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www.mcsmag.com JULY 2020
17
F
lorida, for all its natural beauty,
robust economy, and enticing
climate—key components in
the state drawing more than 300,00
transplants per year—is not without its
shortcomings. The development needed
to sustain that massive influx frequently
meets a challenge in the area’s high
water table. Projects which would be
fairly straightforward in another location
are often forced to bring in or move
tremendous volumes of fill onsite. In
order to avoid the cost and headache
of importing possibly a million or more
cubic yards of soil, companies tackling
larger Florida projects often create new
lakes, using that material elsewhere
onsite to raise site elevations and
alleviate the high water table issue. To
make that happen in the most efficient
manner possible at “Wild Blue,” a huge
residential development project in the Ft.
Myers area, Mitchell & Stark Construction
(MSC) is drawing upon the strengths of
GNSS technology for both the dredging/
shore sloping and earthmoving facets of
the operation. The end result has been
nothing short of impressive in terms of
time and effort saved. Company officials
say their success can be linked to one
key principle which also happens to be
a hallmark in the construction-related
GNSS realm: handle the material as little
as possible. With that at the forefront …
off they went.
MSC GOES ALL IN
Despite the proliferation and broad
acceptance of GNSS solutions across
the construction spectrum, it is still
impressive to learn when an organization
with no GPS experience embraces the
technology in a big way. MSC is one of
those companies—and “in a big way” is a
huge understatement. In a mere two and
half years, the company has transformed
itself from one that was content with the
status quo, to a virtual poster child for
forward thinking through technology.
According to Chris Anderson, MSC’s
project manager, in 2016, after lengthy
consideration, the company recognized
the benefits that could be gained through
embracing GNSS systems and, more
importantly, saw the different areas in
which those benefits could be realized.
“We literally had nothing GPS-related
at that time and jumped in with both
feet,” he says. “That year, working with
Lengemann, the Florida Topcon dealer,
we purchased eight excavator systems
and six dozer systems. In spring/
summer of 2018 we added another four
systems: two dozers and two excavators.
And, in addition to all that, we have
two excavators and two dozers that
are fully wired and ready for serialized
components. So, if a machine is headed
to the shop for any reason, we can simply
use that machine’s system on one of the
wired replacement machines. It’s a way
for us to ensure we have 100 percent
utilization of our capital investment.”
THE LAKES OF WHICH …
A good portion of MSC’s work involves
development of large-scale planned
communities throughout southwest
Florida. In addition to the 3,000-acre Wild
Blue, the company is actively involved in
work at Collier Preserve, Sorrento Grove,
Anguilla, La Mirada, and a massive
15,000-acre development called Babcock
Ranch. Located between Naples and
Ft. Myers, Wild Blue is being done in
phases—the first one will have roughly
500 homesites while subsequent phases
will be larger and denser. Using a range
of GNSS solutions, says Anderson, has
dramatically changed their approach to
such projects, starting with creating the
site’s lakes.
“In addition to their obvious aesthetic
value, creating lakes provides direct,
tangible benefits,” he says. “Controlling
algae blooms caused by runoff, is one
such example. To help ensure that,
the South Florida Water Management
District, the governing entity for all the
waterways in the region, requires that
there be a specific acreage of lakes for
every acre of property being developed.
From a company perspective, creating
a lake can improve onsite efficiency.
Material from just one lake excavation
on this site—about a half million cubic
yards of soil—will be used as a source
for some of the 2 feet to 5 feet of fill
needed to get everything above flood
plain elevation.”
While they are free to dewater an
existing lake in order to excavate in
a fairly dry condition, such is not the
case in some of MSC’s other projects.
Anderson says that, at developments
closer to the Gulf, SFWMD prohibits
dewatering for fear of saltwater intrusion
into the base aquifer.
“In those cases, where digging under
water while maintaining the 4:1 or 6:1
slopes is necessary, the Topcon X53i
system is invaluable for us,” he says.
“The technology has made looking at
marks on the stick of the machine—a
slow and laborious task—a thing of the
past. Now an operator is able to look
at his screen and see the bucket under
water, relative to where they need to be.
His or her work becomes little more than
a material handling operation—it’s been
amazing for us.”
FEEL THE EARTH MOVE
MSC is handling the earthmoving facet
of the project with excavators, haul
trucks and a fleet of dozers equipped
with Topcon 3D-MCMAX machine control
systems. While they have dramatically
reduced the number of stakes on site—a
byproduct of GNSS-based machine
control—doing so was not their primary
goal, according to Anderson.
“I have a manufacturing background,
so I know that double-handling material
is a waste of time, effort and money,” he
says. “We specifically use the Topcon-
equipped dozers because we are trying
to touch the ribbon fill once—any
reduction in staking is just icing on the
cake. Using the dozers, we are doing
the bulk of the mass fill and getting it to
within +/- .1 (feet) of where it needs to
be for each home site. The accuracies
are impressive.”
In addition to the accuracies the
technology provides, Anderson says
they
Wild Blue, Yonder
massive development awash in GNSS technology
