Billy Butlin opened his first holiday resort in 1936 with the idea that a weeks family holiday should cost no more than the average family wage. Now owned by Bourne Leisure the Butlins holiday camps now attract over 1.5 million guests per year. Butlins Bognor Regis opened in 1960 and has been entertaining families on their holidays since. Bourne Leisure acquired Butlins in 2000 and soon after announced a programme of development which would bring Butlins into the 21st century. This started with the Shoreline Hotel, which opened in August 2005 followed by the Ocean Hotel, August 2009. There is to be further development on the site including the replacing of the original 1960s chalets.
The Bognor Regis site is 21 hectares and situated on the south coast of England.
An accurate topographic survey was required, the specification was to show all features within the site and a 20m level grid. The survey was used to enable the architects to plan and develop the whole site and the survey has been updated several times over a period of many years to reflect the changes made. A further area has also been surveyed to facilitate the design and construction of a new entrance. We have discreet coordinated survey stations around the site which makes it easy for additional survey work to be added.
On such a big site as this we realised that, with a tight timescale, we would need to mobilise three crew, each working a specific area. The survey control was carried out by one team, this ensured that the traverse was as tight as possible and that no stations were missed on the loop. The three survey crews then observed the detail using Leica theodolites in both Infrared and red laser modes, capturing 95% of the survey information on site with the instruments. The other 5% of survey measurements was made with handheld laser distos and tape measure. The survey was then processed on our in house survey suite which outputs a .dxf file for import into Autocad. The disto and tape measurements were plotted onto the survey data and the final survey data was delivered to the client on time and on budget.
