The Nordica is a Finnish ice breaking ship during the winter and an offshore support vessel in the summer. CTC marine part of the Tri-Corp group had commissioned the vessel for a pipe laying project. This required a large complex carousel to be fitted to the Nordica’s deck. CTC had a requirement for a detailed deck survey. We decided this would be an ideal project to demonstrate the advantages of 3D laser scanning over conventional survey methods.

The hardest part of the project was getting the survey equipment and team out to the ship. Initially scheduled to meet in Helsinki the project was delayed due to the Icelandic volcano crisis. Instead the survey was re organised for when the ship was docked in the small Norwegian town of Christiansund.

A two man team was mobilised taking a Leica scanstation2 tripod and laptop. On arrival at site, after a quick tour of the state of the art vessel the survey team set to work. As the deck of the ship was very worn no visible centre line markings could be detected. Therefore it was decided to scan as much of the deck as possible and tie the data to the existing CAD plans back in the office.

In all only 5 setups were need to get a very good coverage of the deck. Although a number of obstructions were in the way and welding work was being performed at the time, there were very little data voids in the results.

Once back in the office the point data was cleaned and the deck smoothed. We were then able to convert the point cloud to a solid mesh. This data was brought into AutoCAD and a new UCS defined to level the ship and set the same datum as the Cad Design Plans. This UCS was then exported to Cyclone and used to generate a grid at 0.8m spaces across the deck. The grid was then exported back to AutoCAD and overlaid with the existing plans.

As well as providing a very accurate set of levels across the deck the client was given the full point cloud data and access to our TruView remote access software.  Detailed surveys are not normally carried out on the vessels CTC use and this can incur high costs flying back and forth to the vessel to check measurements. By using the point cloud and TRU View access, CTC can now visually inspect and check any dimensions on the ship from the comfort of the office, vastly cutting mobilisation costs and improving project efficiency.