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The newest technology in concrete structure inspections
9 Plays7 months ago
In this episode of the Feed & Grain Podcast, Cheyenne Wohlford, CEO and president of CCS Group, LLC stopped by to talk with host Steven Kilger about effectively handling human resources as a small company. They talk about concrete structure inspection, how often it should be done, what an inspection covers, technology like drones and radar scans, plus all the data that can be gathered during a visit.
Podcast sponsored by Pneumat Systems.
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Transcript
Introduction & Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi everyone, my name is Stephen Kilgore and I'm the managing editor of Feeding Grain and the host of the Feeding Grain podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today as we dive deep into the issues affecting the feed manufacturing, grain handling, and allied industries. Today's episode is brought to you by the Binwit from New Mat Systems.
00:00:17
Speaker
The powerful dual impact binwhip removes the toughest buildup and blockages in industrial storage silos without hazardous silo entry. Learn more today at binwhip.com.
Meet the CEOs: Ryan Rolford & Cheyenne Wilford
00:00:27
Speaker
In today's episode, my guest, Ryan Rolford, CEO and president of CCS Group, we talk about concrete inspections. When the concrete structures on your facility should be inspected, what to expect during the inspection process, what kind of information is gathered, and some of the newest technology that's being used in the field today.
00:00:45
Speaker
I hope you enjoy the interview. If you want to help out the podcast and are listening to this in a podcasting app, please rate us and subscribe. If you're listening online, sign up for the feeding grain newsletter industry watch to see the latest podcast and stay up to date with all the latest news from around the industry. Now onto the show. Hi Cheyenne. Thank you so much for talking to me today.
00:01:03
Speaker
for any listeners out there that don't know you, can you tell us a little more about yourself and your relationship to the industry? Yeah, absolutely. Um, so again, my name is Cheyenne Wilford. I'm the president and CEO of CCS group. Um, started CCS group in 2009. And my, I guess my main objective at that point in life was to
CCS Group's Silo Repair Work
00:01:25
Speaker
We started a construction company that obviously utilizes the newest technology, the newest safety standards, all that type of aspect and approach. We provide silo repairs nationwide, and so we're serving clients all throughout the U.S. I've done some international work as well, but I say our primary focus is in the United States.
00:01:45
Speaker
country elevators, terminals, load out facilities and such, feed mills, ethanol plants. We also dabble in the bulk storage of like full and cement. So we're also in other industries as well. But I would say 99% of our business comes from the feed and grain industry. Yeah. And you guys are very involved in the grain and feed industry. I mean, every year I see you at Jeeps and you're always, you're always involved in something. You're always moving and shaking.
00:02:13
Speaker
Absolutely. Now that's, I think that's kind of the spirit of what we designed CCS around was always looking for the newest technologies, not so much that the newest gimmicks or anything of that nature or everything. Everything we bring to market is obviously studied very heavily and critiqued and want to make sure there's a tried and true process, either with equipment or materials, new repair materials or new technology and that aspect.
00:02:38
Speaker
definitely keeps us busy. And as an entrepreneur inside of me, that's what gets me excited about getting up in the morning is seeing what's new out there and how we can utilize that in our industry that we very much enjoy. It's a great group of people.
Frequency of Grain Facility Inspections
00:02:51
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And so, well, what I have you here for is to talk a little bit about inspecting your facilities for damage so you could get ahead of it before you have some serious happen. Right. Can you tell me a little bit about how often feed facilities, grain elevators should really be like inspecting their property, not just, you know, glancing at it as you go by, but really taking a walk around and looking. Yeah. As we get that question a lot, obviously, and I always tell,
00:03:20
Speaker
our clients or potential clients. I guess the main thing I kind of refer to it as a health checkup, if you will. Once you get that initial once over inspection done, which is where we really go into the intense GPR scanning, drone inspections, sound testing,
00:03:38
Speaker
Kind of consider that like you're going to the doctor once a year and you're getting your physical done, you're getting blood work done. And that's once we get that done and we kind of know what the structure is as a design or necessarily as a build, I guess, then you can kind of move into a secondary phase of doing just visual inspections, going back to that kind of what you said earlier, a little less intense, not you don't have to do GPR scans every year, primarily because the rebar is the rebar. Nothing's going to change in that aspect.
00:04:06
Speaker
So I always tell them, let's get the first initial cumbersome blood work done. Let's do all the GPR scanning. Let's see what your roof beams look like internally inside your bins. Let's inspect your hoppers. Let's get in your tunnels and
Comprehensive Inspection Process
00:04:19
Speaker
do the once over. And that's, that's a pretty heavy, intense inspection from there. Then you can move to an every year or every year type of aspect or every other year, excuse me. And during that initial inspection process.
00:04:32
Speaker
you might uncover some areas that either the facility manager or the outside superintendent or something didn't notice. So once you get that first initial one done, then you can kind of direct them to monitor different areas either throughout the year or when you come back to do the secondary visit, say a year down the road. So.
00:04:49
Speaker
So again, that first one is the first initial one is obviously the more intense. There's a financial burden with that you're going to pay to have somebody come in and give it a once over. But what I like about that, Steven, is that information then can be shared with third party engineering. You know, you can send that out for review and get everybody kind of on the same page, I guess.
00:05:09
Speaker
Yeah. And while there might be a financial component, you know, it's a lot better than having a bean collapse or something like that. That's the big, big issue. I always explain that the preventative maintenance side of things is a fraction of the cost when it comes to ruptures or a silo collapse. Of course, you've got
00:05:28
Speaker
The safety aspect of it first and foremost is make sure that you've got a healthy facility so that you have healthy employees and safe employees that are comfortable coming to work every day and the morale. The preventative side is really where we like to spend our time.
00:05:43
Speaker
Yeah. Well, just like humans,
Tech in Inspections: Drones & LiDAR
00:05:45
Speaker
right? Going to the doctor is a pain, but it's a lot better if you catch things early than have to get surgery later. So how does the inspection process work, especially for that first kind of inspection, the one where you do a really thorough overview? What should people expect when they call you and they have someone come out to the site?
00:06:03
Speaker
Yeah, so the initial meeting is we do a lot of data collection up front. We try to get our hands on the blueprints or the as-built. We know what the structure should be. We try to visit with them and answer any questions that they might have up front as far as what the process looks like. Obviously, do the bins need to be empty? Do they need to be full? Can we be receiving grain? Can we be shipping grain?
00:06:26
Speaker
Just try to get on the same page of what is your operations doing that other day? How can we be as less intrusive as possible? Obviously, if we, you know, are needing to have a boom with set up and do GPR scanning and stuff, then we'll have to have some sort of traffic control or something. But again, just kind of getting into the nuts and bolts of what are you seeing as a client? Show us the areas that you're concerned about and just do a good walkthrough with them of what they have going on, what the history of the facility is.
00:06:51
Speaker
Finding out what the facility was built for. Was it just a storage facility? And now all of a sudden we are using it as a kind of a centralized loadout type of situation for that client. So just a lot of fact gathering meetings, I guess up front, if you will, phone calls.
00:07:08
Speaker
Meeting with the operations team the marketing team and then the second phase of that is now what do you want to use the facility for in the future so as we start the inspection process we kind of had that in the back of our heads of saying okay they're gonna add a larger leg or they're gonna put a discharge in somewhere or they're gonna try to crease their rail loadout size or whatever so just then getting a futuristic view of
00:07:30
Speaker
What's your intentions for the use down the road? And so that kind of is our kickoff meeting that just allows us to kind of get an understanding of what do you have and where do you want to go. And then from there, you know, we really just start the process, kind of try to stay out of sight, out of mind. We move in to a majority of the time doing GPR scanning. So that's ground credit trading radar, where we're doing scans from top to bottom, utilizing a boom left scanning and checking for every
00:07:55
Speaker
horizontal piece of rebar that's in that facility. And then that typically moves into the drone inspections. And from there, you know, the drone inspections are always kind of fun because you start out with a plan and typically doesn't end the exact way you planned it. It's like, Oh, so you said you can see this so well, then.
00:08:13
Speaker
I think we should drop the drone into a different silo over here in your answer to this question for me. And so oftentimes we go in with a very detailed plan of which silos we're inspecting, what areas we're looking for. And I would say oftentimes it ends up going in a, not in a totally different direction, but an additional direction of saying, okay, I didn't realize you guys could capture those photos or the video so well, or that we're getting an actual LiDAR map of
00:08:39
Speaker
the facility and so a lot of times we're asking that just happened a couple weeks ago of once we started the inspection the on-site gentleman that was managing the facility said I had no idea that you could you could get these pictures would you mind dropping the silo into bed number 10.
00:08:54
Speaker
because we have a lot of water leaking into that bin. Can you tell us where it's coming from? And it just so happened on a rainy day that we could drop down and actually see right where that water was coming from because it was cleaning the dust off the interior wall of silo where that water was entering the bin. So again, those kind of those additional moments where you kind of go into it with a plan, but then they're like, oh, by the way, since you're here. And we
00:09:17
Speaker
And again, just on that same exact facility, they had an electrician that was running new vent temp cables for him and actually was really wanting a picture of the footprint of the whole facility. So we were able to launch our external drone and get him the picture that he needed then to start drawing his plans out and such.
00:09:34
Speaker
It's always kind of fun to do those additional services and make people's day and hopefully make that project a little bit easier for them. So that's kind of the typical day in the life of the inspection process. And then obviously wrap that up at the end of the day with sharing the information that we found. Oftentimes we'll pull up the videos right there with the client and show them what we looked at, what we found. And if we didn't quite get the picture we wanted or the video that wasn't clear and we need to go back, then that's the great part too is
00:10:02
Speaker
It's such easy entry that all you have to do is go back up to the roof or go in through the side of the silo and relaunch the drone and get exactly what the client's looking for or what we're needing for our inspection process. So it's kind of neat there too is to review your information right off the bat and be able to go back in and get better video or better footage of something that might have been suspect.
00:10:23
Speaker
Yeah. And that's one of the things that when I saw you've been putting out some marketing, which is really, really good. You guys do great marketing too, by the way, just, you know, tell your marketing team, they do a good job, but you've been putting out this marketing from about, you know, using drones for these inspections, which when you see it, you're like, yeah, obviously that's a genius idea. Cause it's gotta be able to see things in ways that just no one else can possibly do from a ground perspective.
00:11:03
Speaker
putting a tripod in a bozeman's chair and a winch system and actually dropping me down inside of the bend. So I knew there had to have been a better way to complete that inspection. I always wasn't satisfied with either the picture quality or
00:11:14
Speaker
Can you talk a little bit about what
Drone Inspection Benefits
00:11:16
Speaker
the placement of where I was at within the bend. So there's a lot of information that kind of I guess just got left on the table when we used to do the old way of dropping somebody down inside of the bend.
00:11:17
Speaker
the advantages of using these drones are for these inspections?
00:11:26
Speaker
And of course, then you have the safety issues. You're in the bin, you're in a confined space, you've got a fall protection rescue plan. There's usually multiple, multiple people involved with that, including the local fire and rescue in the event of an accident. So it takes quite a team to actually drop somebody down safely and to do it the right way. And so as I started to see this technology come down the pipeline, it really got me excited because that just meant I didn't have to be lowered inside of the bins anymore. And again, it's such an encompassing
00:11:56
Speaker
process that once you got out of the bin and got home and realized that you didn't get the exact angle that you wanted of the picture or it was dusty and camera that you had, you know, wasn't able to capture exactly what you're seeing with your eyes really intrigued me when I saw this drone technology. So a couple of things to note is obviously allows us to do it much quicker. We can, you know, obviously the, about the time that it takes to pull a man, pull a cover off.
00:12:22
Speaker
and drop down inside of the van is anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes per inspection. So that's kind of nice is it really eliminated that from being a two hour process to about a 10 to 15 minute process. I touched base on it a little bit earlier, but the safety side of it is huge. No more human entry.
00:12:38
Speaker
And as we know in our industries, that's kind of our goal is zero human entry. That's where we're going with all the different loading systems and hoppers and augers and such as we don't want to have anybody in those bins if possible. So that's been a nice addition for us as well.
00:12:54
Speaker
Other nodes would be the whole time the drone is deployed in the bin, you're capturing 4K video. So oftentimes we get home and we're reviewing those videos and in high definition on a flat screen TV. And we actually see more than what we obviously saw on a little 12 inch tablet while we were flying the bin in person. So
00:13:16
Speaker
It's kind of neat to get back and review that video with those 4K and high definition videos and see the different things that you didn't see even when you were on site. And then of course, while you're doing that, you're able to catch what we call POIs, which are points of interest.
00:13:31
Speaker
So if we are on the bend deck and we're flying around and we see a major horizontal cold joint or a rough beam or a truss that isn't positioned right or potentially failing, not only can we take 4k videos of that, but we also can take some still photos of that so that those photos can be shared very easily.
00:13:49
Speaker
and again, high resolution so they can be blown up and studied. So that's another nice objective of that is the POIs as you're flying throughout the bend. And then last, probably but not least, is the entire time that we're using our LiDAR drone, that drone is actually selecting a point cloud, which is millions of data points or thousands of data points. And so as you're actually creating a 3D map,
00:14:14
Speaker
that interior silo as you're flying around in there and so that's really neat when you come back out either when you're studying a silo that has a potential roof failure or beams that are misplaced things of that nature anomalies if you will you're able to go back and get exact precision measurements of the beams and that's where that tools
00:14:33
Speaker
become really handy for us is sharing that information with engineering. We're looking at going back and adding additional roof trusses or different supports or something and they want to know what the measurements are on the roof beams or how far apart they are or how long it is that that's neat as well.
00:14:49
Speaker
And that LiDAR map actually did something a few weeks ago for us that we didn't even realize possible, but we were asked to come inspect a bin that had fire damage from an explosion slash fire. And as we were flying that bin and looking at the potential damage, we were also able to help that client determine how much grain was still on the bin from a volumetric standpoint, so that when the team showed up to do the bin cleaning,
00:15:16
Speaker
knew exactly how much grain they had to contend with, where it was bridged up, and it really opened our eyes and the client's eyes to determine what are we going to do with this grain once we get it all out, how much is still left in there, how much of it is burnt and or smoldering. And so it really was a nice perspective to be able to do that zero human entry and drop down inside of there and see that there was a large wall of grain that was bridged up and could have potentially
00:15:41
Speaker
causing some headache down the road when trying to get that grain out of there. So that LiDAR mapping was super neat. Do that volumetric type study and determine what's left in there. And then ultimately, I hope, in the end, it was able to save the clients some money because now we know what the known amount of grain and such that's still left in there. So we kind of learned something almost every time we use that. Our drones is a different perspective or different tools. So that's kind of fun and neat as well.
00:16:08
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And I have a hard enough time filming like an interview, concentrating on both talking and the filming at the same time. So I can't imagine dangling in a silo and trying to catch good footage as well. So yeah, obviously the safety is the number one piece of that and not having to worry about that anymore is great. And something that I failed to mention earlier is we actually have a secondary tablet that we bring with us that we can connect to the drone. And so the client or the engineer,
00:16:38
Speaker
I can have a tablet in front of them as well, a little bit larger than like tablet that I have. So they're seeing things that they might ask me to go back and get a better picture of or get closer to. And that's kind of nice because obviously trying to control the drone and get to where you need to be. It's always was a tough challenge before the secondary tablet client was always looking over your shoulder. And as much as I want to share that information with them too, I got to successfully make the flight and get the drone back up out of the silo as well.
00:17:05
Speaker
The secondary tablet was a great addition for us and our clients absolutely love it. So that's been a great addition. So it sounds like the tech out there has really evolved even in the last couple of years since I've been in the industry. It's really exciting, but is there anything else tech wise that you see coming down the pipe that you maybe have your eye on?
Emerging Tech: Ultrasonic Testing
00:17:25
Speaker
As far as new technologies is coming down the pipeline, we're obviously always studying and going to different conventions and such. One of the things that it's not directly related to concrete repair, but a lot of our facilities that we work at have either steel bends or steel tanks for bulk storage.
00:17:44
Speaker
One of the new technologies that's coming out that really has our attention right now is the ultrasonic thickness testing of steel. And so although, again, that's not a new tool in the industry as far as being able to measure the thickness of a tank. But what is new to our industry is that now an additional hub that you can add to the drone. So you don't have to have a boom left on site to do precision measurement of a steel tank, maybe 80 foot up in the air.
00:18:11
Speaker
can actually deploy this drone and the drone has an arm that sticks out that has the gel capabilities and everything and so it actually just performs a UT test right there on the steel tank. It's got a magnetized head and allows you to take pinpoint measurements all throughout that steel tank if you will and if you do it on the inside of the tank while the tank's empty
00:18:32
Speaker
you can actually collect that LiDAR map that I talked about earlier all at the same time. So you can be collecting a 3D LiDAR map and be doing some precision testing on the inside of that steel tank. And every test that you take, you'll be able to pinpoint exactly what elevation, what location, if was it the north wall, south wall. So that's kind of got us intrigued right now. They just did a big launch in Switzerland on that technology.
00:18:59
Speaker
And here in May, they're going to do some training on that here in the States. So we're really looking forward to getting our hands on that technology because oftentimes, like I said, we have clients that either in the ethanol industry or different aspects where they're doing bulk storage of some sort of material in these welding steel tanks. So we're really looking forward to seeing what that has to offer for us and our clients.
00:19:20
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds really cool. You'll have to come back on when you get that technology in use and we'll be able to talk about it. So if people want more information, where should they go? Yeah, absolutely. If you want information on either all the aspects of the repairs that we offer, the drone inspections, GPR, you can go to our website, which is ccsgrouponline.com. And obviously you can follow us on all our socials as well. And there will be a link to that in the description below. Thank you for joining me so much today.