INSPIRATION
As construction projects are geographically spread and involve many assets and human resources, it is difficult to manually monitor projects. Various areas in construction sites are beyond human reach but still require regular inspection. This is why construction companies are adopting technology to streamline construction monitoring. Value addition from monitoring depends on the level of the monitoring process, which starts from a lightweight audit function (CM1) to quality assurance (QA). Advanced monitoring and inspection techniques use drone-based monitoring in combination with LIDAR or thermal sensors. Construction worker monitoring uses high-definition (HD) cameras and AI-based facial recognition techniques to improve productivity. Robots also detect faults and failures in the structures using embedded sensor technologies with more accuracy than manual inspection.Hence, startups offer services or products to improve the overall efficiency of construction site monitoring.
US-based startup AI Clearing uses AI to monitor and track construction progress digitally. The startup’s SaaS solution,AI-Heart, performs advanced 4D geospatial analytics on data captured by drones or other devices. The solution generates automatic visual reports of the site data to shorten the monitoring time and detect discrepancies early. AI and geographic information system (GIS)-based analytics automates infrastructure monitoring which consequently decreases supervision cost and mitigates litigation risk. Moreover, the solution offers transparency as all processes are managed through a project database.
Israeli startup Holoarch uses cloud-based and hardware solutions to facilitate indoor inspection on construction sites.The startup’s robotic solution Holobot is an autonomous drone that scans construction sites and reports errors to the inspection authorities. Holobot uses high-resolution LIDAR point clouds to scan the building even in GPS-denied areas.The data is then transmitted to AI-based servers for analysis
and error detection. The solution reduces monitoring costs for construction companies using digital twins while significantly speeding up inspection processes and quality.
