RELEVANCE OF ENGINEERING SURVEYS IN CIVIL ENGINEERING PROJECTS

RELEVANCE OF ENGINEERING SURVEYS IN CIVIL ENGINEERING PROJECTS

CHAPTER ONE

• INTRODUCTION

Engineering survey is considered to be one of the preliminary stages of work carried out on site before the erection of structures.

Engineering surveying is carried out to collect requisite data for planning and designing, as well as execution of engineering project. Before any route locations of highway are finalized, various Engineering surveying work may be done in the following four stages, namely; map study, Reconnaissance, preliminary and detail survey. Among these, three stages are considered with all possible alternative rules, keeping in view the various requirements (principles and factors governing alignment).

Hence, Engineering survey is a type of survey that is required before, during and after the execution of all civil engineering projects. It as well involves the determination of both the natural and artificial features (offset) on or beneath the earth surface and utilizing these features in the planning, designing and construction of the civil Engineering project of interest.

In another view, Engineering survey deals with any surveying work carried out in connection with the construction of civil Engineering project. As such, Engineers and Surveyors involved in a surveying site are responsible for all aspects of dimensional control on such scheme.

Also, surveying is the technique of determining the relative positions of different features on, above and beneath the Earth surface by means of direct or indirect measurement and finally represent them on plan or map.

Engineering surveys are usually based on horizontal and vertical control frameworks which consist of fixed points called control station, as the name or title implies, defined points on an arbitrary two – dimension horizontal plane which covers the area of interest.

It is also the monitoring process to make sure that the structure remains in the right position and recording the final build position.

Engineering survey also refers to as any survey operation executed as information aid for any engineering construction project, which is an essential part of all large constructions such as roads, railways, dams, bridges and residential areas. And this is very broad category including a range of various types to suit different purposes, one of which is the construction survey.

Construction survey is done both during and after a project has been completed, as such is a very important category of engineering surveys which serves a purpose of checking over construction process as well as to maintain the building once they are completed.

Another category of engineering surveys is design survey, which is a group of survey done during the design phase of construction after the planning survey is being done.

While the planning survey is done at a very first stage even before the two earlier mentioned stages, and such survey is otherwise called investigation survey (As built) which its element include

• Vertical control
• Level
• Gully
• Valley
• The cross-sectional area of channel
• Reservoir area surveys, etc.

• AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The aim of this study is to explore or dig out the relevance of engineering surveys in civil engineering projects of a particular interest. Thus, this is achieved through the following objectives:

• By setting out, which is the transfer of the structure from the blue – print to the ground, in a proposed marked position.
• By preparing an engineering details plan and section of various section such as roads, railways, bridges, dams and other structures related to civil engineering project.
• Collection of field data.
• Analyzing and calculating field parameters for setting out operation of an engineering project of interest.
• Determining the relative position of the existing offset on the ground of a site.

• SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The scope of this project involves digging out the basic platform to determine the relevance of engineering surveys in civil engineering projects.