Winstanley Headgear Building
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Chatterley Whitfield Colliery is a disused coal mine on the outskirts of Chell, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire. It was the largest mine in the North Staffordshire Coalfield and from 1986 to 1993, it became a museum which provided a mining experience for visitors.
The scheduled monument is now owned by Stoke-on-Trent City Council, but the structure had unfortunately suffered some recent structural defects that needed investigating. We worked with BHB Architects on a brief which included a set of staged objectives that had been agreed with the client.
The initial objective was to obtain enough information so that a plan of approach for repair or remediation could be conceived and agreed with Historic England.
As the structure was deemed dangerous and unsafe to access, we utilised specialist operators that used state-of-the-art drone technology to reach areas that would not have otherwise been physically possible. A point cloud created by the laser scanner was combined with images from the high-resolution camera to allow software to produce a digital twin of the entire structure.
Utilising the drone mounted hardware and a specialist confined space drone, produced a fully immersive digital twin that had a very impressive level of detail in every corner and crevasse. This enabled us to get up close without the risk of injury or damage to the delicate structure. Our services and report have produced an invaluable tool for all that are working on the project. Utilising this technology will allow a detailed design of temporary works to be carried out, saving time, money and significantly reducing risk.
There are plans to extend these services to further structures within the site.
