Construction Progress Monitoring: Best Practices for Remote Stakeholders
More and more construction stakeholders are utilizing construction progress monitoring to capture and archive real-time construction conditions week after week. Fortunately, the advancement of reality mapping technology has made this process easier, faster, and more affordable than ever before.
Today, virtually every organization can ask field teams to perform rapid reality capture of the job site every week using simple equipment such as 360 cameras and smartphones. A drone can capture hard-to-reach areas and unsafe regions or take sweeping exterior shots when necessary.
In this article, we’ll walk through a few best practices for implementing a remote construction progress monitoring strategy that’s fast, affordable, and provides stakeholders with more visibility into construction progress than was previously possible.
1. Ask field teams to capture the job site frequently
Most stakeholders that perform remote construction progress monitoring ask for on-site reality capture to be performed regularly. Once a week is standard and should not disrupt construction schedules. After all, 360 capture is fast: on average, about 1,000 square feet in a minute. For higher-resolution reality capture, stakeholders can simply snap pictures of installations with a smartphone.
If Reconstruct’s photogrammetry engine is used for reality mapping, those high-resolution smartphone images will be automatically blended with all other footage (from all other devices, including 360 camera and drone) to create one single source of project truth in space and over time.
Every time capture is performed, your project’s digital twin will be automatically updated with the new data. To go back in time to see construction at an earlier date, all you need to do is click a button. The digital twin can be shared with any stakeholders. Reconstruct also allows users to create curated job site tours for non-users using Project Snapshot.
Related: 360 Progress Capture: Creating a Digital Twin for Remote Construction Monitoring
2. Use progress capture data to update the master schedule
In the past, physical progress monitoring required stakeholders to frequently walk the job site, assess construction progress, and update a spreadsheet with details about immediate activities and tasks. Later on, this information would be compiled with updates from other weeks to try to determine the real progress for each activity on the master schedule.
Once clear, stakeholders would input this data into the P6 schedule to update the owner on the construction progress. This process is time-consuming and requires experts to remain on site. Moreover, it provides the owner only with a P6 file. There’s no visualization or context of how progress is being performed.
Remote progress monitoring solves this by allowing anyone (not just an expert) to capture the true visuals of the job, offering clarity about progress and complete context about every activity.
Moreover, whoever performed the reality capture can use the Reporter app to update the progress in the P6 schedule directly, bypassing the spreadsheet phase where superintendents and subcontractors exchange files to determine each activity's progress.
Related: 10 Benefits of Visual Progress Monitoring for Construction Stakeholders
3. Share visuals—not just a schedule—with critical stakeholders
It goes without saying that reality capture can make construction progress monitoring more efficient. After all, whoever goes out there to record progress via Reconstruct can immediately and directly update the progress for each master schedule activity.
But it’s also about providing stakeholders with more visibility…all while doing less work in less time and for less money.
With Reconstruct, for example, users can export progress directly into a P6 schedule, which gets them to the same point as a traditional physical progress monitoring workflow in less time. Or, just as easily, users can invite project owners and owners’ representatives into Reconstruct, allowing them to “see” the progress on the schedule and in the Viewer through immersive, measurable images and BIM color-coding.
About Reconstruct
Reconstruct is the leader in digital twinning and remote construction progress monitoring. By enabling virtually every team member to perform reality capture, it’s much easier for all stakeholders to immerse themselves in the job site and inspect construction progress, even when a physical walkthrough is impossible.
To learn more about Reconstruct or see your project in 3D, schedule a personalized demo today.
