Have you ever ever spent extra time than you’d like trying to find the knowledge you want? Or grown uninterested in patching collectively a whole image of your challenge with a number of software program platforms and dense folders stuffed with drawings and different documentation? You’re not alone. You want good Google Earth alternate options.
We hear the identical each week from challenge managers, engineers, and superintendents; there aren’t many software program options on the market constructed particularly for big infrastructure initiatives. Juggling Google Earth and drawing administration software program solely goes to date.
You lose time attempting to navigate your challenge, knowledge falls between the cracks, and folks or supplies aren’t in the precise place on the proper time. However what Google Earth alternate options are on the market?
Thankfully, there’s a extra intuitive technique to seize, handle, and share development knowledge: geolocated drawings. By visualizing your drawings and layering challenge knowledge on a map, you’ll have all the things you want in a single place – simply digestible by anybody in your group.
Why Actual-World Location Issues in Building
Contractors are left with hundreds of paperwork, pictures, and different knowledge which are siloed throughout platforms or just crammed into folders, lists, and spreadsheets.
The present expertise accessible means the constructed world is decreased to a stack of recordsdata.
We’ve seen with our clients that monitoring supplies or just sharing a complete view of your challenge together with your group is usually a critical headache.
Because of this, contractors are turning more and more to mapping to higher visualize and manage key knowledge. However present strategies depart a lot to be desired.
The Mapping Standing Quo: Advert Hoc & Time-Consuming
Building groups perceive the worth of real-world context and sometimes flip to some type of mapping:
- Printing out giant sheets of satellite tv for pc imagery to hold on the partitions of an workplace
- Exporting drone or satellite tv for pc imagery as a PDF and marking it up manually in software program like Bluebeam
- Utilizing Google Earth or Google MyMaps to make easy annotations
We’ve seen groups pair these annotated maps with spreadsheets or different hooked up documentation. However whereas these groups’ creativity and pragmatism ought to be admired, their options are restricted.
In every case, contractors have patched collectively an answer that:
- is difficult to replace to match the fact on the bottom
- shows solely a partial image of the challenge
- is siloed from different platforms
- is time-consuming to create and keep
With this in thoughts, it’s unsurprising that development groups don’t use maps extra extensively. Maps ought to deliver readability to a challenge, not deliver additional issues.
The issue right here is obvious: Contractors are compelled to create their very own mapping options or leverage software program that’s not constructed for development.
Google Earth & MyMaps Aren’t Designed for Building
Google Earth and Google MyMaps are wonderful mapping instruments for the general public, not challenge engineers. Building groups want Google Earth alternate options.
Although these platforms are used broadly, they danger losing your time, create difficult workflows, and fall in need of the true potential of development mapping.
Let’s study the professionals and cons.
Professionals:
- Each Google Earth and MyMaps are free. Arduous to argue with that, proper?
- Google Earth gives easy-to-use drawing and annotation instruments whereas MyMaps gives an added diploma of customization.
- They combine with different Google merchandise and supply simple mapping from a spreadsheet.
Cons:
- Google Earth and MyMaps don’t assist a combined dataset (drone imagery, development drawings, subject documentation, and so on.), present restricted element on the work represented, and have to be juggled with different platforms or documentation for a context-rich document.
- It’s difficult to collaborate with a group inside Google Earth and MyMaps, these instruments are siloed out of your different development software program, and export choices are restricted.
- Google Earth and MyMaps don’t operate offline and have restricted cellular capabilities; they’re not constructed for the sphere.
Google Doesn’t Join Workplace, Trailer, and Discipline
Google mapping merchandise are nice for most of the people, however they’re clearly not designed for development, the place collaboration is crucial and also you’re dealing with a number of completely different knowledge varieties.
By sticking with Google merchandise, you danger contributing to the identical issues that will have pushed you to maps within the first place: info silos, dangerous knowledge, and time wasted monitoring down correct info.
We see an alternative choice to Google merchandise within the evolution of development drawings. Whereas Bluebeam, PlanGrid, and Fieldwire have introduced contractors into the digital age, the subsequent era of drawings is on a map.
The place Fashionable Drawing Administration Falls Brief
Regardless of vital innovation within the final 10 years, fashionable drawing administration instruments are lacking a crucial dimension of your knowledge: real-world location.
Building Drawings: Previous & Current
Paper drawings went the best way of the dinosaur with digitization (with paperwork saved digitally in complicated submitting methods). Right here, Bluebeam gives a strong but straightforward technique to mark up your digital drawings simply as you probably did by hand.
The whole lot’s additionally been linked in a single place for straightforward entry within the subject. For instance, PlanGrid equips boots on the bottom with real-time entry to up-to-date drawings.
And software program like Fieldwire guarantees streamlined collaboration and the potential to connect key documentation to your drawings for a extra full document of labor.
There’s debate over which of those merchandise is superior, but it surely’s clear they’ve remodeled the best way contractors handle drawings.
Sadly, Bluebeam, PlanGrid, and Fieldwire share one thing else in frequent; they show development drawings stripped of their real-world context.
Google Earth Alternate options: The Subsequent Era of Building Drawings
Fashionable drawing administration instruments have to be paired with a map.
It simply is sensible to see your drawings on a map – whether or not that’s a superintendent within the subject directing crews on the day’s work, a challenge supervisor assessing progress throughout a number of initiatives, or an engineer sharing updates with an proprietor. No matter you’ve got hidden deep in a folder construction can see the sunshine of day in your geolocated drawing.
Geolocated Drawings
You possibly can stake your drawings to real-world coordinates, toggle drawings on and off to mirror completely different phases of your challenge, add challenge stations, and overlay related environmental and geographic info.
Combined Dataset
For additional context, you possibly can visualize the contents of your folders (RFIs, change orders, permits, gear, supplies, and extra) or dump a thousand pictures and watch as they’re routinely geolocated.
Actual-time Progress
Plus, this info isn’t static. Crews can log inspections and different updates from the sphere with easy knowledge assortment instruments – so you possibly can monitor this progress immediately towards your drawing.
With a real-time map, groups can navigate your website and fieldwork with ease. The place is their day by day project? The related documentation? The supplies and gear? A employee can use their telephone’s GPS to see precisely the place they’re standing amid the knowledge.
In the end, these map-based drawings not solely present nice Google Earth alternate options however are additionally the way forward for development knowledge administration.
