Inspiration Quattro Expertise: Damage-free construction through vibration monitoring

Quattro Expertise strives toward damage-free construction. The company was founded in 2006 to simplify pre-construction surveying through digitalization. Since then, Quattro Expertise has grown to focus on the entire construction process. Like in the past, the company assesses the state of buildings close to construction sites before the work starts. But now, it also analyzes potential risks, creates monitoring plans, and monitors risk factors during the project. Examples of such risk factors monitored by Quattro Expertise are cracks, groundwater levels, noise levels, and deformation. For many of these monitoring tasks, access to real-time information is crucial. And that is where Omnidots' SWARM vibration monitor comes in. We talked to Monitoring Expert Tom Smits and Junior Marketeer Boris Tebrunsvelt. They told us about projects where Omnidots' all-in-one vibration monitoring solution helped to ensure that construction work did not cause any damage.

Quattro Expertise's project aimed to expand a cemetery without causing any disturbances to the graveyard and nearby structures. Part of the expansion included installing sheet piles. Vibration monitoring during pile driving is crucial because the sheet piles are usually vibrated into the ground. To ensure damage-free construction, however, Quattro Expertise's partner Gebroeders de Koning decided to work with a Giken Silent Piler during this project. Using the electric Giken Silent Piler, the company could use hydraulic pressure rather than vibrations to push sheet piles into the ground. This would be the first time the company worked with that machine, and they expected this approach would create considerably lower vibration levels. This, in turn, would reduce the risk of damage and open up a sustainable new way of working.

Before the construction work began, Quattro Expertise set up a monitoring plan. For Quattro Expertise, monitoring plans are usually the starting point of any project. They contain clear agreements and limits for risk factors such as noise, vibration, and horizontal ground displacement. For any factor that might be identified during the initial assessment, Quattro Expertise offers a monitoring service to help its partners avoid causing damage. During the cemetery's expansion, the monitoring plan included maximum acceptable vibration levels and a prognosis of the vibrations the Giken Silent Piler was likely to create. Exceeding the vibration limits would mean that damage-free construction could not be guaranteed. To determine whether their prognosis was correct and whether vibration levels stayed under the allowed threshold, Quattro Expertise mounted Omnidots’ SWARM vibration monitor on the wall of the nearby church.

Once they took the Giken Silent Piler into operation, the SWARM sent real-time data to Omnidots' Honeycomb platform. If the vibration levels had exceeded safe levels, Honeycomb would have alerted several people within the project team, letting them know that they had to adjust their activities or stop working.