GPR Survey Timeline in Delhi NCR: How Long Does It Take?

Updated: 23 October 2026

How long does a GPR survey take from enquiry to report?

Ask how long does a GPR survey take and the honest reply has three parts, because every GPR survey timeline includes the time before the crew arrives, the time spent on the ground, and the time needed to issue results. Many contractors plan only for the middle part, then find that the first and last parts decide their excavation date.

• Before field work – route files are checked, the scope and survey type are fixed, and the client arranges access with whoever owns the road.
• Field work – radar lines and utility locating with an electromagnetic (EM) cable locator along the route, ground marking of each find and extra passes at crossings.
• Issue of results – the signed survey report, plus CAD/GIS drawing sets or an L-section profile wherever these were ordered.

Our crews are in-house and the radar units are company-owned, sent out from the Sector 41 base in Faridabad, so no machine hire adds days at the start. In NCR most of the calendar goes on access, not on scanning. The Delhi NCR GPR survey page lists the cities and localities we cover across the region.

Why does the same route length take longer in some parts of NCR?

A radar cart moves at walking pace in every city, yet the metres it covers per shift change sharply from site to site. The usual reasons are:

• Traffic and footfall. Markets, arterial roads and junctions often allow only short early-morning or late-night windows.
• Crowding below ground. Older colonies and central districts hold underground utilities – power, water, sewer and telecom lines – from several owners, and tightly packed finds need closer line spacing and slower interpretation.
• Recent large works. Delhi Metro lines, the Namo Bharat (RRTS) corridor and expressways such as the Delhi–Meerut and Dwarka Expressways have shifted services, so old records help less and more ground has to be read fresh.
• Several road and asset owners. One route may cross MCD or NDMC roads, municipal corporation roads in Gurugram, Faridabad or Ghaziabad, and development authority land, with cables of BSES, Tata Power-DDL, DHBVN or PVVNL below. Mezux Touch is not affiliated with any of these bodies or DISCOMs. Terms differ from one owner to the next, so check with the road-owning agency early.
• Ground and weather. Rain raises the moisture content of clay, and the resulting signal attenuation – the radar pulse losing energy in wet ground – cuts penetration depth; standing water can stop scanning on a stretch until it drains.

An open expressway shoulder or a new sector road with clear verges, on the other hand, moves quickly. The 100 km we have managed in one day came on open corridors with crews on both day and night shifts – a figure for that kind of ground, not for a crowded bazaar lane.

Which types of GPR survey job have different timelines?

Plot and site scans

A building plot, housing society compound or factory yard is scanned on a grid. Field work is short, frequently a single shift, and the report follows. Billing still starts at 4 km, so grouping several plots in one order makes sense.

City cable and OFC routes

Distribution cable and telecom duct routes along city roads are the most common NCR jobs. Their pace follows the windows on offer, and a route split between several road owners may be scanned in phases as each consent comes through.

Long corridors

Expressway-side routes, ring roads and peripheral roads allow long continuous runs and, with night shifts, the highest daily output.

Crossings and HDD bore paths

Each crossing of a road, drain or railway is scanned on a tighter grid over the intended bore line and the two pit areas. A handful of crossings can take as long as a kilometre of open route.

L-section surveys

If the work order wants the depth of each detected service plotted along the line, the ₹32 per metre L-section survey is done during the same visit. It adds some field and office time compared with a standard survey.

Which programme terms should you understand before agreeing dates?

• Working window – the hours in which road conditions and the owner's terms let a crew scan. In central Delhi this can be just a few hours a day.
• Output per shift – metres of route actually scanned in one window, which is different from hours spent on site.
• Night shift – scanning after traffic thins out; it speeds up busy roads but is priced separately from the per-metre rate.
• Mobilisation – moving crews and systems to site, also quoted as its own item.
• Coverage – the length that was really scanned, as against stretches missed because of parked vehicles, locked gates or water.
• Re-scan – a return visit to stretches that were blocked; on congested routes, plan for at least one.
• Issue date – the date printed on the report. Near new metro or road works it tells the excavation team how current the data is.

What features of a survey keep the timeline short?

Several of these sit with the client, and a few sit with us.

1. Clean route files. A KML showing the alignment, total length and every crossing lets the crew start scanning straight away instead of walking the route to understand it.
2. Access arranged early. Traffic arrangements and permissions are outside the survey rate and are settled by the project owner with the authority concerned; a delay here pushes back everything else.
3. Enough owned systems. With 58 GPR systems and in-house crews, a long route can be divided between teams working different stretches in parallel, subject to permissions.
4. Radar and EM together. Pairing GPR with EM locating confirms metallic utilities in the same pass rather than on a later visit.
5. A fixed deliverable list. Deciding at the start whether CAD/GIS sets or an L-section are needed avoids a second round of office work.

How do you plan a GPR survey timeline and budget for an NCR job?

Work backwards from the date excavation or boring has to begin:

1. Send the route, its length and the type of work for a quote; the quote carries a programme for that route.
2. Approach the agency that owns each stretch for access while the order is being placed.
3. Fix survey dates against confirmed windows, putting crossings first if boring starts there.
4. Keep excavation close behind the survey, since paint marks fade under traffic and rain.
5. Leave time after field work for the report and any drawing sets.

The per-metre charge does not change with the number of days on site. Standard survey work is charged at ₹24 a metre, L-section work at ₹32 a metre, and no order is billed below 4 km. Inside Delhi NCR no ₹1,00,000 project minimum applies. GST, mobilisation, night working, traffic arrangements and CAD/GIS drawing sets come on top. A 6 km standard route, for instance, is ₹1,44,000 before GST and extras whether it needs two windows or six. Slabs and discounts are set out in the GPR survey price list, while city detail sits on the Gurugram and Noida pages.

What should you do with survey records after the crew leaves?

The programme does not finish when the crew leaves. Your team and the asset owners will refer to the report months later, so:

• file the signed report, with its issue date, next to the excavation permission and work order;
• keep the matching KML or drawing, so faded marks can be re-set from the record;
• note every stretch the report lists as not scanned, and book a re-scan before digging there;
• treat the record as out of date where metro or road diversions happen after the survey.

What a full deliverable set holds is explained in our article on GPR survey deliverables, and rain-season planning is covered under monsoon GPR survey in Delhi NCR.