At this year's BIMForum in Las Vegas, I came across an intriguing new company in the construction technology space called HoloBuilder. I had an opportunity to follow up with Harry Handorf to gain a better understanding of how their solution, a combination of an app for iOS and Android with cloud processing, makes it possible to use a consumer 360° camera such as Ricoh Theta cameras to quickly document progress on a construction site.
The handheld app is called JobWalk, which makes it possible after uploading a floor plan to walk through a job site placing the camera and tripod in the middle of each room to take a series of 360° photos. After the photos are uploaded to the HoloBuilder cloud, virtual tours of the construction site are available to anyone with a web browser on their platform. In the virtual walkthroughs, dimensions can be measured with 99% accuracy. The only input data that is required to make this possible is the distance between the camera lens and the floor. Plug-ins are available for Revit and Navisworks which make it possible to view as-designed BIM model renderings side-by-side with as-constructed. It is also possible to time travel over the lifetime of a construction site comparing images taken at different times to track construction progress.
HoloBuilder introduced its technology to the broad market in 2014. In 2015 it won the grand prize at the RICOH THETA Developers Contest. Since then it has focused its solution entirely on the construction market. It even offers a solution for real-time construction monitoring. Harry told me that it has many customers in the construction market including the likes of Skanska, McCarthy, AECOM, Hensel Phelps, Mortenson and others.
As a practical example of how HoloBuilder is used, Skanska is currently building a 185,000-sq. ft. hotel with a construction contract value of $52.3 million. Skanska is using HoloBuilder on the project to document existing site conditions, share progress with stakeholders and make decisions requiring the agreement of remote stakeholders scattered around North America. One of the use cases where Skanska found a lot of value with HoloBuilder is capturing images as part of pre-pour inspections - necessary inspections that occur before pouring concrete. The challenge is to document all the in-slab deck conditions prior to pouring in a very limited window of time. Cables, heating and ventilation, plumbing and electrical, rebar, and other equipment need to be captured. Skanska’s Project Engineers use HoloBuilder to take 360° photos in conjunction with the bi-monthly concrete pour cycle. Each of the floors scheduled for concrete pouring is captured and uploaded during a one-hour site walk using the JobWalk app and a standard 360° camera. HoloBuilder estimates that one 360° photo contains approximately the same visual information as 11 single lens photos. The resulting HoloBuilder project provides information about the contents and layout of materials in the slab including mechanical, electrical and plumbing as well as the rebar size, spacing and number. The images also contain additional context related to site conditions, weather, and location where the 360° photos were captured. Skanska is able to share the site conditions with the architect and structural engineer as a supplement to the inspection. With HoloBuilder, Skanska’s project team reduced photo documentation time by 50%. It also was able to offer a valuable deliverable that could be shared with the owner, architect, facilities management team and other project stakeholders.
This is another example of how consumer devices are changing the construction industry. The number of startups like HoloBuilder, Dot Product, Enscape, Revizto, Fuzor, Skur, Cupix and others in the construction industry is increasing and many are using consumer technologies such as gaming engines (Unity, Unreal Engine). As new technology gains traction in a $10 trillion industry that has traditionally been ranked at the bottom of R&D spending and digitization, construction productivity will rise and infrastructure will become increasingly attractive to private investors who are expected to become the source of most of the money required to develop, renew and maintain our infrastructure for the next two decades.
Subscribe
Comments