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360° Progress Documentation with HoloBuilder

March 10, 2020
Ken Grothman
Cameras Don’t Make Photographers

HoloBuilder is changing the way Gilbane’s project teams are approaching progress documentation on jobsites While technology has put a high-resolution camera in everybody’s pocket, it hasn’t made everyone a photographer, nor a skillful organizer of multitudes of photos.

 width=This is where HoloBuilder excels. By leveraging 360° camera technology, project teams are able to quickly capture spherical photos that maximize photographic coverage of job sites. One 360° photo can replace up to 10 traditional photos, by capturing all the walls, ceiling and floor of a room with one press of a button. This accelerates the team’s ability to quickly capture comprehensive images. With HoloBuilder, a 360° digital replica of the job site is created, that can be accessed and analyzed remotely.

“HoloBuilder gives the Proton Therapy project team in Houston progress photo documentation you’d expect from a professional service but in half the time and half the cost. The client finds the results so valuable they plan to use it for their facilities team for building maintenance after move-in. The product deliverable has the capacity to be a value added service if properly presented,” said Karl Thompson, Gilbane Senior Project Engineer.

The photos can then be geolocated to project plans, making navigation easy and allowing users to quickly find and leverage photos. Gone are the days of navigating through folder upon folder of JPG photo files with names like “IMG_1698.jpg.” The 360° photos are automatically organized by location, time and content, and stored in a secure cloud server environment. Having photos filed away to never be seen again becomes a thing of the past.

Powerful Tools Provide Ongoing Integration width=

Powerful tools within HoloBuilder can also annotate and attach documents to the 360° images, providing advanced technology features like BIM rendering import, computer vision, Artificial Intelligence, and distance measurements. In addition, integrations between HoloBuilder and other industry tools such as ProCore, are continuing to expand. With this integration, the 360° photos are seamlessly integrated into RFI’s, Observations, and Coordination Issues. HoloBuilder provides 360° progress documentation and a complete record of construction activities for our construction teams.

Click below to view video on how HoloBuilder JobWalk Planner allows you to pre-plan capture locations in the office before your team is heading on-site and notify them about which areas have to be captured in 360 degrees:




About Authors
Ken Grothman is a VDC Manager that leads Gilbane’s BIM planning efforts between owners, designers and general contractors. With a Masters of Architecture as well as on-site experience as both a VDC Engineer and a Project Engineer, Ken’s knowledge improves the preconstruction efforts that drives value for project teams during the construction phase. He is a subject matter expert in Reality Capture, including laser scanning, drones and photogrammetry that allows dimensionally accurate, existing conditions be brought into the BIM platform to enhance coordination efforts. Ken enables BIM services for a wide range of verticals including Mission Critical / Data Centers, Healthcare, Education and high-end Corporate for Gilbane’s Western region.
Read more posts by Ken Grothman

One Reply to “360° Progress Documentation with HoloBuilder”

  1. Christian Claus
    • March 10, 2020

    Fantastic article, thank you for sharing, Ken! Love the fact that you pointed out the JobWalk Planner capability to connect the field to the office, very powerful use case!

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