Throughout 2011, Holland Engineering (HEI) has been providing ground disturbance scans to Enbridge at numerous locations throughout Michigan, Northern Indiana and Ohio. Initially, a majority of these services were provided for Line 6B, the same 30” crude oil pipeline in Marshall, MI which suffered an oil leak earlier this year. HEI was able to complete a list of over 300 digs by providing scanning, staking and surveying services. 

For those digs located on Line 6B at the clean-up site, the process involved assessing the area that was excavated and disturbed, staking the “scar” to show the contractor what needed to be cleaned, staking the access road into the site and locating and flagging the existing pipelines within the disturbed area. HEI also scanned the entire area that was staking for any additional underground utilities and located and flagged them.  Using GPS, our survey crews were able to survey the staked area and overlay the data into Google map for contractor use.   

In addition to the clean-up site, Holland Engineering also provided ground disturbance scans for new dig site locations. These included Lines 5 and 17 which ran through northern Michigan, southeastern Michigan and Toledo, Ohio. Enbridge supplied HEI with “dig sheets” for each location which allowed HEI to coordinate the location of the anomaly. Using GPS, HEI staked out the point over the pipeline to show the true location of the Girth Weld and was ultimately able to compile the data into a Google Map drawing. Although the overall process was very similar to the clean-up site, it did require more staking and probing.  Our survey crews performed these throughout a variety of different terrains including fields, wooded and residential areas and swamps.

For more information on HEI’s pipeline surveying services, please contact Eric Osterhaven, P.S., Survey Manager at 616.392.5938 or via email at eosterhaven@hollandengineering.com.