Managing project progress with integrated drone data
One of Leighton Asia’s projects in Indonesia is using its common data structure, drones and a new drone mapping platform to track progress and support project management.
Challenge
Our challenge on the project was to assist onsite and remote team members to keep up to date with progress and changes to the site conditions. A solution needed to be integrated into existing systems to increase efficiency and provide useful insights for decision making.
Solution
With initial site works, earth works and piling tests underway, the project team is flying drones over the site on an alternate day basis to keep track of progress.
The drone captures are then stored and processed in DroneDeploy. The new drone mapping platform turns the drone captures into a high-resolution 2D map and 3D model. The project’s common data structure fully integrates the platform and its outputs with the project’s other digital systems.
Benefits
The integrated drone and mapping software solution equips the team with construction data in real-time for analysis, providing greater foresight for planning and evaluation.
The platform’s advanced features include functionality to:
- overlay drone capture with drawings to better relate the design works to the actual site
- generate area calculations and volume analysis to eliminate manual survey measurements
- compare captures from different dates or against a design surface.
With the project using a common data structure to link digital systems, the drone mapping platform is fully integrated with Procore, the project’s electronic document management system. This means every progress image is automatically uploaded to the daily Log, allowing team members to inspect and systematically close out identified issues.
The data generated from this platform can be integrated into many other systems, for example the 3D model is currently embedded into the project’s monthly 4D Simulation and the latest map to contextualise the productivity of plants.