- If you can't tell by now,
I get fairly excited by some of the things
that technology can help us with in the field.
One of the reasons for this is that I've been around
long enough, that I've spent many, many hours, and days,
and weeks doing this the hard way.
Some of the things that used to be really time-consuming
can now be moved to a digital process and a digital workflow
with the result being a tremendous savings
in time and effort.
The additional advantage to digitizing our data
is much better accessibility.
Let's start with something really simple
in terms of data capture.
The daily report is like a time-honored tradition
and requirement on a construction site.
For years, I kept my notebook logs of daily reports
for the projects I managed.
At one point, I had volumes of them.
They didn't do much, sitting there on the seat of my truck,
or there on the shelves.
But you had to have them just in case.
And that need did come around from time to time,
usually when something went wrong
or you were trying to prove that something did
or did not happen.
So you didn't need them.
It was just time-consuming to record
all of that information.
You usually took notes, then sat down at the end of the day
or the end of the week, and used all of your notes
to create those daily reports,
that then typically sat locked away until you needed them.
Now going digital is a huge step forward.
And again, using one of the construction management
applications that I've discussed
streamlines this even further.
You can create fillable forms that are location-aware.
So data like weather can be filled in for you.
You can make entries out there in the field
as your day progresses,
so that at the end of the day, you're done.
You can even set them to remind you
when you haven't submitted a report that's required.
In a digital form,
this information can then be easily shared.
It's searchable, and you can set it to push your reports
to everyone that needs to see them.
Or better yet, you can store that report
in a centralized database, where there's a single,
read-only copy for those with permissions to access.
Let's look at another process that was very time-consuming,
documenting the condition of a job site.
Now whether it's documenting existing conditions
or documenting construction progress,
this has always been time-consuming, expensive,
and it also resulted in siloed information
that was difficult to access.
Now having cameras in our phones put us on the road
to making this task easier.
A digital picture is certainly easy to take,
it's easy to check and make sure it captured
what we intended, and it's easy to share with others.
More recent advancements have simplified,
and even improved that process.
But one of the issues with digital photos
is that we end up with a lot of pictures, a lot of files,
and it's difficult and time-consuming to name them
and organize them all.
That's where software comes in.
This ranges from free consumer products
to products built specifically
for the construction industry.
For example, I can set the camera on my phone
to record location and date.
So I don't have to worry about that.
I can also use the free Google Photos application
to search and sort through them.
I use that quite a bit because I take a lot of photos
and I'm never sure if I'm actually going to need
any of them.
So I just snap a picture with my phone.
It goes straight to Google Photos
and that's all I do with it.
I can go in later and I can search by location,
I can also search by looking for only construction projects,
and it really does help you find and sort things.
And then of course, sharing is very easy.
If you take that up a level,
we have software like HoloBuilder.
That works in a similar fashion,
but it's built specifically for the construction industry
to document conditions.
In addition to search and sharing, it adds things like
the ability to stack photos,
so that you can see how a room changes over time
during the course of construction.
And it makes it easy to locate photos by their location
within a specific job site.
Now this software also supports 360 degree photos.
These images are really good
because one of the issues I always have
with photo documentation is that I always seem to cut off
the one thing I end up needing in a photo,
no matter how many pictures I take of the room.
360 degree cameras solve this problem.
They're not that expensive, they're easy to use,
and in one click of a button,
I can capture the current condition of an entire room,
360 degrees, from ceiling to floor.