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Section Manager Per Nørgreen says that when it
comes to planning COWI’s mapping flights, his list
of priorities is weather, deadline and assignment.
Photo: Das Büro
“My priorities are weather and project deadline,”
Nørgreen says. “If the weather is fair over Britain and
Denmark at the same time, I will send the planes
wherever we need to be finished first.”
Head in the clouds
As a youngster, Nørgreen had his introduction to aviation
when he saw an advertisement in his local newspaper
inviting visitors to a small regional airstrip where
they could get a behind the scenes look at the job of a
pilot. Nørgreen went with one of his mates, and quickly
found himself dazzled by the pilots and their uniforms.
From that moment, his career path was clear.
After earning his Danish pilot licence, Nørgreen
worked as an instructor in the US. After three years
there he returned home to a job piloting air taxis. A few
years later, he signed on with SAS as the airline’s Performance
Engineer on the turboprop fleet of Fokker
50’s and the Dash 8 aircraft. In 2005, he joined cowi,
where he manages the company’s fleet of airplanes.
Today, his office is in a low building outside Roskilde
Airport where he sits with the rest of the flight wing’s 11
permanent employees and seven freelancers. The building
serves as the wing’s nerve centre as Nørgreen and his
colleagues keep track of weather across Europe to make
plans for where to send the fleet and when. The weather,
however, is just one of many variables he needs to consider.
The past two years cowi’s flight wing has carried out
projects in Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
There, the biggest challenge is finding the right fuel for
the planes. Normally, they use 100 octane unleaded aviation
fuel that can be hard to come by in the Middle East.
Another problem can be air traffic in and out of busy
airports. When preparing for missions over London,
which has some of Europe’s busiest skies, cowi is often
advised to wait until weekends, since taking pictures requires
them to fly patterns of parallel lines over the target
area at a height that can interfere with other airplanes.
“To be honest, we don’t have anything to do with the
air travel industry,” Nørgreen says. “We belong in the
geo and mapping field. Air traffic controllers at major
airports simply can’t understand why we don’t know
precisely when we need to take off or land. A request
like ‘we’d like to fly when the sun comes out is not really
very useful for them.”
In the air seven days a week
One of Nørgreen’s other important jobs is to make sure
that maintenance schedules are being kept. Some
planes need a check up after every 50 hours of flying
time. When planes hit 100-hours, they need to go in for
a check up that lasts two to four days, and having a
plane out of service for so long has a significant impact
on Nørgreen’s planning. When the sun is out, pilots fly
ten-hour missions, so it does not take long to rack up
the hours. Making a schedule for pilots, he says, is
almost a science in and of itself.
“Our employees are away for
weeks at a time, but just about all of
them have families, and that needs
www.cowi.com/flight
to be taken into consideration.” But
during prime flying season from
March to October, Nørgreen says he
has planes flying seven days a week.
“We need to fly as much as possible,
and we cannot be making special
See video from Roskilde Airport
considerations just because it is a
weekend or holiday.”
Fighter escort
The fascinating thing about his job is that all the pieces
need to fall into place. It can be hard to get them to fit,
but working in the flight wing is enjoyable. He remembers
that once, as a cowi plane was making its way
through Dutch and German airspace on its way home
from Britain during the 2006 World Cup, the pilot was
asked by German air traffic controllers to change frequencies.
The request, however, was never heard, and
concerned about the threat of terrorism, the German air
force dispatched two F-16s to make visual contact with
the unresponsive airplane. They escorted the plane as
“Major airports do not really get it when we tell them that
we do not know when to take off or land. A message like ‘we will fly
when the sun comes out’ is not really very useful for them”
“We need to fly as much as possible, and
we cannot be making special considerations just
because it is a weekend or holiday”
Photo: COWI
New technology
Thermal scanning. Measures heat loss from buildings. Thermography
measures temperature differences using an infrared
camera. Thermal scanning can be used to determine
where buildings are losing most of their heat, so steps can be
taken to improve indoor climate and reduce CO 2 emissions.
Mobile mapping. Similar to Google Street View. Makes it possible
to register items as small as post boxes and benches.
Mobile maps are made using a 360 digital camera and are
combined with aerial photos.
Oblique aerial photography. Makes it possible to see buildings
in near 3D detail from all sides, as well as places that cannot
be seen from street level or from directly above. Frequently
used by estate agents to show potential buyers how a neighbourhood
looks.
Lidar scanners. Similar to sonar. Maps the contours of the
earth’s surface. Makes it possible to see the effects of flooding.
Lidar scanners can take pictures at any time of day or
night. The equipment also means that COWI can fly outside
the March-October season.
it slowly made its way out of German airspace, even
though they were having trouble flying as slow as
cowi’s propeller plane.
@ Per
Nørgreen, Section Manager,
pno@cowi.com
Two international projects
cowi is mapping Serbia as part of a major EU project being
carried out to reconstruct the country. The maps will help
create a register of individual buildings and plots of land.
In Sweden, cowi is working with the mapmakers at Blom to
conduct laser scanning of the entire country. The informa-
tion will be used to create a new elevation map that can
be used to record where high-tension power lines are
located, as well as to keep an eye on the condition of dikes
and whether river valleys are drying out. In addition, urban
planners and forestry managers will also be able to use the
information.
International news magazine from cowi • 39