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It’s not always just about the numbers. The impressive accuracy from Trimble’s RPT600 inspired total confidence from AV Unibrak. The Rapid Positioning Tool has reduced fieldwork by 30%, completely justifying their investment.

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AV Unibrak is one of the UK’s largest independent ventilation companies. They offer a full design, planning, installation, and maintenance service. They work on high-profile projects across the UK, including Manchester’s Crown Street and the London Dock and Nine Elms Parkside.

As they also work with some of the country’s biggest contractors, it’s important they are able to do timely, high-quality work. Under the guidance of Managing Director, Jamie McCann, the company has established a reputation for doing just that.

Jamie realises that many people view the construction industry with suspicion. Delays are inevitable, errors occur and the methods used to address the issues often rely more on speed than quality. He works hard to separate his company from this ‘near enough’ approach. In fact, the AV Unibrak mission is to provide a high-quality job that satisfies the client and benefits the company itself.

“If there’s one outstanding benefit of the introduction of this new system, it has to be simply the quality of the setting out work that we can now produce. In fact any member of our site team can now produce this level of work, not just the tape measure veterans. We can show our contractors that everything is precise because the Trimble is always right! 

This has opened up new doors for us and the additional work that we were awarded on the New Victoria project is a great example of this. Correcting measurement work for Building Standards can cost millions of pounds so our contractors value the accuracy we can bring to a project. In fact, the only people who don’t like the RPT600 are some of our fellow sub-contractors because the quality of our work shows inaccuracies elsewhere.”

– Jamie McCann, Managing Director, AV Unibrak

Mapping Hardware Selected for a Clear Purpose

Always on the hunt to improve efficiency, Jamie felt that the company’s process of setting out ventilation services was an area for improvement. Along with the company’s Head of Design, Gabriel Asante-Boadu, he decided that moving away from traditional tape-based measuring methods could make a massive difference.

Though the old system still worked well, it relied on the expertise of their staff in setting out by hand. This limited how many jobs could be done, creating a bottleneck when demand for these services were high.

And even with their highly-trained and proficient staff, there was potential for human error using offsets.

After researching possible systems, both Gabriel and Jamie thought that

Trimble’s RPT600 Rapid Positioning Tool would be a useful addition for site work.

This compact setting-out tool has an easy-to-see green laser that points directly where you need to set out. All with millimetre accuracy. And it’s automated functions and guided workflows mean it is simple to use as well.

The flexibility of the RPT600 also appealed to Gabriel. It is easy to integrate into existing workflows, so their team wouldn’t face much disruption during set-up either.

“The Trimble equipment clearly provided us with the best possible scenario, primarily because it combined the accuracy we required (consistent millimetre positions) with ease of use. Our setting out team members are not IT experts and we could see that the Trimble RPT600 system would be easy for them to adapt to within days and in fact they were up and running after just a couple of run throughs.”

Putting the Trimble RPT600 to Good Use

AV Unibrak purchased 3 RPT600 systems, alongside Trimble FieldLink software and rugged Trimble T100 tablets to control them. These purpose-built systems are more than capable of running power-hungry construction applications and are straightforward to use, making them the perfect companion.

The final part of their packable was Trimble FieldPoints. This software works as a plug-in to CAD and Revit to let them create 2D and 3D point clouds in their design files. They can also be easily exported into FieldLink software for use on-site.

With these tools at their disposal, setting out work is now managed from their office. They’ve also improved communication with automated drawing updates making sure that the onsite team is always working from the current design. 

This has led to increased accuracy on every job, reducing errors despite increasing speed.

Another benefit for Gabriel is the ability to track progress in real-time. This lets him plan more clearly, making sure everybody’s time is optimally used. 

And, as the whole field team can use this straightforward system, they don’t have to rely on experts to take every measurement. This is backed up by automated reporting that allows Gabriel to check all work is done correctly per the drawing.

Key Benefits for AV Unibrak

• Confidence in the quality of work done.
• Reduction in human error, the RPT is always right
• Easy to integrate into an existing workflow
• Improved communications that ensure the site time is always working from the latest drawings, reducing errors
• 30% reduction in rework
• Extremely easy to use by all members of the site team allowing for a better distribution of skills
• Opens up new doors for setting-out all of a job’s MEP services

Qualitative Benefits

AV Unibrak has already used this system on 15 projects across the UK. In fact, it’s in use all day, every day.

In the past for big projects, Gabriel had to provide a 2D drawing plan of each floor plate with over a thousand setting out points on it. This was then forwarded to the site team.

With the 26-storey residential development at New Victoria Tower in Manchester, this work setting out the ventilation was so impressive it earned AV Unibrak all of the MEP setting out work across both towers.

While the accuracy of the RPT600 system has delivered a reduction in rework of around 30%, Jamie stresses that the real benefits of their new system is qualitative.

AV Unibrak has also been supported by KOREC, Trimble’s UK and Irish distributor. Thanks to the T100, KOREC was able to provide excellent support remotely, dealing quickly with queries.

Now their new workflow is firmly established, AV Unibrak are extending their investment. They’ve purchased a Trimble XR10 Mixed Reality System running FieldLink MR so that they can visualise their designs using holograms. They can also increase the accuracy of their RPT600’s, setting out to designs with mm accuracy,

Follow us to catch up with them in a few months to see how they’re getting on!

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