Jeddah Desalination Stacks, KSA

Jeddah Desalination Stacks, KSA: Delta Scan implements Scan to BIM and drone-based Engineering Condition audits for Jeddah Central Development Co.

Delta Scan introduces their stack inspection service to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia:

The Jeddah Central Development Co. is currently working on transforming the Jeddah desalination stacks plant into a museum that will document the city’s industrial heritage. This iconic project’s engineering and architectural designs are with the multi-award-winning British architecture company Heatherwick Studio.

The museum will open in 2028 and will include, among other features, studios dedicated to creative visual production and exhibitions. These will represent industry and culture. The $20 billion plan is to develop 5.7 million square meters of the port city. This will include major international landmarks, such as an opera house, a museum, a sports stadium, and coral farms.

Delta Scan was appointed under ICC Commonwealth, a Dominion company, to capture the existing 150m smokestacks. This was to assist in conducting an engineering condition assessment as well as CAD conversion of the stacks. A team was deployed to site and completed capture work in 5 days. The workflow included high detail external drone data capture. As well as high resolution internal drone data capture, and precision LiDAR capture for the CAD conversion of the stacks, These stacks were designed and constructed in 1983.

How we used our Elios 3

The Elios 3 was used for the initial inspection of all connection conditions, and platform within the stacks. The caged drone allows us first access to areas otherwise only accessible through scaffolding or rope access. Secondly, this allows us high resolution imagery, up close, almost in contact with the various points of interest. Combining these two key features along with the onboard SLAM LiDAR, the Elios 3 allows quick engineering checks in terms of buckled and deflecting members to be checked prior to allowing the manned portions of capture to take place.

The team traversed over 300m of cat ladders with specialised enterprise level 3D laser scanners. These were use to capture and generate geometrically accurate point clouds for the conversion to CAD and Revit models. High level of detail was required on the final models. Therefore the team compiled 3D models along with elevations, layouts and connection details for updating records.

Using external drone imagery, Delta Scan’s technical and processing departments generate a 3D digital twin of the structures. Subsequently, our in-house engineers conduct inspection work off-site, behind a computer, starting from this stage, while client engineers verify the process. Our in-house engineers then embark on a Hybrid AI inspection journey, with our proprietary software rapidly detecting and quantifying defects, all under the supervision of the professionally registered engineer on duty. Ultimately, the team delivers the 3D model annotated with defects, along with a precise ‘roadmap’ of all issues on a 2D facade map, effectively summarizing all integral capture information onto a single A0 drawing.

Project Details:

Project Start: SEP 2023- Ongoing

18 000km travelled.

11 400m² of stack facades mapped.

19200 objects modelled on Revit.

First project in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia