SURVEY & INVESTIGATION

Concrete condition assessment of Battersea Power Station Cooling Towers
Once your requirements are understood, the starting point in the development of any corrosion management scheme is to understand the specifics of the structure or asset at hand.

This includes review of the available as-built documentation, drawings and other investigations and reviews already undertaken.

Where information is not available and/or additional information is required i.e. to determine the cause of a defect or as-built condition of the structure, it is likely that direct inspection and testing will be required. The type and extent of survey and testing undertaken will be prescribed in order for the engineer to develop a full and detailed understanding of the type and condition of materials, construction and defects exhibited by the structure in question. This may include destructive and non-destructive testing [NDT] and sampling as well as laboratory analysis. Examples are;

Integrated CIPS and DCVG survey for buried pipelines
  1. Visual Survey and Assessment;
  2. Half-cell Potential Mapping;
  3. Corrosion Rate Measurement;
  4. Water and Soil sampling;
  5. Close Interval Potential Survey [CIPS] and Direct Current Voltage Gradient [DCVG] Survey

Through interpretation of the available documentation, survey and test data, we are able to determine the likely cause of deterioration.

With this information, it is possible to estimate the time to first maintenance and / or failure and thereby prepare recommendations for proactive remediation, repair and / or long-term monitoring.

For details of specific survey and investigation techniques please refer to our knowledge Library.