At Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, Kimball Construction needed to drill, cut, and core concrete in almost 100 locations in early April 2008. The contractor needed to be able to penetrate the concrete without cutting any electrical conduit or rebar. GPRS Virginia/Maryland/DC was able to mobilize quickly to the hospital site and completely mark all of the conduit and reinforcing steel necessary in less than 2 days on site. In addition to locating all of the rebar and conduit within the slabs, Ground Penetrating Radar Systems was able to locate 2 large conduits under the ground level slab exactly where the contractors planned on saw cutting. This discovery which was made with GPR under the slab on grade saved the contractor and the hospital much damage and costly repairs. As in this case, Ground Penetrating Radar scanning where electric conduit is present helps avoid potential injury to the concrete cutters.

Jamey Harmon runs GPRS operations in the Virginia, Maryland, and Washington DC areas. He can be reached at (703)728-7333 or by email at jamey.harmon@gprsinc.com Concrete scanning for the purposes of identifying the location of rebar and electrical conduit is a frequent service provided by technicians at GPRS.

Jeff Dehart will plot the location of the reinforcing steel
directly onto the concrete surface using the structure scan
GPR system from GSSI. This is the SIR-3000 system with a
1.6 GHz antenna, used for concrete analysis and imaging.