Remote Australia is the last place you’d expect accurate GPS control, but SITECH Solutions has succeeded in bringing precision technology to the Outback.
In the sprawling cattle country of regional Australia, where the nearest parts supplier can be a two-hour drive away and the nearest city even further, a Caterpillar 315 excavator is breaking new ground — literally.
On an organic beef station spanning about 250,000 hectares, Airport Consultancy Group (ACG) is building a private airstrip to a standard that would satisfy the most exacting civil aviation engineer.
The technology making it possible arrived in the cab of a ute driven by SITECH Solutions support technician Matt Leonard, who had clocked close to 1000 kilometres before the working week had properly begun.
The project centres on Trimble Earthworks, a grade control platform that transforms heavy machinery into instruments of surgical precision. On this airstrip, precision is not merely desirable; it’s financially critical.
ACG Director Craig Halliday puts it plainly: “We’re chasing millimetres.”
Where roads and ports require a more lenient tolerance of between 10 and 15mm for pavement levels, Craig’s specification is +0/-5mm. The reason is straightforward. The design specification requires a tight tolerance to ensure optimal ride performance for aircraft.
It is the kind of tolerance that separates conventional earthmoving from precision construction, and it is exactly the scenario where Trimble’s Universal Total Station (UTS) system earns its place on the machine.
“Unlike standard GPS or GNSS-based grade control, which can be affected by atmospheric interference and satellite geometry, a UTS uses a ground-based total station to track a prism mounted on the excavator, delivering sub-three-mm accuracy in real time,” Craig said.
“A UTS provides accuracies of less than three mm, and Trimble Earthworks works with both GNSS and UTS configurations, offering flexibility and versatility depending on the demands of the project.”
For final trim work on an airstrip surface destined for sealing, it is one of the most viable options.
The relationship between ACG and SITECH Solutions began five years ago in Port Macquarie, when Matt fitted out a Caterpillar 150 motor grader with Trimble Earthworks on a full UTS set-up. That grader is still running the same configuration today.
As the company’s work expanded, Matt remained the go-to for Craig. That ACG has chosen to anchor its relationship not just with a technology brand, but with a specific technician, speaks to the kind of trust that Matt has generated.
ACG is not a small regional contractor — it operates across Australia, the Asia-Pacific region and internationally, with a team that includes PhD-qualified pavement engineers, senior electrical engineers specialising in airport lighting, and airside safety officers.
The company holds ISO 9001 quality accreditation and ISO 45001 health and safety certification, and has delivered projects for defence, civilian aviation, and mining-sector aerodromes. Craig boasts more than 20 years of airfield pavement construction experience, including managing projects at Sydney Airport and overseeing the RAAF Base Williamtown Ordnance Loading Aprons project.
“For the airstrip project, Monday was spent behind the wheel, driving for 12 hours,” Craig said.
“Tuesday was 12 hours on site, with the excavator positioned just 20 metres from his accommodation. A parts run to Emerald, two hours each way, completed the install.
“By Wednesday, Matt was on the site training the machine operator on the newly commissioned system, and also revisiting the grader to ensure everything remained calibrated and up to date. By Thursday morning, he was planning a 3am departure to make it home by Friday.”
Craig said this was the reality of field support in construction technology, and it is one the industry rarely documents.
“The technology itself attracts attention. The person who drives it to site, installs it in the heat or the freezing cold, sources the missing component from a regional town, and then patiently walks an operator through every function before leaving, tends not to,” he said.
Although Matt is in his 13th year with SITECH, he said he was still learning, and remains clear-eyed about what that means for the profession.
“Anyone that sits there and says ‘I know everything’ is wrong. The depth of knowledge required to do this work well is not something that can be shortcut,” he said.
“It takes about two years before a new technician is capable of operating independently across the range of situations the role presents. The skills are teachable, but the timeline is not compressible.”
The airstrip is taking shape, measured to +0/-3mm across 1.2km of Class 2.1 crushed on-site pavement material.
When the surface is sealed and aircraft begin landing safely, passengers probably won’t think about the 1000km drive, the 3am departure, or the parts run through the outback.
But the runway will be there, true to +0/-3mm, because Matt and the teams at SITECH Solutions and ACG made sure of it.
