Using Laser Scanning to Protect Crews from High-Voltage Risk

Challenge

When high-voltage transmission lines intersect the envelope of an 11-story downtown tower, there is no margin for assumption. At the 222 North Detroit Office Building in Tulsa, Flintco identified a potential life-safety hazard early: three active 130-kilovolt high-voltage transmission lines running along the building’s east side. With the structure already framed and façade installation imminent, the proximity of the energized lines threatened to stop work and put crews at risk.

While OSHA mandates a minimum 15-foot clearance from energized lines, Flintco maintains a higher internal standard of 20 feet. With three levels of underground parking and a constrained urban footprint, the team needed to determine whether scaffolding, worker access, and long-term building maintenance could be performed safely with the lines in their current positions. Early civil drawings depicted poles and lines only at approximate locations, providing insufficient accuracy for precise planning.

Solution

Flintco’s Construction Support Services team combined the A/E team’s 3D coordination model with laser scanning to determine the exact location of the high-voltage lines. The team established civil control points in AutoCAD, imported the civil plan into the Revit model, and aligned the datasets using shared grids. The coordinated model was then exported into Navisworks, where laser scan data was integrated and manually rotated and transformed to align with the established control points.

With accurate geometry in place, the team modeled 10-foot-wide scaffolding and measured actual clearances between the scaffolding and the scanned power lines. This analysis identified multiple locations where clearances fell below the OSHA required 15-foot minimum, confirming that the existing configuration posed an unacceptable risk.

Result

Flintco presented the data-driven findings to the owner, clearly illustrating the hazard and recommending corrective action. The owner approved relocating the high-voltage lines to the opposite side of the poles, resolving the safety conflict. Because the issue was identified early, the relocation was planned and executed proactively, on schedule, and without disrupting masonry or façade installation, restoring safe clearances and keeping the project on schedule. By leveraging in-house technology expertise and precise, data-driven analysis from the outset, Flintco eliminated a potentially life-threatening condition—protecting construction crews during construction and ensuring safe access for maintenance personnel long after the building’s completion.