Reconstruct Inc.

Many building project stakeholders, including owners reps and owners, can’t frequently visit their jobsite. Yet they still need to stay on top of milestones, risks, and schedules. Reconstruct Inc. created the Visual Command Center, built on Forge, to help project managers share progress with remote stakeholders. Instead of visiting jobsite trailers or paging through hard-to-understand paper plans, stakeholders can simply log on at any time to conduct a street-view walkthrough of the site, measure progress and quality, compare them against design and schedule, and convenently document issues and communicate them with other stakeholders in real-time.

Challenge

Reconstruct, based in Menlo Park, California, and Champaign, Illinois, wanted to solve two problems in remote construction progress monitoring: lack of remote access to progress updates and a deluge of visual data associated with construction projects. Until recently, sharing updates with stakeholders who aren’t always on the jobsite—such as construction executives, owners, owners reps and insurance companies —meant crowding into trailers to view complicated paper plans. Reconstruct uses powerful images to convey a project’s progress, including 360-videos, cell phone images, crane videos, and drone footage. By integrating a wealth of visual data; transforming the data into measurable reality walkthroughs of the site; and then aligning this with designs and schedules … the Visual Command Center creates virtual site walkthroughs that let stakeholders remotely see progress with their own eyes from the safety of their own offices or homes.

How Reconstruct solved it with Forge

Reconstruct chose Forge as the platform for the Visual Command Center, which transforms 360-degree images and video into measurable street-view walkthroughs and integrates them with 2D drawings and 3D building information models. Reconstruct uses the Forge Model Derivative API to translate data files in multiple formats, letting stakeholders view them with the Visual Command Center. The Forge Model Derivative API ensures interoperability for files from Autodesk Navisworks®, Autodesk Revit®, and many other design solutions. Forge Model Derivative API and Reconstruct integration with BIM 360 allows project teams to always access the most up to date drawings and models to see “what is there” vs. “what should be there”.

Reconstruct also uses the Forge Viewer API to show 2D and 3D designs, including 3D point clouds and floor plans, with sub-inch accuracy, letting stakeholders virtually walk through floor plans. And interactive timelines act as a time machine for construction by bringing project phases to life. This timeline allows project teams review “what is there” vs “what should be there” in the past, present and future of the project.

The combination of web-accessible reality vs design in 2D and 3D increases project transparency, helps identify risks, and reassures stakeholders with at-a-glance status reports. And the Visual Command Center is integrated with BIM 360 to ensure that project data is always in sync.

Forge highlights include the following: 

• Improve solution interoperability 
• Open the door to complex global projects that require stakeholder reporting
• Increase transparency with online access to project plans
• Convey real-time project status by overlaying 2D and 3D design for indoors and outdoors with high-quality images and videos

APIs and Services

Viewer

Model Derivative API