Late one evening, GPRS Project Manager Thomas Judge received a message from Kristopher Nickerson, a Senior Project Manager for Skanska. Judge had worked Skanska often, but he wasn’t expecting to hear about a job so late in the afternoon.
Nickerson had reached out asking for some help locating electrical lines for a charity in South Florida called the Bit-By-Bit Medical Therapeutic Riding Center. Bit-By-Bit is a charity that provides healing with the help of horses to special needs children and veterans. The accredited riding center provides speech, occupational, and physical therapies, while also aspiring to empower everyone they serve and transform their lives.
When their initial local utility locator had to bow out, the charity needed a back-up and they needed it immediately. Nickerson also made sure to inform Judge that Skanska was working free of charge for the charity, so Judge would be donating his time.
Judge didn’t hesitate to agree to the job and called fellow GPRS Project Manager Cameron Church, who also agreed to help.
“It was the night before when he sent out that message and I said, ‘Yeah, I'm clear,’” Church said. “Tomorrow, throw it on me first thing in the morning and let's get this done for them.”
Church, who is a veteran of the United States Air Force, was even more honored to be able to help once he learned the charity does work with veterans.
“Being a veteran of the Air Force myself, I knew this was a chance to give back,” Church said. “Let’s do it.”
The next morning, Judge and Church arrived at Bit-By-Bit Medical Therapeutic Riding Center. Upon their arrival, they performed a site walk to analyze the area while also having the opportunity to check out the majestic horses that have helped countless people in need. The job was simple: all they had to do was locate underground electrical lines so an area of the barn could be converted into an office space. However, there were some factors that made this job more interesting and potentially difficult.
“The whole area between that barn and where the utility pole was located at, where the power was coming off, that was all sand,” Church explained.
The vast majority of where Judge and Church would be scanning was in a sanded area that served as a corral and exercise space for the horses. GPRS Project Managers are trained to mark underground utilities with spray paint or flags that symbolize different utilities depending on the color. Marking the lines was going to be difficult as the markings could be easily altered by the horses and volunteers walking around the sanded areas.
Despite any challenges Judge and Church would have faced, their extensive training and experience allowed them to find the right solutions.
“It's sand. So with the horses riding around here, how do you want this marked?” Church pondered. “I can paint this, and I can flag it, but it's not going to take long for the marks to be completely gone. So then, they just reassured me that they would do what they could to make sure that the marks were going to stay there, and we took plenty of pictures before I left that day.”
GPRS’ SIM-certified Project Managers utilize Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Electromagnetic (EM) locators to achieve 99.8% accurate utility scans and lower the risk of utility strikes at all stages of the project life cycle. Once the utilities are located, every GPRS customer receives their digitalized utility locates via SiteMap®, GPRS’ secure infrastructure and facility management software application.
After Church and Judge documented and marked their findings, they presented them to Bit-By-Bit who had a different idea of where these lines were located.
“We traced out the electric and it ended up being on the opposite end of their field from where they thought it was,” Church explained. “They knew it came off the [utility] pole and they knew it crossed over, but they thought it crossed over on the east side and it actually crossed over on the west. So, they were a little surprised by that.”
Without GPRS’ help, who knows how much time and resources would have been wasted looking in the wrong place for an electrical line?
Upon the completion of the utility scan and data delivery, Bit-By-Bit and Skanska were both appreciative of the time and effort both Judge and Church donated.
“I just know that Phil Nickerson could not have been more thankful that we were able to come through for them,” Judge said.
Judge and Church were both honored to have helped out a charity that does such great work and were able to come through for a long time partner.
“Thank you to Skanska for allowing us to be a small part of the project and Bit-By-Bit Medical Therapeutic Riding Center for the amazing work they are doing,” Judge said.
Small acts can have big impacts, and whether we’re scanning an underground electrical line or an entire skyscraper, GPRS’ industry-leading 99.8% accurate utility scans help you Intelligently Visualize The Built World® by showing you what you need to see.
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