Heartland Dredging’s big dredge has been working away on the Bloomington, Illinois CSO lagoon project. The lagoon is used to control storm water overflow during heavy rainfall. While on the Bloomington job, Heartland was able to install a GPS guidance system on the dredge that provides the operator with the machine’s location, heading, speed and cutterhead depth along with a map of the dredge area. A weatherproof laptop has been mounted in the operator’s cab that receives signals from a dual-antenna GPS and a depth sensor that uses a submerged air pressure line to detect cutterhead depth. Heartland can upload design information and color-coded survey data to give the operator a color map of the bottom. The computer keeps track of the dredge path and after the cutterhead passes through an area at grade, the map color changes to red to indicate that grade has been reached. The project is complete when the operator turns the map into a sea of red. Heartland believes this system will significantly improve productivity.