Excavator system speeds up hill-climb track construction

‘That’s really been one of the highlights of this investment from my perspective; that our people are enjoying what they’re doing.’ – Goldsmith Civil & Environmental principal Cameron Goldsmith
LEFT: Goldsmith Civil and Environmental’s Komatsu excavator was fitted with Topcon’s X63 system. RIGHT: Position Partners Matt Brown and
Bob Bent (orange vests) with Robert McKenzie.

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dozer and GD655-3 grader were used to get the initial levels.
“It was a difficult site to work on with hilly terrain and many grade changes. The combination of rover, GNSS and excavator has been excellent,” he said.

“With the excavator operation, it was most advantageous to have the multi-constellation system because the operator was working on a site where there were not huge amounts of cut, but there was lots of detail due to the topography of the site.

“With this system, he was able to see what was going on in real time,” said Goldsmith. “He wasn’t relying on our surveyor to come onto site and do any setup; instead he was actually doing the setup himself and producing a finished product then and there.”

Goldsmith said that since purchasing the Topcon 3D GPS+ systems, he’d noticed the supervisors and operators taking more “ownership” on projects.

“They feel as though they’re contributing more, and they really enjoy the fact that they are adding value to what they are doing. That’s really been one of the highlights of this investment from my perspective; that our people are enjoying what they’re doing,” he said.

Robert McKenzie, Goldsmith Civil & Environmental’s supervisor on the hill-climb project, said “having the rovers and excavator-based GPS made the project much easier and faster.

“On this project, we had one-in-one batters and, if you didn’t get it right, the whole thing wouldn’t work, it wouldn’t come to plan,” he said.

“The GNSS with the GR-3 rover, gave me really fine detail, where to pinpoint the batters, the toes and the center of the road, which made my job a lot easier, and it also helped the operators know exactly where the points were.

“There is no way without this equipment we could have completed the project in the time we did, as it would have required hundreds of pegs, and a lot of extra effort marking out the batters, toes, centers of roads and culverts that we put in,” he said.

Excavator operator Keith McKie said that having the Topcon X63 on the machine doubled productivity and made his job of cutting out the roadways much easier, as he did it on his own, and didn’t need others to do levels and pegs for him.
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