HoloBuilder is a San Francisco, US-based construction technology company that designs, develops, and sells enterprise SaaS software. Its core product offers reality capturing solutions for progress documentation and construction project management, using 360° imagery, computer vision and AI. HoloBuilder says its customers include 40% of the Top 100 General Contractors in the United States, while it investors include Brick and Mortar Ventures and Tandem Capital.
Holobuilder, which recently rebranded, has just released a new construction documentation solution to enable project teams to capture, comment, and view a 360-degree construction project in real-time. It includes collaboration support for unlimited accounts and project download for an offline deliverable once the project has reached close out. A new pricing model is offered, based on project size.
The scalable SaaS solution can be deployed company-wide across projects or at an enterprise level, where it offers:
- 360-degree reality capturing with the JobWalk mobile app
- TimeTravel for progress documentation
- a measurement tool to measure within 360° images, and
- annotations.
Users can now collaborate with their whole team and enjoy enterprise level service and security. Having the entire team on board allows users to set up large projects quickly while allowing the project owner to decide who has access and editor rights. Notifications are shown when team members update the project and allow everyone to see who is working within HoloBuilder at the same time.
During project close-out, the project can be downloaded and saved as a view-only deliverable for the owner to keep throughout the lifetime of the building.
HoloBuilder says it is the first reality capturing solution [it uses 360-degree photography] that enables efficient progress documentation for large-scale construction projects. With collaboration, the responsibility of capturing progress is distributed, data silos are removed, and reliability is increased by providing a workflow that is built around an entire construction team. Andrew Cameron, Area Superintendent at SFO Airport Terminal 1 Construction site by Hensel Phelps, says:
“We have been able to leverage HoloBuilder’s collaboration platform for about two months now. To be able to arm multiple staff members with a camera who can jointly collaborate to track the status and the history of the project, not only for us but also for our clients and stakeholders, makes a lot of sense.”
Mostafa Akbari, CEO of HoloBuilder, Inc, says:
“Our new solution is the result of co-development between HoloBuilder and many of the top U.S. General Contractors. In countless discussions and beta projects, we’ve learned what is most important to them and the construction industry as a whole. Together we have been thinking about all stages of a project, from project set up, to the building phase, and the close-out phase. HoloBuilder is the best in class for all three categories. To provide truly unlimited scalable projects, now unlimited collaborators can work on one project with different access settings. With our new Handover Package, projects can be downloaded and kept offline in a view-only mode for decades to come. It was important that our new solution provides all enterprise requirements that work for the industry. I am proud that we have not only achieved this but also offer the most scalable reality capturing solution in the market.”
Update (22 July 2017) – In response to some follow-up questions I posed to Holobuilder, I received the following from marketing manager Harry Handorf:
Any connection with Microsoft’s Hololens? -There is no direct connection between the Microsoft HoloLens and HoloBuilder. We are an independent company with an independent product. With our roots in the Virtual and Augmented Reality technology space, we are inspired and fascinated by the idea of connecting the virtual and physical world. This is what we are now realizing for the construction industry through an efficient reality capturing process. The idea is also reflected in our new logo and branding, which symbolizes the point of intersection between the digital and physical world.
How many customers and/or end-users? – We have more than 3,000 construction projects on our platform at the moment, we are hosting more than 500,000 photo spheres and our customers include 40% of the top 100 general contractors in the US.
How would the pricing work for a civil engineering / infrastructure project (as opposed to a building measured by sq ft or m2)? – For very large [projects] we provide individual solutions that are custom tailored to the customer’s project individual requirements. We can also provide them with on-premises solutions on their own servers.
What about other reality capture (photogrammetry, laser scans) and BIM support? – Currently, you can add your own renderings from BIM models (e.g. from Revit) if you export them as a cube map file. And we are also working on extended image format support and are also actively working with point clouds in our development, which are generally supported by the web platform (which can easily handle 3D models, due to its roots in the VR/AR space). In general, terrestrial laser scanning is a fantastic technology, that we just see in a different usage scenario. It is a very precise, but comparatively expensive and slow process. Thus we consider it to be perfect if when you need precise measurements, want to compare as-builts with original plans or want to connect the reality with your BIM models on a detailed level. Our USP is, that HoloBuilder is the fastest way to document construction progress. By capturing and organizing 360° pictures on sheets as fast as foremen can walk the site, we allow our customers to communicate current site conditions to their stakeholders and keep the documentation for many years to come.