Title
Purchase of Stormwater Pipe Inspection Camera Equipment (B)
This item is a request to purchase camera equipment from Environmental Products of Florida for conducting pipe inspections of all stormwater infrastructure systems installed and maintained by the Public Works Department Operations Division. This vendor has been selected from competitively bid State of Florida contracts which the City of Gainesville will piggyback.
Explanation
This camera equipment is described as a rover/crawler camera that is operated by remote control, crawling with a rotating camera eye through the underground stormwater pipe system recording video inspection of the areas in the pipe that have failed or have potential to fail. The only camera equipment of this type in the City is owned by GRU. Public Works can schedule the camera for routine inspection or contact GRU in the event of an emergency, but this is not consistent due to the availability of the equipment and GRU crews.
Public Works performs routine maintenance inspections of stormwater infrastructure and is first responder to emergency road cave-in events. The current maintenance inspection method is performed manually by crews who are trained to crawl the pipes to detect and record potential failures. Using this method makes it difficult to record precise locations so they can only detect within a range. Not being able to isolate the exact location makes the repair more difficult and costly for the City.
In emergency cave-in situations, Public Works must respond quickly for citizen safety. If GRU is not available, Operations crews must immediately excavate the area to uncover the pipe and make a visual inspection to determine the degree of pipe failure. This is more costly to the City and increases the amount of time the road is closed to moving traffic. Certain pipe failures can be repaired internally without destroying the road by identifying and isolating the failure in the structure and re...
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