Here are five recent announcements from software makers and other tech providers about new products or updates to existing products that are designed to smooth out construction for contractors:
Trimble
Trimble has released its Trimble Construction Cloud powered by Microsoft Azure, the only construction industry cloud for Microsoft customers.
The platform takes advantage of Microsoft Azure services to link project teams, data, processes and multiple stakeholders across all phases of construction projects. It powers Trimble Construction One, a construction management offering that includes rich field data, estimating, detailing, project management, finance and human capital management solutions, the firm said in a press release.
Non-Trimble Construction One users can subscribe to Trimble Construction Cloud independently as a separate service.
EarthCam
Webcam service provider EarthCam announced its redesigned VR Site Tour app that makes it faster, simpler and more intuitive to capture and communicate interior progress for owners and contractors, according to the firm.
VR Site Tour is specifically designed for quick, straightforward reality capture for small-to-medium jobsites. Its interactive images are captured using a standard 360° camera, combined with EarthCam’s environmental sensor data, and automatically assembled into a virtual project tour, the company says.
It quickly converts a day’s worth of progress into easy-to-share, 360° photos, synching them directly to site plans, CAD drawings or 3D BIM models. All images are geo-tagged to properly align with the site plan. Immersive imagery quickly tracks actual live progress, reducing the need for site visits, preventing rework and saving time and money for stakeholders.
Built Technologies
Built Technologies recently introduced Trade Partner Management, a suite of tools that help project stakeholders in the construction industry identify, evaluate and verify trade partners before, during and after a project.
Trade Partner Management enables Built customers to mitigate the risk associated with non-compliant vendors in order to keep projects on schedule and on budget, the company says. By integrating key industry risk management data within the context of vendor management tools, the product equips general contractors, property developers and owners with the insight they need to identify the right partners for their projects, according to a release shared with Construction Dive.
Trade Partner Management consolidates the data into a single, useful view, from prequalification through project fulfillment, streamlining the vendor onboarding process. Compliance is ensured by pairing the integration of key industry risk management data and trade partner management tools.
StructionSite
StructionSite, a provider of ground reality capture for the construction industry, has launched the industry’s first tool to analyze reality capture health based on precise project locations. The “Locations” tool gives users the ability to filter and view images by different parameters like date range, location, tags and image quality for a comprehensive understanding of what happened on a jobsite, and when, the firm says.
Many construction projects are broken down by a location hierarchy: building, floor, area, room. The Locations feature in StructionSite matches this model, thus integrating with the customer’s project management and scheduling workflows, according to a press release. This enables teams to search a location and see all the latest images, RFIs and work status to make critically informed decisions.
Locations unlocks the ability to categorize the thousands of photos taken over the course of a project in a way that makes it easy for a user to find, and then tell the story of what happened in a particular part of the jobsite over time.
Trimble and Hilti
Trimble, along with toolmaker and technology provider Hilti Group have announced that the Hilti ON!Track asset management system will integrate with Trimble Viewpoint Vista, an enterprise resource planning solution within the Trimble Construction One suite.
The partnership is Hilti's first North American integration with an ERP solution, and provides a product for unified tool tracking and more accurate, automatic job allocation, giving contractors one source for tracking and managing their tools and equipment, according to the firms.
Instead of having to manually look, call or guess where tools are or how much to invoice based on their use, contractors can more easily track their tools and equipment in one place and automatically know how much — and where — they were used so that an accurate amount of equipment time can be invoiced, according to a press release. This eliminates the need to spend clerical time manually inputting utilization data, and even manually tracking it in the field.
