It always amazes me when I see some other firms diagrams from RADAR imaging, but it also explains why RADAR imaging gets such a bad reputation too. We were recently on a project in Alpharetta, Georgia performing a RADAR scan on a typical concrete floor. The client had called us to the site because they had used another firm to perform some scans and things had went wrong quickly when they cored the holes. I entered the building expecting to see super thick floors, excessive steel, or any variety of oddness that can occur. Instead, I found probably one of the best floors I had seen in months. The steel was 12" on center in a 5" slab--quiet possibly the easiest slab available to do. That made me very curious to the reason the other firm had the issue so I met with the client and he showed me what had happened and I laughed out loud---really I did. The other firm had entered the site and scanned various areas and upon rechecking their scans we found they were all very close. What the other firm had done was to draw a single line directly down the center of the steel instead of giving them an area to avoid. They had basically given the client cross hairs to aim for and that's what the client used to determine core locations. Yes this really did happen. The problem with the scan was not the scan itself, but the lack of care and communication that the other firm lacked. 

The reason problems like this happen is that some firms have a strict no guarantee policy which means if you hit a conduit or two the RADAR firm is not responsible for any damage. Coring companies are notorious for this.  Because they have no risk involved in your project they have very little reason to communicate to the client the results of the scan because they have no reason to care about your project. A reputable RADAR firm would never let this happen because they are more concerned about damage that could happen than the client is. Reputation is everything in the RADAR imaging business and it will always win out over lower priced inferior companies. 

Typically, Xenogenesis starts a project by speaking to the client and determining what they need, explaining how the RADAR system works, explaining how large an area we will evaluate, and how we will mark the area.  Once we have the information we scan the floor making sure to mark objects in the slab slightly bigger than what should be there. We call this the "cover our behinds lines" because we know that some lines may be drawn slightly crooked and we want to make sure that no matter where our clients core as long as they are not cutting into our lines that they will have no issues. A single straight line does not have this built in safety net, but why should it they are not going to guarantee it anyway. Once the scans are complete we meet again with our clients and walk around to each location with the client to make sure we have scanned sufficient area, to explain what each mark means and any other notations that we saw in the scan, and to answer any client questions. We then follow up the scans with a coring company that is familiar with our scans and how we mark the concrete. We strive to use only coring companies that take the same care and pride in a project that we do because at the end of the day we want to know that we provided the highest quality most accurate scans possible.

Between the companies that don't care about the client and the coring companies that just scan as a side business RADAR imaging has obtained a slightly bad reputation as being a somewhat unreliable method to evaluate concrete. I argue that RADAR imaging is extremely reliable, but only when it is being used by highly trained companies that take the time to care about their clients happiness and their own companies reputation. Our firm is fortunate to have it's home base in Atlanta because currently there is no other firm in the area that can offer the level of quality Xenogenesis does or that has the concern for the clients happiness that Xenogenesis does.  Yes, there are a lot of other RADAR firms here that are much cheaper, many have come and gone, but we have not found one yet that has shown any concern about their reputation, the reputation of RADAR imaging in general, or their clients satisfaction. The old saying that "you get what you pay for" is truly alive and well in the Atlanta RADAR market.