Seven Ways Pixly’s Snap, Tag, Share, and Photo Collaboration App Can Help Your Job Sites

December 22, 2020

Being a professional builder for a General Contractor, specialty subcontractor, or yourself can be a very demanding and chaotic business. However, it can be made a lot more simple by deploying the right tools at the right time. Anyone who has worked in the construction industry understands the complexities that come with completing a job. Here are some great examples of how Pixly’s photo collaboration app is the right tool to help your Job Sites be more successful and contribute to your project's overall success by collaborating on photos in real-time to identify pre-existing conditions, observations, safety issues, progress, and more.

Increased Collaboration

Once a construction project gets underway, there can be a vast array of stakeholders involved in the process. Owners, developers, architects, contractors, and inspectors alike understand that they all play vital roles in contributing to the project's overall success. Many of these collaborators are involved in a multitude of projects, sometimes across state lines. For those not involved day-to-day on construction projects, it isn't easy to check in, have clear visibility, or have their team members communicate on the progress effectively. Utilizing Pixly, an AEC industry-specific photo collaboration app increases the visibility of the overall project progress by giving access to all the collaborators remotely. Individuals and teams can access Pixly construction project photos in real-time as soon as anyone takes the photos. They can get an executive overview of progress in a Pixly project photo feed and simply scroll through project photos. They can tap on any photo for a detailed view, to see associated tags, comments, conversations, or task assignments related to that project photo. There are enormous time savings to addressing issues without having to be physically present at the Jobsite.

Stakeholder Communication

The standard expectation for a construction professional has been to document the project regularly. Typically, the contractors are expected to capture progress photos on a monthly, weekly, or sometimes daily basis as part of deliverables to the owner. The hardware evolution in recent times has taken us from point & shoot cameras to high-resolution image capture using today’s smartphones. Furthermore, having a current set of constantly updated progress photos is always valued by the project stakeholders including the owners. Having a construction progress photo app like Pixly makes this process more collaborative and simplifies the overall documentation process.

Keeping Photos Organized

As a project progresses, keeping your bearings on where the photo was taken is critical for the documentation process. In the past, keeping an accurate set of images meant manually documenting where the photo was captured and then dropping the pictures into a folder structure based on location, level, and area onto a shared server. Anyone who has participated in this process knows it is time-consuming and cumbersome and can be littered with inaccuracies from human error. Utilizing Pixly’s robust construction progress photo app takes the antiquated method of organizing these photos and makes it less burdensome and way less time-consuming. Time will always be money. There is no more need to waste precious time by manually moving photos around from phones, uploading to servers, back down to computers, then marketing up on a desktop and emailing. Those days are over. By having Pixly at your fingertips, individuals responsible for the photo collection can streamline the process and track pictures in an orderly fashion. Pixly organizes photos taken by project and by projects within albums. Users can quickly search by project name, user, tag, location, or date and time to find any project photos. With Pixly you don’t have to waste any time searching through servers and folders for photos when you need them.

Historical Record Keeping

Photo documentation is an incredible resource when looking back on how the project has progressed. It can be utilized to recall how things were installed in the past, whether for practice purposes for equipment or trade coordination or for instances where a project is not going particularly well, and the project team needs to understand how the project has fallen behind. Pixly provides a robust construction progress photo app. Pixly serves as a historical record since photos are time stamped automatically. This important feature is a practical means for recalling past efforts, understanding how the project has progressed, and protecting and defending yourself from any potential litigation. Pixly creates a simple method for all stakeholders to review and evaluate the overall construction progress whenever they want from anywhere they want.

Asset Tagging & Search

Having a deep library of progress photos has straightforward applications associated with the location and timestamping the tagging efforts. The next level handling of progress photos involves the tagging of assets based on what is being documented. Determining tags that can be keywords to be associated with specific images adds a layer of organization to the overall construction Jobsite photo documentation process. Tagging photos with mechanical, electrical, exterior, architectural, in-wall, overhead, equipment, or similar helps users recall specific project elements at a moment's notice. A simple yet practical method for categorizing photo assets will help your team maintain a well-documented library of assets that can be called upon as necessary.

Verify Schedule Progress

The utilization of a CPM schedule is the industry standard for tracking progress every month for a construction project. Any good Superintendent or Scheduling Manager can appreciate the amount of information that can be drawn for the baseline and progress schedules. It is not something that anyone outside of an engineer's mind sees significant value applied to progress tracking. A set of detailed construction progress photos managed in Pixly can supplement that information in a digestible format that is easy to understand and decipher by anyone on the project. A CPM progress schedule is vital from a technical standpoint. Still, progress photos add a layer of simplicity that will add value to the information being conveyed to your project team. Everyone on the project can see progress photos in real-time that can be used to verify the schedule.

Resource and Time Savings

Taking construction progress photos can take a lot of valuable time. The average Superintendent spends 1+ hours a day documenting project progress photos. Depending on the size and scope of the project it can require even more time when there are some issues or concerns that can cause project delays. Keeping a well-documented set of photos was a cumbersome and all-consuming process before Pixly. Ask any field engineer or trade partner tasked with taking, tracking, and posting progress photos; it takes a significant amount of time and effort to complete. When your staff is regularly focused on this task, they lose opportunities to focus on the project's mission and energy away from resource tracking, schedule management, quality control, and all that it takes to complete a successful construction project. When time is reduced managing photos with Pixly’s simple, intuitive app for construction progress photo management, emphasis on all project required tasks increases to allow for adequate control of the construction and team members.

Keywords: construction photo collaboration tool, construction photo app, construction progress photo app, construction progress photo management, jobsite app, photo documentation app