Reconstruct Customers Share 2023’s Top Construction Challenges

To end the year, we’ve gathered some of the top hurdles our customers have faced in 2023—and how they’ve leaned on Reconstruct to lessen or solve them. From laser scanning challenges to tedious report generation, here’s what construction, inspection, and engineer stakeholders had to say about what held them back the past twelve months:

1. Laser scanning is not always efficient (or even necessary)

If a customer wishes to do a high-precision reality capture once, laser scanning is a great tool. However, recording the reality of the job site on a given date, usually before a project starts or after construction is complete, leaves stakeholders with a site survey but no archive of changes or progress over time. What’s more, laser scanning is expensive and slow, rendering it nearly impossible for an active job site with even a good-sized budget to perform reality capture regularly.

This challenge is why many organizations turn to Reconstruct. After all, Reconstruct’s photogrammetry engine can generate reality maps from smartphones to 360 cameras to drones. It can also blend all forms of reality capture from every device, from smartphones to 360 cameras to drones to laser scanners. That means high-quality, professionally performed laser scanning can be combined with frequent geo-referenced reality capture performed by field teams on the job site week after week.

The end result? A constantly updated, single source of project truth that enables frequent visual progress monitoring, visual quality assurance and quality control, and more. 

The top image reveals a convention center (250,000 square feet) “captured” by Reconstruct in 32 minutes. Such a scan would have taken hours, if not an entire day, to record using a laser scanner. The bottom image reveals the point cloud generated from the reality capture walk.

Related: Choose the Right Reality Capture Tool, Process, and Team

2. Walking the same path over and over again in reality capture isn’t possible

Many customers who come to Reconstruct from another reality capture solution are frustrated with trying to walk the same reality capture path over and over again. During early calls with soon-to-be customers, our team is frequently asked, “Will my people need to walk the same path every time they do a capture?” 

The answer is no. One of the chief benefits of Reconstruct is that the technology automatically pins whatever you’ve captured precisely where it belongs at the time you’ve captured it. You can capture a building’s exterior with a drone on a Tuesday, floor one with a 360 camera on Wednesday, electrical details with a smartphone on Thursday, and then a laser scanner at the end of the week, and all that data will be blended to create one virtual duplication of the job site in space and over time.

Use whatever path makes sense for you. Sure, walking the same path might be helpful so you don’t forget anything, but there’s no technological need. Every bit of reality data can be consumed by Reconstruct to generate the digital twin for construction, regardless of who captured the data, when it was captured, what device it was captured on, or what route they walked to capture it.

Related: Reality Capture vs. Reality Mapping | What’s the Difference?

3. There’s not enough time for travel and site visits

Another frequent challenge for Reconstruct customers is time. Quite simply, there isn’t enough of it. Whether someone is a regional portfolio manager overseeing dozens of convenience stores in the tri-state area or an owner’s rep responsible for several high-profile construction projects across the world, travel is expensive, time-consuming, and exhausting. 

By creating measurable, immersive walkthroughs of job sites that bring the construction project to the stakeholders' desks, Reconstruct can cut travel time in half for most stakeholders. By adding hours back to every workday, key stakeholders can take their time to audit job sites, check on all their projects in a single afternoon, compare what’s been built to what’s been planned using 2D and 3D design integration, and even pin QA and QC concerns directly to the digital twin.

Moreover, since Reconstruct is a true time machine for construction, remote stakeholders performing QA/QC or visual progress monitoring can also turn back time to visualize the job site on any other day in the past. This can help answer questions about installations (i.e., “What’s behind that sealed wall?”) without the cost, delay, or disruption of demolition. 

Related: Remote Quality Control: The Secret to Avoiding Costly Rework

4. Report generation for QA/QC is too manual and tedious

Another challenge that frustrates Reconstruct customers? Visual quality assurance and quality control processes that take too long. Fortunately, with a bit of help from their contacts at Reconstruct, creating QA/QC reports can be automated, too.

With Reconstruct’s communication tools, stakeholders can pin QA/QC concerns directly onto problems, and then create a spreadsheet that feeds into a PowerPoint template that rapidly fills a single slide (with photos and notes) for every issue. This “strike list” can then be shared in coordination meetings.

Stay tuned for more news regarding upcoming solutions for issue management in 2024.

5. Professional site surveying is too expensive and skill-dependent 

Finally, similar to the challenges with laser scanning, many stakeholders come to Reconstruct because relying on professionals to perform site surveying takes too long, costs too much, and isn’t feasible for regular reality capture. 

Reconstruct not only slashes the need for constant travel to the job site but also enables virtually anybody on the job site to perform frequent reality capture. These weekly captures don’t have to be perfect, and no formal training is required. Instead, simple devices can be used to capture a complete picture of the job site, and this data can be used for a whole host of use cases. If an owner’s representative asks for footage of the second floor of a parking garage, the on-site team can provide that footage in minutes, not weeks. 

There’s no delay, no wait, and no sky-high expense for reality data. Instead, remote and field teams can rely on a single, consistently updated source of project truth to align the next steps and finish the job on time, on budget, safely, and amicably.

About Reconstruct

Reconstruct has set the gold standard for digital twinning in the construction, inspection, and engineering industries. To learn how Reconstruct can bring your job site to remote stakeholders, contact us for a free, personalized demo.