CPX Fall 2021 - the tires were running hot!

Beautiful autumn weather used in the best possible way

This year's summer with its high precipitation was hard on the CPX team. The roads were often wet, which made pavement quality measurements impossible for several weeks. The large mountain of measurement orders was only slowly reduced and many measurements had to be postponed to the second half of the year.

All the more pleasing, then, that autumn showed itself from its most beautiful side. Plenty of sunshine and little rain meant that it was now time to catch up on what had been postponed due to the weather. From Geneva via Valais and Basel to Liechtenstein, the CPX measurement system from Grolimund + Partner AG was on the road for a total of 15 days and also several nights in October.

Figure 1: In October, G+P's CPX measurement vehicle could be spotted in 16 cantons, i.e. more than half of Switzerland ;-)

Shift operation makes catching up possible

In order to get the maximum out of the days with good measuring conditions, the measuring vehicle was often on the road in shift operation with rotating teams of two, consisting of driver and measuring engineer. 3 drivers and 5 measurement engineers shared the total of 192 hours during which the measurement system was in operation in October. By way of comparison, the CPX vehicle was on the road for an average of more than 9 hours per day over 21 working days (assuming a 100% workload in October).

With only 15 measurement days, some longer operations were necessary. Thus, on seven measurement days, the deployment time was more than 15 hours and on three days, the 20-hour mark was even cracked.

The figure below shows the daily precipitation totals of Bern, Zurich and Sion and the daily deployment time of the CPX measurement system. Over the 15 measurement days, the CPX measurement vehicle was on the road for an average of more than 12 hours per day.

Figure 2: Daily precipitation totals of three selected sites and CPX deployment time in October 2021. Since October was not free of precipitation either, some longer deployments were necessary to complete all measurements. On seven days, the CPX measurement vehicle was in operation for more than 15 hours. The measurements on October 30 took place in the canton of Zug and in the Principality of Liechtenstein, where no precipitation had fallen at the time of the measurement.

Thanks to the great commitment of the entire CPX team, the 2021 measuring season was completed in the usual high quality at the beginning of November, despite challenging weather conditions. Even if we would wish for a nicer summer next year, we are looking forward to what the 2022 season will bring!