Central Plains Cement — Barge Loadout

For well over a century, Central Plains Cement Company has provided Portland cement of varying grades for industrial, civil, and personal projects throughout the Midwest. To deliver the cement, Central Plains makes use of its location on the Missouri River to load barges destined for midwestern markets. Their Kansas City barge loadout facility had been in operation for decades and needed to be replaced.

To prepare for the engineering and construction required to install the new barge loadout, Central Plains called on the trusted reality capture professionals at Rogue Visual Design. The challenge was that a large portion of the structure, sheet piles, and fender piles were only visible from the water side of the loadout. With a deep and fast-moving channel and steep riverbanks, the Missouri River did not provide stable footing for our LiDAR scanners; however, it is perfect for our UAS/drone. We deployed our 3D LiDAR scanner to document the facility from the land side and our UAS/drone to document the water side.

The major elements of the barge loadout included two side-by-side piers supported by steel columns driven into the river channel and dry bank, surrounded by vertically placed steel sheet piles and fender piles. Back at the office, our BIM team created a Revit model of the existing loadout and surrounding area, including a 3D contour drawing of the area surrounding the loadout structure.

The information we delivered proved immediately useful in not only designing the needed upgrades but also in helping to troubleshoot during the construction. While installing new piles, an old tieback failed causing the sheet piles to shift. To assess the extent of movement, the engineers brought the Rogue Visual Design Team back to document the construction area and compare it with our original scans. Once the new barge loadout was complete, Central Plains called us back out to document the newly installed facility and establish a baseline model for future improvements.