Automated progress tracking products use computer vision and machine learning to automatically identify materials and percent complete from image or scan data. These solutions are now being broadly deployed on jobsites, giving project teams unprecedented transparency, objectivity and quantified insights. This accurate and timely progress information allows project executives, project managers, and superintendents to focus on maximizing schedule and budget performance. In the construction industry, it is common for superintendents to track progress by highlighting drawings when materials are installed or for trades to provide weekly or daily progress updates. With the introduction of automated progress tracking tools, teams are able to focus on decision making rather than data gathering.
Automated progress tracking data provides fast, accurate, and impartial information so that teams can act with more confidence. In construction, where job progress is made every day, progress data needs to be available while it is still relevant and timely. Automated progress tracking solutions work by first capturing your jobsite with 360° cameras or laser scan technology and then analyzing these captures to determine percent complete. There are three main areas in this process where speed impacts information delivery:
Speed to capture,
Speed of image or scan processing and
Insight processing speed is vital so that you can act on fresh, timely data.
An automated progress tracking solution should have accuracy within 1% to 2% of what self-perform teams are estimating. Some solutions only offer tracking for one specific trade or scope of work, others have focused on the final project stages, like rough in and finishes. With progress tracking solutions, your insights will only be as good as your capture frequency, but some solutions charge based on how much you want to capture. Automated progress tracking provides teams with insights about percent complete and quantity installed. Teams can also find a lot of value in the capture data that powers these insights. Processing this capture data and aligning it to plans can be costly, and as such some progress tracking solutions will pick and choose which data to display.
Link to related Article: Evaluating Automated Progress Tracking Solutions | Engineering News-Record (enr.com)
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