One of the largest retirement communities in America contacted GPRS to help them locate a leaking water line.
What they got was accurate existing conditions documentation for their entire campus.
GPRS Project Manager Chris Pomraning responded to an emergency request for a utility locate at Cross Keys Village – The Brethren Home Community in New Oxford, Pennsylvania. The village’s longtime facility director had recently retired, taking with him all his institutional knowledge of the campus’s buried infrastructure – including the location of a water line which the new facility director suspected of having a leak.
Cross Keys Village is one of the largest stand-alone non-profit retirement communities in the country, and the largest in Pennsylvania. The 334-acre community features cottages, Bridgewater homers, and apartments of various sizes. New Bridgewater homes and a new Day Services and Memory Support Resource Center will open in 2025.
Large campuses require a lot of buried infrastructure, and the countless improvement projects conducted over the decades on large campuses often lead to a tangled network of both active and abandoned buried utilities. This was the case at Cross Keys Village, which had no existing, accurate utility maps to guide their operations & maintenance projects.
“…They were really kind of trying to figure out where this water line was on their campus,” explained GPRS Market Segment Leader for Facilities, Rhett Teller. “[The new facility director] was like, ‘the guy who just retired took a lot of institutional knowledge with him, and now I’m here holding the bag and the keys and I don’t really know where everything is.’ Listening to his problem and trying to craft a customized solution for him was kind of our single objective walking into the initial meeting.”
Pomraning was able to locate the leaking water line with an electromagnetic (EM) locator and ground penetrating radar (GPR) scanner.
EM locators detect electromagnetic signals radiating from metallic pipes and cables. These signals can be created by the locator’s transmitter applying current to the pipe, or from current flow in a live electrical cable. They can also result from a conductive pipe acting as an antenna and re-radiating signals from stray electrical fields (detected by the EM locator functioning in Power Mode) and communications transmissions (Radio Mode).
Signals are created by the current flowing from the transmitter which travels along the conductor (line/cable/pipe) and back to the transmitter. The current typically uses a ground to complete the current. A ground stake is used to complete the circuit through the ground.
GPR scanners emit radio waves into the ground or a surface such as a concrete slab, then detect the interactions between those waves and any buried objects such as utilities, underground storage tanks (USTs), rebar, or post tension cable. These interactions appear on a readout as a series of hyperbolas that vary in size and shape depending on the material composition of the located obstruction.
GPRS Project Managers are specially trained to interpret the data provided by GPR scanning to determine the location of buried objects and provide you with an estimated depth for these items. You can learn more about this training here.
Pomraning connected to the copper water line from inside a nearby building and traced it outside using the EM locator. When he lost the signal due to the copper line transitioning to a plastic pipe, he switched to the GPR scanner to continue marking out the buried utility.
Pomraning discovered that a coax cable line had been inadvertently installed through the water line, which had compromised the latter’s integrity and led to the leak.
“We figured out the position of the leak because it was where a cable TV installer crossed the line,” he said.
Pomraning didn’t just mark out the location of the water and cable lines on-site using spray paint and flags to assist with the repair of the leak. He also uploaded the data into SiteMap® (patent pending), GPRS’ interactive utility mapping solution designed to provide accurate existing conditions documentation to protect assets and people.
Securely accessible 24/7 from any computer, tablet, or smartphone, SiteMap® is a single source of truth for all the critical infrastructure data a facility or campus needs to plan, design, manage, dig, and ultimately build better. It takes all the accurate, field-verified data collected on-site by GPRS’ team of SIM-certified Project Managers and puts it in the palm of your hands, whether you’re in your office in that facility or campus or working remotely from halfway across the world.
And with multiple levels of access available, we can tailor SiteMap® to meet your needs and circumstances – whether you manage one facility or oversee multiple campuses across the country.
Every GPRS customer receives complimentary SiteMap® access when they hire us to conduct a subsurface investigation. When Pomraning showed the facility director at Cross Keys his data inside SiteMap®, the facility director immediately saw the benefit of having his entire campus’s buried infrastructure mapped in the platform.
Teller, along with GPRS Business Development Manager Isaiah Runkle and Area Manager Sam Hart, worked with the facility director to create a customized SiteMap® Pro solution for Cross Keys. Through this agreement, GPRS Project Managers are actively mapping the entire campus and responding to emergency utility locating, video pipe inspection, and leak detection needs that arise during regular O&M.
“We’ve been really using every service…” Hart said. “It’s been a really good relationship.”
“Really, [the facility director] was trying to solve his issue with the water line,” Teller added. “From that, we started talking about all the other things that we could help them solve, and creating an as-built was one of those.”
From leaking water lines to accurate as-builts, GPRS Intelligently Visualizes The Built World® to keep your facility projects on time, on budget, and safe.
What can we help you visualize?
Frequently Asked Questions
What informational output do I receive when I hire GPRS to perform a utility locate?
Our Project Managers flag and paint our findings directly on the surface. This method of communication is the most accurate form of marking when excavation is expected to commence within a few days of service.
GPRS also uses a global positioning system (GPS) to collect data points of findings. We use this data to generate a plan, KMZ file, satellite overlay, or CAD file to permanently preserve results for future use. GPRS does not provide land surveying services. If you need land surveying services, please contact a professional land surveyor.
Please contact us to discuss the pricing and marking options your project may require.
What are the Benefits of Underground Utility Mapping?
Having an updated and accurate map of your subsurface infrastructure reduces accidents, budget overruns, change orders, and project downtime caused by dangerous and costly subsurface damage.
How does SiteMap® assist with Utility Mapping?
SiteMap®, powered by GPRS, is the industry-leading infrastructure management program. It is a single source of truth, housing the 99.8%+ accurate utility locating, concrete scanning, video pipe inspection, leak detection, and 3D laser scanning data our Project Managers collect on your job site. And the best part is you get a complimentary SiteMap® Personal Subscription when GPRS performs a utility locate for you.
