Stockholm is growing rapidly. The road infrastructure is reaching its limits. So, the Swedish metropolis is building a 21 km motorway under the city. Personnel and machines on the building site access the same data and synchronise with each other. Using web-based Leica ConX tools means the handling of data for machine control is harmonised and simplified.

57 kilometres – that is a world record. Before the first train could run through the Gotthard base tunnel, the construction needed to be recorded precisely. Grunder Ingenieure AG used a Leica Pegasus:Two for the survey. The company efficiently carried out the project in just a few weeks with this mobile capture platform without compromising the ongoing construction work.

Tight bends or underpasses can pose risks. Lorries can accidentally get onto the opposite carriageway or cause damage. One city has used a mobile surveying platform from Leica Geosystems to digitally survey their streets in order to prevent collisions. The simulation shows where action is required to make the city safer.

Under the English Channel lies one of the largest works of infrastructure of the 20th century. After six years of construction, the Eurotunnel between England and France opened in 1990. The railway tunnel is 50 kilometres long, 38 of which are, on average, 40 metres under the seabed. An electronic WILD theodolite was used for control measurements. Fixed survey consoles were fitted into the tunnel walls every 45 metres, so that regular assessments can quickly detect any possible changes such as local subsidence, for example.

The A2 motorway from Basel to Chiasso is almost 300 km long. At the heart of this North-South link road are the rugged Gotthard mountains. Numerous tunnels, viaducts and avalanche galleries characterise the route to the Gotthard road tunnel that was built between 1970 and 1980. Leica Geosystems tachymeters were used in the construction of the Gotthard motorway in order to ensure millimetre precision in the construction of roads, bridges and tunnels.

2019 saw the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s successful moon landing on 21 July 1969.  Kern was at the forefront with its lens on the 16 mm DAC film camera. The most impressive scene in the film, recorded with the Kern Switar lens f=10mm from the lunar module, was the greetings message from the then US President Richard Nixon to the astronauts.

The first large railway tunnel through the Alps was built without lasers or computers. Elaborate triangulation networks had to be calculated over the mountains to survey the Alps for the tunnel. It is remarkable that when the cuttings met in the middle of the tunnel they were only a few centimetres apart. This was also the case with the construction of the 20 km long Simplon tunnel between 1898 and 1921. A Kern surveying theodolite was used for that.