Company completes $40 million Canadian highway expansion saving time and money with grading and excavation efficiency from Trimble

Overview

Customer Profile:

Windley Contracting Ltd. provides full mechanical contracting services in the residential and commercial sectors within British Columbia and Alberta, Canada. The company’s civil construction division continues to expand, and today Windley Contracting has an increasing inventory of earthwork equipment and a growing team of widely experienced tradesmen. The company executes multi-million dollar civil contracts that include excavation, highway realignments, intersection improvements, and utility work.

Business Challenge:

With Windley Contracting’s successful track record, the company was selected for an important road building project between Winfield and Oyama in the District of Lake Country, B.C. The company was hired to widen a two-lane road into four lanes for a nine-kilometer (5.6-mile) section of Highway 97. Looking to tackle these projects efficiently and with more accuracy, the company turned to Trimble.

Solution:

Trimble® GCS900 Grade Control System

Benefits:

• In total, moved more than 200 million cubic meters of dirt, built two overpasses, two tunnel crossings and tie ins, and placed 27 kilometers (17 miles) of safety barrier
• The Trimble Grade Control System paid for itself in about a week, with time, labor and fuel savings
• 50% increase in excavating productivity
• Saved approximately $2,500 per week by eliminating the need for a full time surveyor for excavation work
• Eliminated 75% of staking costs, cutting more than $150,000 out of construction staking costs overall

Windley Contracting, which started as a family owned plumbing and heating business in 1949, has expanded into a full-scale contracting business focused on high-end commercial, residential and civil projects within B.C. and Alberta, Canada. In 2011, the Columbia Ministry of Transportation of Infrastructure and Transportation (MoTI) hired Windley Contracting to build a new four-lane, nine-kilometer (5.6-mile) section of Highway 97. This major highway overlooks Wood Lake and connects Winfield to Oyama in the Okanagan Valley in B.C.

 

Part of the beautiful Okanagan Valley, this section of the roadway is heavily used by tourists and locals. It is a gateway to the valley, which offers a full range of recreational activities and landscapes from orchards and vineyards to mountains, lakes, trails, and ski slopes. The area boasts more than 60 provincial parks and dozens of recreation sites. The land surrounding Highway 97 is also culturally significant to the First Nations and Native American people. With this project, MoTI and community leaders were looking to increase corridor capacity through this section and to address safety concerns.

Windley Contracting’s Civil Division Manager Kyle Webb explains that there were several elements that made this particular project unique. The new part of the highway was built on untouched land in a mountainous and rocky area. To build the road, his team was responsible for blasting through rock and moving two million cubic meters (70.6 million cubic feet) of dirt. They were also tasked with building an embankment, two overpasses, two tunnel crossings and tie-ins to the existing Highway 97.

Webb explains the new design of the highway placed public safety as a top priority. As such, the new road design included a bypass that removed a once dangerous section of the roadway that was prone to accidents and fatalities. At $40 million, this major civil contract is one of the largest ever completed by Windley Contracting. The company adopted the Trimble® GCS900 Grade Control System to drive productivity and accuracy across the project.

“The Highway 97 project is especially important because it goes a long way toward improving safety and commercial traffic flow through the corridor, as well as improving access to pristine recreational spaces,” said Webb. “We knew that by leveraging Trimble machine control technology we would have more grading accuracy and a streamlined way to communicate design changes with our operators fast.”

 

Windley Contracting used the Trimble Internet Base Station Service (IBSS) across the project.  The base station equipment consists of a GNSS receiver, GNSS antenna, radio and radio antenna. These receivers provide corrections to Trimble Site Positioning Systems. The team installed the Trimble GCS900 with dual GPS on its excavator and motor grader. Webb recalls that almost immediately they noticed significant productivity gains during excavation work.

“During bulk excavating work, our operators were able to get very close to tolerances the first time through. They weren’t over-excavating and then having to come back for trimming because they could clearly see where they were digging to, which cut down on trim work by approximately 75%,” said Webb.

The full 3D control system puts the site plan—design surfaces, grades and alignments—inside the cab for operators. Using GPS, the exact position, very accurate cross slope, and heading of the blade is measured. The on-board computer compares this position information to the design elevation to compute cut or fill to grade. The cut/fill data drives the valves for automatic blade control and provides additional visual guidance to the operator for up/down to grade and right/left to a defined alignment.

“After a quick training from SITECH Western Canada, our operators caught on to the system so quickly, it’s amazing what they can do. We joke now that they can’t imagine running the excavator without Trimble technology,” said Webb. “We used to have a gradesman working along-side our operator 10 hours a day, running line to determine cut/fill. Now, there’s no waiting, so our operators can get straight to work. Right there, productivity went up 50%.”

 

Working through cold, snowy months in the winter, Windley successfully moved approximately two million cubic meters of dirt. Webb explains that a majority of the work was moving rock, and blasting for the two overpasses and tunnel crossings. Little bedding was wasted because the team was also able to place utilities into the ground precisely to the design.

Two months into excavation, the team performed a cost analysis of having the GSC900 technology. Webb estimates the team saved approximately $2,500 per week by not relying on a full time surveyor for excavator work. By eliminating 75% of staking costs, the company cut more than $150,000 out of construction staking costs. He estimated that with the money saved on the surveyor, staking costs, and the reduction in trim work the system paid for itself in just one week.

“On Highway 97 we only had to use staking for finished grade for graveling and some grade checking formalities,” said Webb. “It took our guys and the Ministry some time to get used to the jobsite without stakes. We loaned them a rover to check work, but as the project evolved, everyone got more comfortable. We realized with grade control from Trimble our grader is far more accurate and we all but eliminated the need for rework.”

Over the two year project, the crew (Windley and subcontractors) fluctuated in size from 40 to 200 depending on what work was being done, from excavating and paving to blasting and building bridges. In total, the team laid two layers of gravel and 50,000 tons of asphalt. Part of the highway’s safety upgrade plan also called for installing 27 kilometers (17 miles) of concrete barrier on each side of the highway. A specialty contractor built the barrier, which Windley secured and placed on the roadway.

 

“From my perspective, the greatest payback came when we were finishing the slope of the road. We were able to hit grade within the specifications and it was fully automated. For fine grading for paving we had to be within 10 millimeters, and for paving subgrade within 25 millimeters, and we hit those tolerances every time.”

The highway was opened to the public on August 16, 2013 to much excitement and fanfare. Windley Contracting was also named Contractor of the Year honored by MoTI.

“Highway 97 was an incredible opportunity because it’s not often that you get to actually build a new highway and have the road project be so enriching to the community,” said Webb. “3D grade control from Trimble gave us huge productivity gains. We’re already using the equipment on other projects because it gives us a competitive advantage in almost all civil projects.”