The Delaware Claymont Regional Transportation Center needed an upgrade to increase passenger safety, greater accessibility to the station and trains, passenger convenience and regional rail service. The $54M design-build project—a collaboration of the Delaware Department of Transportation (DOT), Pennsylvania DOT, Amtrak and Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA)—includes construction of a new train station and parking center near the existing Amtrak rail line.

An automated Trimble S9 monitoring total station measures high-accuracy displacement of active railway tracks during nearby construction activities at the station.

The new station and garage will feature a multi-modal transportation center and state-of-the-art amenities, with improved access for bus transit, bicycles and pedestrians.

An automated Trimble S9 monitoring total station measures high-accuracy displacement of active railway tracks during nearby construction activities at the station.

To maintain the structural integrity of the train tracks, current facility and surrounding area, the four Amtrak rail lines needed to be monitored for movement throughout construction. Project owners and general contractor Wagman teamed up with Navarro & Wright, a consulting engineering firm with extensive experience on large transportation projects in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, for the monitoring portion of the construction.

Navarro & Wright has completed numerous manual monitoring services for transportation projects, although the firm had never ventured into automated monitoring campaigns—until now. When the firm’s project manager reviewed the Claymont scope and site conditions, he knew it needed an automated monitoring campaign for safe, efficient, timely and cost-effective execution. Knowing there would be many moving pieces for this high-profile automated monitoring project, Navarro & Wright turned to the Trimble Monitoring team for additional input.

The AMTS are powered by solar systems to ensure long-term operation and sustainable power generation.

“We recently completed a rail project using conventional monitoring for SEPTA, which included 30 targets,” recalls Greg Gress, survey manager in the King of Prussia office for Navarro & Wright. “Our surveyors worked 10:00 p.m. – 5:00 a.m. monitoring shifts, sleeping in their trucks between measurements. Automated monitoring is a vast improvement from this process, not only from a safety standpoint, but also because we can make efficiency and cost improvements with an automated campaign.”

This evening time photo shows the locations of prisms placed on the rail track used to measure any displacement that could occur from nearby construction activities.

The primary challenges for the project team included power and connectivity at the site, as well as positioning three automated monitoring total stations (AMTS) for ideal coverage of the track. Of course, the Mid-Atlantic weather patterns also factored into this project.

The Navarro & Wright site team, led by Matthew Sannik, utilized the following instruments and tools:

The instruments and tools made it possible for Sannik and his team to overcome many of the challenges presented by this project, including:

◾ Monitoring measurement coverage. The monitoring system needed to measure movement data over 1,000 feet for four separate sets of train tracks. To get the proper coverage and redundancy, three total stations were placed along the track for monitoring. The monitoring team mounted total stations up to 40 feet high on the parking garage to achieve proper site lines for all prisms mounted on the track. Coverage of total stations overlapped so that if one measurement was missed, it would get picked up by another.

Although this is the first automated monitoring project for Navarro & Wright, it certainly does not show. All instruments and tools were set up and running smoothly on the Claymont Regional Transportation Center project, which is expected to be completed in fall 2023.

Taken at night, this photo highlights the position of one of the AMTS relative to the large amount of prisms deployed on the rail track.

“The Trimble Monitoring team has been a huge help in getting the system set up and running,” said Gress. “This is new technology for us and having the Trimble team available to assist us through the process was crucial.”

The automated monitoring campaign for this project offered the following benefits over a manual monitoring process:

In fact, the automated monitoring campaign was roughly half the cost of running a manual monitoring process, considering labor hours. And, the project gained even more efficiencies because Navarro & Wright could utilize those survey crews for other essential work necessary at the project site or other projects.

“I love that I have the ability to troubleshoot the system live,” said Gress. “If there is a concern on a section of track, I can immediately look at the system, take additional measurements, push a button and receive a report with all the data to review and distribute immediately to the stakeholder.”

A concrete foundation was built to ensure long-term stability for the AMTS setup.

Gress said he’s recently seen an increasing number of project specifications that will require the need for automated monitoring, and he expects Navarro & Wright will utilize AMTS on many future projects.

Rowland Chen is the monitoring sales manager at Trimble. For the past five years, Rowland has been supporting and installing automated monitoring systems around the world. He received a Bachelor of Science in Geophysics from the Colorado School of Mines and is based in Denver, Colo.

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