Gothenburg is Sweden’s second-largest city—and home to some of the country’s most important economic and industrial corporations, including AstraZeneca and Volvo. In a decades-long plan to transform the already-crucial city into Northern Europe’s most essential commercial and logistics destination, nearly $100 billion is being invested into Gothenburg.
And the crown jewel of Gothenburg’s new frontier? Citygate, the Nordic region’s tallest office building. Slated for completion in 2023, Skanska—the world’s fifth-largest construction company—is handling the tower’s commercial construction. And to provide all project stakeholders with optimal, remote project monitoring, Skanska has partnered with Reconstruct and Insta360 cameras to transform construction footage into a precise, as-built digital twin of the job site.
Plans for the 36-story, 144-meter tall, WELL and LEED-certified Citygate building have always been complex. Between breathtaking design and a long list of environmental and wellness requirements for air quality, lighting, and more, Citygate stakeholders need to ensure construction on all 42,000 leasable square meters of the tower is not just proceeding as scheduled but being built as planned.
Skanska’s remote construction monitoring strategy consists of three overall steps:
First, on-site employees perform quick, frequent reality capture walks of Citygate using Insta360 cameras (ONE X or ONE R) and the Reconstruct smartphone app. Both software and hardware are simple and intuitive, with Reconstruct’s reality capture app offering “capturers” a live floor plan of tracking progress so no corner of the site is forgotten. The footage can be captured inside or outside, and virtually any team member can record the job site, with no expertise required.
Next, Reconstruct’s photogrammetry and reality mapping engine automatically transforms the most recent 360 photos and videos of the job site into geo-referenced, as-built 2D floor plans and 3D reality models. (Skanska’s team never needed to upload initial floor plans, BIM, or other information about the building to Reconstruct, because the software uses geo-referenced reality capture to automatically position visuals exactly where they appear in space and over time.)
After this, all stakeholders and teams, whether local or across the world, can visit Reconstruct’s Visual Command Center to review the latest updates to Citygate’s job site. Stakeholders walk through the digital assets virtually, perform visual progress monitoring, pin comments and concerns directly to visualized issues, review schedule against progress, measure and inspect every inch of the job, compare what’s been built to design drawings and BIM, and streamline cross-team communication and collaboration. Stakeholders can also use Reconstruct Project Snapshots to turn back the clock and visualize, measure, and inspect Citygate at a previous date or time—no costly demolition or schedule delay necessary.
Related: Remote Quality Control: The Secret to Avoiding Costly Rework
Remote construction monitoring allows all construction stakeholders to visualize the same online as-built duplication of their job site, even if those stakeholders are half a world away. This was particularly important during earlier construction of Citygate, which coincided with the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when most business travel and face-to-face collaboration was virtually impossible.
Even with limited access to the job site for some stakeholders, Skanska had the remote monitoring tools required to verify quality, review construction progress, and address small problems before they became major concerns. Remote construction monitoring has also enabled Skanska and other stakeholders to properly update schedules and make better-informed decisions.
Here’s what Henrik Ljungberg, Digital Innovation Manager at Skanska, had to say about the integration between Reconstruct and Insta360.
“When you use the Reconstruct Capture app, you unlock the potential of having a structured workflow for photo, video, and 360-video documentation. Throughout the construction phase, you are able to collect data that can be used to drive value and efficiency in many different areas. Safety, quality, and progress, of course, especially in communication with all involved stakeholders. We find new scenarios almost every day for which we can use the photos that we have captured in an organized way using the Reconstruct Capture app. It’s truly amazing that such a simple solution can give so much value in so many areas.”
Remote progress monitoring:
Notably, all these features and benefits are achieved with a simple 360 camera, Reconstruct’s reality mapping software, and the personnel Skanska already has on the job site. While there are certain moments in site assessment when a laser scanner or other complex hardware may be indicated, reality mapping tool-selection research demonstrates that for effective progress monitoring, all Reconstruct requires is footage captured with a 360 camera for effective progress monitoring.
To enable remote progress monitoring on the Nordic region’s tallest office building, all Skanska needs is the team it already has in place—and the integration between Reconstruct and Insta360.