows, and dynamic display of crossfall between strings were just a few of the features MPA utilised constantly for this purpose.
Another feature MPA used frequently is the ability to use pipe linetypes in cross section and therefore check clearances to existing services during construction.“We have used 12d Model every day for 2 years,” Mr Cross said. “In south-east Queensland, for any roadworks that we’re involved in, and even for construction work, we use 12d. It’s going really well.”
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