It has been a very busy last 18 months here at Phase SI. So much so that, other than job vacancies, we did not have the time to write any news stories or updates during all of 2014!
We saw a significant increase in our archaeological geophysical survey workload last year. This was due to a general increase in workload in the sector, coupled with recognition by our established clients of the benefits (cost and quality) of our MACS surveys and our informed interpretations and reporting. We now have a second cart system in our equipment pool so that we can better meet this growing demand over the coming year.
Our biggest area of growth this year however has been in the utility tracing side of our business. This again appears to have been driven by increasing numbers of developments that require utility mapping coupled with an understanding by our clients of the benefits of a high quality utility tracing survey. We have seen our workload increase for all types of development projects, particularly for residential schemes but also including commercial, schools and general infrastructure projects. Interestingly we have noticed a significant increase in the number of surveys requiring a detailed / recorded ground penetrating radar (GPR) as opposed to GPR scanning, in large part due to the introduction of PAS128. Here at Phase SI we have have the equipment and expertise to carry out both mark-out and recorded GPR surveys (the latter requires detailed post-processing in the office) and our senior surveyors have more than ten years experience of carrying out surveys that require GPR data processing.
We have also undertaken a variety of other types of geophysical surveys, including detailed GPR surveys to locate features such as buried foundations, basements and voids, and EM surveys on brownfield sites and our largest EM survey to date (over 20 ha) to locate mineshafts and we have undertaken an increasing number of topographic surveys. In short we’ve been busy!
