If it’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words, it’s not surprising that the construction industry loses an untold amount of dollars every year due to poor photo filing. Construction progress photos are worthless if they get filed away without an easy way to locate them, or if you don’t know when and where they were taken.
Commercial construction is extremely complex and becoming more so as we move to combine tens of thousands of supply chains in new synergistic ways—energy recovery systems, variable volume air distribution, and dynamic building controls being a few examples. With all of these moving parts, progress documentation has become essential to the construction process, thus requiring us to take lots of photos. Imagine you could see through walls, above ceilings, and underground, but had no idea where you were looking. That’s roughly the current status of construction progress digital photography.
Let me tell you a story that illustrates my point.
A month after moving a client into a beautiful laboratory building, I received a phone call from one of the facility managers telling me that the exterior lights were out—the breaker had been tripped. We checked the lighting loads and conductors, replaced the breaker, safely reset it, and—ta-da!—the lights worked.
Exactly 30 days later, the same phone call. In desperation I turned to the installation photos. What I found was a mind-numbing pile of digital photos, including one shown here labeled “BOB 005.” The entire collection lacked a meaningful file name, structure, or location. I had no clue as to where the photo belonged or when it was taken. In fact, all the photos had the exact same date, the day the project was closed out.
As it turns out sheer luck led me to the solution. I’ll give you a clue: grey conduit met white conduit and, magically, on the one day in the month when the trees on this desert property were watered, the site lighting would short out. The experience inspired me to find a way to organize digital construction photos so that they could be useful in situations like this.
'Simple isn't the same thing as 'easy'
My first instinct was to try to simplify the process. However, that meant requiring our construction field teams to: 1) take photos of anything that could not be seen after construction; 2) download the photos on a regular basis; 3) name and date the photos in such a way that a third party could find their way back to the point of reference where the photo was taken; and 4) make the photos truly searchable.
This first idea was to develop a complex file structure that was located on a project SharePoint site. The idea was that each folder would hold only photos of that specific room, product, or site location; anyone could post and use the library at any time in the future.
As you’ve probably guessed, my plan fell short at the implementation stage. The operations group members weren’t downloading photos on a regular basis, couldn’t remember where photos had been taken, and didn’t post them into the correct folder. As a fallback, I thought about hiring a couple of project interns whose only job would be to document photos, but that, too, would have been too labor intensive.
What we needed was a solution that didn’t add labor costs and would actually encourage our field staff to take construction progress photos. In short, we needed a tool that could see through walls, above ceilings, and underground—a tool where all the pertinent information could be automatically stored with the photo the moment it was taken.
Increasing the level of photo sophistication
I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. The solution turned out to be “geo-tagging,” which is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to images through a global positioning system (GPS) digital camera. Such cameras are all over the market. We tested Nikon’s P6000, Samsung’s CL65, and several models by Sony; we chose the Sony Cybershot DSC-HX5 for its reasonable cost, GPS accuracy, and the fact that it utilizes a nonproprietary memory card that could easy be removed to transfer photos onto our project servers.
The data-rich file itself is not the end-all; it’s what you can do with it that counts. To draw a parallel, a digital song file comes with the image of the album cover, the name of the song, the artist, and the date it was recorded. It doesn’t matter what kind of device you play a digital song on, you still have access to the data.
Similarly, a geo-tagged photo comes with its latitude, longitude, altitude, compass direction, date, and time recorded. Having all that data embedded in your geo-tagged photos allows you to create so-called “mashups.”
According to Wikipedia 2012, a mashup is “a Web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation, or functionality from two or more sources to create new services.” The main characteristics of mashups are “combination, visualization, and aggregation” that make existing data more useful for professional (or personal) use.
When a construction progress photo has been geo-tagged, it can be viewed in any of a number of mapping programs that recognize latitude and longitude; with a little work, it can even be viewed in programs that recognize x-y-z relationships to a given reference point.
One of the simplest of these mapping programs is Google Maps. In the case of the geo-tagged photo and Google Maps mashup on page 21, the red pin represents the precise location where the photo was taken. The blue cone emanating from the pin is the image angle, indicating the direction of the photo. In other words, the person taking the photo was standing on the red pin and facing in the direction of the blue triangle.
Once your photos have been geo-tagged they can be paired (i.e., mashed) with any number of backgrounds through a variety of interfaces. The three primary interfaces that we use are: 1) the typical file view (sort by name or date); 2) a very useful calendar view; and 3) a map view.
Finding your construction progress photos now becomes much easier. If you know the approximate date, use the calendar view. If you know roughly the location, use the map view. Let’s say you are a supervisor of several construction projects, and you want to find a photo from your job in Phoenix. No problem: using the software that comes with the GPS camera, just zoom in to the location.
Moreover, you don’t necessarily need a GPS-enabled camera to geo-tag your photos. You can download freeware (e.g., Picasa 3, GeoSetter, Geolmgr) that will enable you to manually geo-tag your new (and old) photos that were taken with a non-GPS-enabled camera. Using the map view, you simply drag and drop your photos to the location you remember being at.
However, this method makes you do all the manual work yourself, which from a field perspective creates a disincentive for taking project progress photos
The most elegant solutions are often the simplest. In the brave new world of open source data and cloud computing, data sophistication is paramount. Thanks to GPS and digital cameras, now you can see through walls, above ceilings, and below ground, as if you were really there. +
Ryan Abbott (raabbott@sundt.com) is the Science & Technology Group Leader with SUNDT Construction, Inc.
Related Stories
| Nov 6, 2013
PECI tests New Buildings Institute’s plug load energy use metrics at HQ
Earlier this year, PECI used the NBI metrics to assess plug load energy use at PECI headquarters in downtown Portland, Ore. The study, which informed an energy-saving campaign, resulted in an 18 percent kWh reduction of PECI’s plug load.
| Nov 5, 2013
Net-zero movement gaining traction in U.S. schools market
As more net-zero energy schools come online, school officials are asking: Is NZE a more logical approach for school districts than holistic green buildings?
| Nov 5, 2013
New IECC provision tightens historic building exemption
The International Energy Conservation Code has been revised to eliminate what has been seen as a blanket exemption for historic buildings.
| Nov 5, 2013
Living Building Challenge clarifies net-zero definitions and standards
The Living Building Challenge has released the Net Zero Energy Building Certification to provide clearer definitions regarding what net zero really means and how it is to be achieved.
| Nov 5, 2013
Oakland University’s Human Health Building first LEED Platinum university building in Michigan [slideshow]
Built on the former site of a parking lot and an untended natural wetland, the 160,260-sf, five-story, terra cotta-clad building features some of the industry’s most innovative, energy-efficient building systems and advanced sustainable design features.
| Nov 4, 2013
Architecture and engineering industry outlook remains positive on all major indicators
While still below pre-recession levels, all of the key indicators in the latest Quarterly Market Forecast (QMF) report from PSMJ Resources remain in positive territory.
| Nov 1, 2013
CBRE Group enhances healthcare platform with acquisition of KLMK Group
CBRE Group, Inc. (NYSE:CBG) today announced that it has acquired KLMK Group, a leading provider of facility consulting, project advisory and facility activation solutions to the healthcare industry.
| Oct 31, 2013
74 years later, Frank Lloyd Wright structure built at Florida Southern College
The Lakeland, Fla., college adds to its collection of FLW buildings with the completion of the Usonian house, designed by the famed architect in 1939, but never built—until now.
| Oct 31, 2013
CBRE's bold experiment: 200-person office with no assigned desks [slideshow]
In an effort to reduce rent costs, real estate brokerage firm CBRE created its first completely "untethered" office in Los Angeles, where assigned desks and offices are replaced with flexible workspaces.
| Oct 30, 2013
15 stellar historic preservation, adaptive reuse, and renovation projects
The winners of the 2013 Reconstruction Awards showcase the best work of distinguished Building Teams, encompassing historic preservation, adaptive reuse, and renovations and additions.
