While 360° photo capture is a game-changer for the operations & maintenance (O&M) sector, simply buying more 360° cameras and capturing more photos in shared drives and directories is not the solution. More photos mean more managing of those photos, which inevitably leads to more wasted time.
To set themselves up for success, owners need a toolset that manages photos of different renovation and maintenance projects by location and time before starting jobsite documentation for assets.
The purpose of this guide is to outline best practices with respect to 360° photos captured on-site – managing them in a way that documents progress, saves time and money, and creates a reliable as-built record for owners to refer to for future projects.
Pre-renovation, maintenance & new builds
During the planning or design phase of your renovation project, it is important to be confident that the project documentation has been set up in a scalable way. The following are some tips to keep in mind when beginning your project.
- Flag Locations — Prior to beginning renovations, it helps for a project manager to perform an initial survey to flag locations on-site as areas of focus for the contractor to prioritize once work begins. Even if your building does not have existing floor plans to work with, HoloBuilder's JobWalk App provides a simple grid outline that can be later exchanged with the floor plan.
- Label Your Cameras — If you have multiple cameras to be used by multiple contractors during the project, it is helpful to label each one and document who is using which camera. As with other tools and equipment, a tracking log is helpful to track storage of cameras, so they are not misplaced.
- Software Storage — Use a cloud-based solution to back up your raw photos. This way if damage occurs locally to your machine, photos remain accessible. Cloud-based storage solutions can organize and store a huge amount of data and are often accessible on any device with a web browser. Organize your photos with a consistent naming convention.
- Documentation App — When a 360° camera is paired with a smartphone and the manufacturer's app, photos are captured and stored within the app or camera, without being organized by project. With a dedicated 360° construction progress tracking app, you ensure that all photos are linked to their corresponding locations on the project floor plan and are organized by time of capture.
- Visualization Software — Without a 360° viewing system, 360° photos are skewed. Most 360° camera manufacturers offer free visualization software, but they can often only offer to view one photo at a time, while a dedicated Construction Progress Management solution provides a holistic view of your entire jobsite in 360°.
During construction work
When renovation, maintenance or new build work has begun is when most photos are taken to document progress. This is a crucial stage in planning photo capture with a 360° camera. Crews will want to be familiar with these best practices:
- Camera positioning — 360° cameras are best used with a light-weight tripod that can be easily carried and only requires one hand to transport. Standing at a distance while the photos are captured allows an unobstructed view of the camera's surroundings. Holding the camera overhead, maybe even mounted on a monopod, also provides an unobstructed view.
- Photo Location — Photos are most effective when captured in the same location. This location can be hard to pinpoint due to changes in the surrounding environment with ongoing construction, so physically marking the location of the camera/tripod with a marker could improve consistency. Overhead markers may work better as they will encounter less wear. It's also helpful to mark the tripod/camera locations on a floor plan for a static reference.
- Lighting — Invest in a proper light source that will illuminate darker areas to be photographed, especially if your site does not have permanent lighting. Most 360° cameras produce mediocre photographs when there is poor lighting in the area. A 360° LED light that can be mounted between tripod and camera, an LED light wand or some other task lighting that disperses light well to surrounding areas will be very helpful in this case. On the other end of the spectrum, bright lighting conditions will also alter the quality of your photos. Be sure to check the photos in the preview screen after capturing and adjust for your condition.
- QA/QC — Appoint a team member to review photos for proper location/categorization about once every few weeks. Sometimes while on a walk and documenting the site, photos will be taken by accident or saved in the wrong location, which is why checking for these issues regularly is important.
Closeout
In the final stages of a project, photo management and storage become paramount. If your organization process has been neglected, it becomes almost unmanageable at this point. Photos are needed at this stage to check work for final payment and to be shared with other relevant departments. The handoff process from your general contractor to owners can be streamlined by doing the following.
- Delivery — Share photo documentation with other departments in a manner that is easy to navigate. Photos with descriptions, markups, or identifiers help all parties, including the contractor, owner and accounts payable, understand what they are looking at and stay on the same page. Using a software solution to communicate those photos eliminates the need for physical copies and can improve the overall user experience.
- Document — With photos captured throughout the renovation project, owners can now integrate them with BIM software to create an as-built record for future projects. However, it is important that these records are stored in a centralized system to be updated and referenced when needed.
How HoloBuilder Simplifies On-Site Photo Documentation
HoloBuilder is a 360° cloud-based Construction Progress Management solution that has revolutionized the way photos are captured and managed on-site. With the mobile JobWalk App working seamlessly together with the Web Editor and Viewer, you can mark up photos, compare photos from different times side-by-side to monitor progress, and much more.
With the many integrations for Autodesk BIM 360©, Procore© and more, store your raw project data where you like and work between the platforms seamlessly to eliminate data silos within your organization. Easily manage your projects & teams with the Enterprise Dashboard.
When your project reaches its close-out phase, you can keep a permanent record of your 360° construction documentation for offline viewing and sharing with stakeholders by using the Offline HoloViewer.
With every angle of the site documented with 360° photos taken by your team, and organized by location and time in HoloBuilder, you can finally put an end to your site documentation headaches.
Are you ready to start your 360° construction documentation? Get a demo or start a free trial today!