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Topcon Total Stations Chosen for Europe's Largest Construction Project

105 MS05AX units to be used in London tunneling project.

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Topcon Europe Positioning B.V. announces the recent award of an order for more than 100 high precision robotic total stations for the Crossrail project in London, UK. The order is one of the single largest orders for total stations ever recorded.

In order to satisfy specific monitoring requirements, ESS Safeforce, confined space safety consultant company, ordered 105 Topcon MS05AX total stations. The order for 105 instruments is also believed to be the single largest order globally for 0.5" total stations from any manufacturer. The order follows the award of the Crossrail C510 contract to ESS customer Morgan Sindall, a leading United Kingdom construction company.

Morgan Sindall is part of the BBMV group, in which four of the world's leading construction companies – including Balfour Beatty, ALPINE BeMo Tunnelling and VINCI Construction, formed a civil engineering partnership.

The Crossrail project is to provide new east-west rail connections underneath Central London. The project is to provide rail services that will complement the Thameslink Programme, the north-south route through London. Work on the Crossrail project started in 2009, with the first trains expected to be operating by 2018.

Gary Ridsdale, ESS Safeforce survey products business development manager, said, "We are delighted to have supplied BBMV through Morgan Sindall with this record-breaking number of instruments. It is great news for us to supply such a significant quantity of instruments in what is the biggest civil engineering project in Europe."

He credited Topcon for its extremely quick delivery time on such a large order.

Having conducted extensive field testing of available instruments from other manufacturers, Morgan Sindall concluded that the MS05AX was the best sensor for the monitoring project. The company cited Topcon's "superior specification and reliability, along with their evaluation results," in placing the order.

Alastair Cruickshank, engineering survey manager at Morgan Sindall, said, "We are very impressed with the Topcon total stations. The build quality, performance and especially the reliability, is extremely impressive. The instrument always locks on to the correct prism while monitoring the building and tunnels of London.

"This is important as there are often several prisms in the field of view of the instrument, particularly in the challenging linear tunnel environments. The matrix detection function has also saved us a lot of time and hassle. We can install new monitoring prisms and the instrument just finds them automatically."

Ian Stilgoe, Topcon's European geomatics business manager said, "Matrix detection is Topcon's latest technological feature designed to save time and increase efficiency whilst setting up complex arrays of prisms for monitoring systems. Using intelligent algorithms and high accuracy imaging sensors, the total station series is able to detect and locate all established prisms, even in low light or dark conditions. Once located, it then measures the prisms quickly and reliably, virtually eliminating any sources of human error."

Stilgoe cited the "dedication of our staff in Tokyo, who despite experiencing Japans worst natural disaster, worked through even without main power to ensure our client received their instruments on time. It is absolute proof that Topcon believes that the needs of the customer always comes first."

Topcon Positioning Systems, Inc. (TPS) designs and manufactures precise positioning products and solutions for the global surveying, construction, agriculture, civil engineering, mapping and GIS, asset management and mobile control markets. TPS' parent company, Topcon Corporation (Tokyo Stock Exchange – 7732), was founded in 1932. Learn more at www.topconpositioning.com.