Article by: Rich Donnelly | First Coast News | To view the original article, click here.
It’s going to be the most expensive building project in Jacksonville’s history. The Jaguars “Stadium of the Future” is expected to cost $2 billion, and while a deal between the city and the team hasn’t been finalized, there’s already work being done on this project.
The Jaguars hired the Jacksonville company England-Thims & Miller, Inc (ETM) to pull back the layers from nearly 100 years of history underneath what will become the site for the Stadium of the Future.
Years before any groundbreaking takes place a team from ETM is already working on the Stadium of the Future.
“We’re locating underground utilities, we use ground penetrating radar and pipe detection to layout underground utilities,” said ETM surveyor Charlie Schreiner.
Part of ETM’s method to find what’s underneath the stadium is actually to go to the sky above it with drones.
“We went and scanned the stadium with lidar and did the entire site,” said Schreiner, “with new innovations like the unmanned aerial systems (drones) that we’re using, it’s a huge cost saving factor. What used to take months is now taking days or hours.”
Lidar is a remote sensing method that uses light to measure distances between objects. In this case, utility information underneath the stadium.
“It was really for the topographic survey, which is the lay of the land, the site itself,” said Schreiner, “essentially we’re creating a map from the lidar data.”
ETM combines that data with a crew of surveyors on the ground to get a complete readout of the site, both above and below the ground. So what did they find?
“You’ve got fiberoptic cable, you have water, you have chiller lines, you have drainage, sanitation,” said Barry Scott, ETM’s VP of Surveying, “you pretty much name it and everything else from back when this was a shipyard.”
ETM said those are very standard things to find underground and similar items were found during ETM’s work in other projects across northeast Florida including Nocatee, State Road 9B and work in Brooklyn. In fact, ETM is celebrating its 100th anniversary of a company in Jacksonville.
“Our roots run deep,” said Scott, “when you realize you’ve been somewhere for 100 years, it’s the legacy that’s been created and we continue that legacy with the work set forth before us.”
ETM also utilizes what they call an Accelerator Program, which trains the future of surveyors while they are still in school.
“Our Accelerator Program is a unique, best in class internship program that we’re very proud of,” said Jeff Krueger, ETM’s Director of Human Resources, “with everchanging technologies and workforce, we use it not only in the geomatics for surveying, we’re reaching out to not only college students, but high school students and educating them on surveying and civil engineering.”
“The Accelerator Program allows students to get real world practical application of what they’re currently learning,” said Krueger, “when they finish the program they have years of experience and our goal is to give them a job offer before they graduate.”
More information about ETM, their projects and opportunities with the company can be found on their website: https://www.etminc.com/.
Members of ETM were also proud to point out that we are currently in National Surveyors Week, which is recognized from March 17-23.
According to ETM, nothing found under the current stadium should affect the eventual plans for the Stadium of the Future; whenever a deal is finalized.