Properly tracking and documenting progress on a construction project is critical to a well-managed project. Documenting when and how key tasks and activities are completed by specific trades can make schedule updates more straight forward. Capturing this information, however, has traditionally required time-consuming site walks and tedious, paper-based processes that are poorly controlled and inconsistently executed.
New technologies, such as Newmetrix, are changing how progress tracking is accomplished. Leading contractors are now leveraging the power of mobile applications, video, and photos to easily record critical progress information and share it with team members. Advanced technologies not only drastically reduce the time and manpower required to document construction progress, they create richer documentation that also contributes importantly to a culture of discipline and accountability in jobsite practices.
Using the power of voice to provide updates
Newmetrix makes it easy to create rich site inspections and progress observations by simply capturing photos and videos that can include voice recordings. Newmetrix’s solution combines an intuitive mobile app as well as AI-based speech and image recognition technology (Vinnie) to automatically label and organize all site observations.
By marrying an intuitive mobile app and powerful AI analytics, contractors save 60% of the time traditionally spent recording progress observations. Photos and videos are easy to capture and are automatically uploaded and sorted based on any spoken keywords including phase of construction, subcontractor names, trades, and jobsite locations such as room numbers or elevations. And, because all keywords are added as “SmartTags” to the files where they are heard, it is also easy to search and retrieve photos at any time in the project.
Proven workflow of documenting progress
Suffolk Construction has completely revamped its project documentation process based upon an integrated workflow between Procore and Newmetrix. Now, Suffolk’s field engineers take daily narrated videos and photos that are automatically indexed by Newmetrix’s Vinnie engine. This new approach for tracking progress has cut the time required for progress tracking and milestone documentation by over 60% while also creating a dramatically better, more comprehensive visual record. Coupled with a bi-directional integration into Procore, which took less than 90 seconds to set up, Suffolk’s teams can now easily search for tagged photos or video clips in either Newmetrix or Procore. Suffolk can also easily share selected photos or videos with their trade partners or owner representatives in order to facilitate daily reporting and resolve questions or disputes.
"Video is faster to capture than a bunch of photos and our teams can now simply speak - like with Siri - to indicate any location, room numbers, construction processes, or sub-contractor names for the work being documented. Newmetrix does the hard work behind the scenes to automatically tag our videos and photos with its speech recognition engine. It’s better than Siri because we define what we want Vinnie to be listening for - like room and floor numbers," says Shane Sampson, Assistant Superintendent at Suffolk.
Utilizing tagged photos and videos in Newmetrix
Now that you have begun capturing content and posting it to Newmetrix, how do you make use of it within the platform? Newmetrix makes it easy for you to search for specific observations across all the photos or videos for any of the projects you are managing. Need to search for more than one tag or keyword term? No problem. Simply combine search terms to narrow down results. For example, you could search for content that contains tags: Main Street Multi-Family, Framing, 2nd Floor. A search like this will deliver any photos or videos documenting the framing work on the 2nd floor of the Main Street jobsite. This video could be used to substantiate a change order to the owner, documenting that framing had already started before a change in the layout of the bathrooms had been issued. Now that Newmetrix has made tagging and searching media even easier, users have found even more uses for their videos and images.
Newmetrix can help you make sense of all of your photo and video content by allowing you to capture, organize, retrieve, and share critical jobsite documentation. If you’re interested to see for yourself, start a free trial and check out the examples included in the Sample Project!
