August 23, 2010 by Rob Mathewson
Digital photos are free. Which means that if you have gone through the expense to put a camera on a jobsite, it makes sense for that camera to take as many pictures as possible. Usually more than is necessary (after all, they’re free right???)
Then let’s consider all of the stakeholders who take pictures on a jobsite; There’s the General Contractor of course, then the owner and owner’s reps; the architect and the cajillion consultants retained by the architect; inspectors, municipal, regulatory and otherwise; subcontractors, and oh yeah, anybody else with a hardhat and a camera phone. Did I forget to mention aerial photos and fixed site cameras?
Do all of these photos add up to better coverage of jobsite activity? More coverage definitely, but better? That’s debatable, because at the end of the day it doesn’t matter how many photos you have if you can’t find that critical piece of information that you’re looking for.
Found it! Er, wait. Wrong floor...
Tags: commercial construction, construction consultants, construction documentation, construction inspection, construction photo documentation, construction photography, construction photos, Construction Webcams, Gafcon, MultiVista, Onsite, Ox Blue
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August 4, 2010 by Rob Mathewson
When speaking with managers and executives from general contractor firms I make it a point to ask about their corporate strategy for jobsite photos. Ninety nine percent of the time, the response is “well, we don’t have one.” Wow.
I’m sure if I asked the same question about estimating, scheduling, project management or accounting, one hundred percent would be able to convey their strategy to me. Yet, the one resource they have with the potential to irrefutably convey the value of their work isn’t worthy of a corporate strategy. Talk about an under-appreciated resource.
Tags: construction quality control, construction documentation, general contractor, commercial construction, construction photography, general construction, Project Management, Prolog, Primavera, construction project management, construction scheduling, construction accounting, construction estimating, Web
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July 29, 2010 by Rob Mathewson
For all the promise of 4D and 5D BIM technology, users can never capture the reality of jobsite conditions and their impact on a building. Yes, including the dimensions of time and cost adds a stronger connection between design and construction. But there are many components of “as-built” construction that BIM can never capture. There are certain conditions that can only be accurately and comprehensively recorded in photos and video.
Here’s a partial list of conditions and I welcome you to add others:
- installation processes
- access issues
- sequencing issues
- use of specified materials
- fabrication processes
- water intrusion remediation
- LEED point qualification
Finally, before you convince yourself that as-built conditions can be completely represented in a BIM model, remember that human beings are the connection between the two.
Tags: construction inspection, construction quality control, risk management, construction photography, construction defects, BIM, Revit, construction video, 4D Modeling, 5D Modeling, Photo, LEED, Construction Compliance, IPD, Integrated Project Delivery
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July 22, 2010 by Rob Mathewson
In my previous post I identified the cost associated with extracting information from the photos and video used to capture ground level information from construction project sites. Information extraction costs are a function of time once the project ends and eventually reach impractical levels as the project team becomes disbands and their tribal knowledge of the project evaporates forever.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. What if the project team could encapsulate their tribal knowledge into an archive that remained accessible to the project team and the owner of the finished building for the duration of the building’s life? – Time out. You may be thinking, um, OK Geedra blog dude. Are we talking about some kind of Vulcan Mind Meld?
By packaging the visual media (photos and/or video) with the project team’s intimate knowledge of the images in the media into photo-data, we can make that information accessible without incurring the extraction costs associated with current forensic research efforts using construction photos and video. The components of photo-data include data tags (for indexing and research), annotations (tells the story of the image), contextual references (other photos, floor plans, reports) and any other supporting information.
(c) 2010 Geedra, LLC
Once converted, photo-data information will be resistant to degradation over time, making it as accessible 10 years after completion as it was 10 minutes after the photos were taken. Facility managers and building owners can not only benefit from knowing the history of their building’s past, but can continue to build upon their photo-database by adding new photos to capture conditions during building improvements and major maintenance overhauls. In doing so, they are making a major improvement to the value of the physical asset in a move that will lower operating costs and reduce operation risk for the life of the building.
Tags: risk management, construction quality, construction documentation, commercial construction, construction photography, Geedra, construction photos, construction video, construction photo documentation, photo-data, facilities management, commercial real estate
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July 21, 2010 by Rob Mathewson
Dude, what's your problem?
Ask a project manager or construction manager about their chosen strategy for jobsite photos and you’ll get strange conglomeration of solutions. The three most popular of which are:
- Sitecams (aka webcams)
- Photo Documentation Services
- Shared Document Management Systems
That’s quite an eclectic list of solutions, which leads me to ask the following; If those are the solutions, what’s the problem? After all, each solution offers its own distinct benefits.
- Sitecams – Constant monitoring of jobsite. Remote Access. Provides transparency for the public.
- Photo Documentation Services – A trained set of eyes behind the camera for improved compliance.
- Document Management Systems – A secure system for archiving photos taken by the project team.
Those are all very desirable benefits that any team would embrace. It seems that each solution attempts to deliver ground level information from the project site. However, they don’t deliver that information in a format that can be immediately evaluated, like data on a spreadsheet. Instead, each solution presents visual media (in the form of digital photos or video), which serve to both store and communicate ground level project information.
There is a cost associated with extracting information from visual media so that it can be converted into a usable format. The information extraction cost* is low during construction when the context and subtle details (aka “tribal knowledge”) are fresh in the minds of project team members-see chart below. However, as construction ends, the project team disperses and memories fade, the extraction cost continues to rise until the project’s tribal knowledge evaporates for good.
In my next post I will propose an alternative solution for preserving ground level project information indefinitely.
(c) 2010 Geedra, LLC
*Examples of Information Extraction Costs – time spent searching for media, reviewing media images for relevant information, interviewing project team members for background information, corroborating design data or consulting reports with visual evidence, etc.
Tags: construction documentation, construction inspection, construction manager, construction monitoring, construction photo, construction photos, construction project management, construction project manager, construction video, Construction Webcams, Document Management System, Gafcon, jobsite camera, MultiVista, Onsite, Ox Blue, photo documentation, sharepoint, SiteCams
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March 31, 2010 by Rob Mathewson
When it comes to technology in construction, I encounter two themes time and again.
From providers I see solutions that I can best describe as “Walls of Text”, that is to say huge, unapproachable applications with dry, generic-looking, form-driven interfaces. – Why is it that you NEVER see a screenshot of a project management solution? Because they all look the same, that’s why! – Regardless of their application, these solutions feature the Mega Swiss Army Knife approach to software by loading up on countless features that require hours of training before a user can begin to use them productively.
On the customer side I hear overwhelming frustration. From users in large, actually the largest, organizations that commit to the mega solution, there’s the time commitment for training, the time spent on data input, status updates and managing data exchanges with project partners. Often times, for those in “smaller” organizations (i.e. those with less than $200 million in sales), there is a feeling that these huge enterprise apps are elephant guns when all they need is a .22 caliber rifle. It’s no surprise that many of those in the latter group turn to home-baked solutions for project management, estimating, accounting and other back office functions. That’s right, they choose to develop the software and infrastructure, pay for maintenance and then risk obsolescence rather than dance with the 800 lb gorilla.
What’s the answer? Obviously, no one has offered anything worth embracing yet. My hunch is that the key to the winning solution will be in the interface. Construction is one of the most tangible, relevant industry in our economy, yet the software in which the industry conducts its business is mired in text and numeric data. The one solution that actually wins over a significant chunk of market share* will be the one that breaks from the mold and translates that data in a visual manner worthy of the industry that it serves.
*Note- despite my best efforts, I was unable to come up with any market share data for use in this post. If you have any, please provide a link in the comments. Years ago, when I last saw this market data, the industry was dominated by the “Other” category with major players like Prolog barely registering in the double digits. It’s no wonder that none of the current software providers include actual market share in their press releases. Instead, they boast of their “X percent” increases over previous years. Which, of course, is code for “We’re embarrassed to tell you how little of this market we actually own.”
Tags: BIM, construction data, construction documentation, construction industry, construction productivity, construction software, contractors, Database, Geedra, GUI, Primavera, Procor, Project Management, Prolog, Revit, Scheduling, Swiss Army Knife, UI Design, UI/UX, User Experience Design, User Interface, UX Design
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March 3, 2010 by Rob Mathewson
When you hear construction and The Great Recession in the same sentence, you wouldn’t expect it to be good news. But I read an article today in the Wall Street Journal that has me brimming with excitement over what the future holds for our industry.
Given a choice between going out of business or keeping their construction businesses alive, contractors are striking flat fee deals with banks to build/finish the houses of failed development projects. Sure, the contractors quoted in the article mention that such contracts “help stop the bleeding” but how long would you expect any business to continue to work just for the sake of keeping the lights on? The strongest contractors will innovate in order to improve (create) their profits.
Where will the innovation come from? Well, I hope jobsite technology gets a good, hard look (OK, I’m biased). But you can’t predict these things. Maybe it’s more efficient use of materials or labor, new contract structures or creative insurance policies. Who knows? Every penny gained through innovation goes directly to the bottom line. Now’s the time to try things!
Given the large inventory of unfinished work in the now infamous markets of Florida, Arizona, California and Nevada, flat fee contracts with banks offer contractors a solid alternative to the bare-knuckled bidding wars that are taking place for government projects. Contractors in these markets can work in familiar territory to improve themselves.
What about you? What are your recession-inspired innovations?
Tags: arizona, california, commercial construction, construction, construction contractors, construction industry, construction productivity, contractors, florida, foreclosure, Geedra, general construction, general contractor, Great Recession, Green Building, nevada, real estate development, receivership, workmanship
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January 4, 2010 by Rob Mathewson
Stimulus spending is said to be behind today’s reported jump in manufacturing spending. It occurs to me that we may be witnessing the stimulus “mouse” working its way down the belly of the construction “snake” as projects progress down the path towards groundbreaking. We’ll know in the coming months if the snake fully digests its meal.
Tags: commercial construction, construction, construction industry, real estate development, stimulus, stimulus money
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December 1, 2009 by Rob Mathewson
In telecommunications the “Last Mile” problem refers to the difficulty service providers have in connecting thousands of houses in a neighborhood to a main high-speed data line. Put another way, the Last Mile problem is a distribution problem, distributing a pipe full of data through many many smaller pipes.
Jobsites have a “First Mile” problem, that is there are thousands of simultaneous operations on any sophisticated site, each of which is generating its own critical “data”, with no centralized means of collecting the data and then delivering it to back office operations. Pick any of your existing operations software solutions; accounting; scheduling; project management; every one of these requires human intervention in order to “extract” new data from the jobsite.
However, there’s a problem with the current method for extracting data from a jobsite. It’s the human problem. Whenever we rely on a human to transfer information by observation, there’s a natural filtering process that takes place. Especially when that human is a stakeholder in the process. Schedule updates are the most common casualty of this type of stakeholder filtering. Ever hear a superintendent utter this most damning phrase, “Oh, we can make up that time. No Problem”?
Tags: commercial construction, construction industry, construction productivity, construction quality, construction quality control, Geedra, risk management
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November 27, 2009 by Rob Mathewson
Terrific discussion about the benefits for the construction industry in switching to Software as a Service.
Tags: construction, construction finance, construction management, construction operations, construction software, SaaS, Software as a Service
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