Underground mining advances in the dark, with no sky and no satellite signal — so every metre of development depends on survey control carried down from surface and pushed forward through the workings. Survey House provides that control: orienting the underground network, directing development, and recording the infrastructure that follows.
Development is about direction. Headings, declines, tunnels and ore passes are driven on bearings established by gyro observation and carried forward through the workings, so that headings hole through to one another correctly and safely — the wrong bearing means a mis-holing, which costs money and can cost lives. Raise-bore alignment, decline gradient control and development as-builts all sit within this work.
Infrastructure is about record and tolerance. Shaft stations, conveyor and rail, pump chambers, workshops and tips are set out from the underground control and then captured as as-builts; 3D laser scanning records the openings, measures convergence as ground closes under stress, and compares the as-built profile against design.
It is a sector built from several of our disciplines — gyroscopic orientation, raise-bore alignment, 3D scanning and independent check surveys — delivered as one coordinated underground programme.
Control is transferred from surface, then extended underground as a closed traverse network. Closure is what makes the network trustworthy — an open traverse can be internally consistent and still be substantially wrong.
Where a shaft provides the only route down, orientation is established by correlation survey or gyroscopic observation. Both are checked independently.
Underground conditions degrade observation quality: heat, humidity, dust, ventilation-induced refraction and limited sight distances all reduce achievable accuracy compared with surface work.
