Four Reasons why Photo Collaboration is Crucial in Construction

The construction industry has been driven by technological advances for the past half-century. From the dawn of drafting software in the 1980s to the utilization of BIM over the past decade, the processes that architects and contractors adopt drive change throughout the industry. The nexus of a current movement being adopted is photo collaboration, which has evolved from taking and printing out photos for documentation to storing, tagging, and sharing this content on the cloud across entire project teams including subcontractors and clientele. Pixly is currently at the forefront of this transformation. Communicating through photo documentation in construction is vital to a project's success, and here are four important reasons why.  

Keeping External Personnel Informed

Not all key personnel involved in a project will be available or co-located at a construction project site. Keeping all players involved in the project is possible through the typical daily and monthly reports, but enhancement through photo collaboration brings this to another higher level. There is an incredible amount of value to having a real-time photo collaboration app that maintains a photo database that can be dated, tagged, and referenced in real-time. The significance of sharing this remotely transcends any disconnect between individuals working across town or state lines.

Real-Time Progress Documentation

Keeping a record of schedule progress is traditionally done through a progress update to the CPM schedule. It relies heavily on the baseline schedule and the activities and milestones presented in a bar chart format with durations and schedule ties. It is technically challenging to understand a CPM schedule and the progress that has been made without having a visual representation of the work that has been completed.

Enter Pixly, the jobsite photo documentation platform. Photos can be tagged with project, location, dates and more when taken, but sharing them across the cloud will connect your team and be the basis for daily or monthly visual schedule progress. Using this as a reference will help your team review previous photos and track the project's trends with just a tap.

Keeping Tabs on the Complete and Incomplete Items

Connecting the client to the architect and contractors can be augmented through to the trade partners completing the project through a construction photo storage app such as Pixly. Trade partners are not on a project but for their specific time allotted for completing their scope of work based on the schedule durations and dates. Having a photo progress collaboration tool that can share information across the cloud keeps teams aware of how things are progressing and how the work that needs to be completed before installing their work is proceeding.

The information relayed through photo collaboration can also inform trade partners of incomplete work, which has been left out because of work unfinished by other trades or deliveries that were not received promptly. Checking the project's status helps teams connect and understand what work needs to be completed and maintain the project schedule, reducing schedule delays and quality concerns.

Enhancement of As-Builts Post-Warranty

Once a project is completed and turned over to the client, team members quickly move onto their subsequent efforts. An incredible amount of information is turned over to the owner, from as-builts to operations & maintenance manuals, product data, and equipment information. This information gets transferred manually or digitally and can be tough to recall if the owner calls for a warranty item or repair request once the team has moved on. Having a photo collaboration tool that can be easily accessed from anywhere at your fingertips can help streamline the process of determining the equipment or room location from a set of tagged photos that will make it simple to follow up on a request from an owner to contractor.