October 17th, 2022
So, did you attend Waypoint 2022? On October 5th, we hosted nearly 400 construction professionals for our annual virtual conference. This event is our chance to connect with and amplify leading voices in the construction industry, announce new product developments, and peer into the future of contech innovation. The number of builders from all over the world who attended was truly inspiring! With people joining us from Canada to New Zealand to across the US, this event was truly global.
Thanks again to all who attended. If you missed Waypoint or simply want to recap everything you saw, keep reading! We’ll summarize it below.
Our CEO, Jeevan Kalanithi, kicked off the conference by sharing the company’s vision for 2023 and beyond while reflecting on how much OpenSpace has grown in the past year. We now have more than 100,000 users in 90 countries! He also shared the exciting news that the General Services Administration (GSA) selected OpenSpace to provide the U.S. Public Buildings Service with a reality capture solution across all 11 GSA regions. This is huge news for OpenSpace because it will allow us to continue helping project teams on major government projects.
Jeevan also affirmed our commitment to making life easier for our customers by improving speed and simplicity in the user experience—with 15-minute process times for 360-degree videos—and the ability to scan construction sites from any phone in high fidelity. We know these changes will help you capture and share jobsite conditions more quickly.
Following Jeevan’s announcements, Neel Sheth, our VP of Product, gave Waypoint attendees an overview of how we are scaling our user experience. Neel then announced our new integrations with Insta 360’s latest cameras: the One RS 1-inch 360 edition and the Insta 360 X3. He also outlined how OpenSpace is launching background uploads for mobile, enabling construction professionals to focus on the job at hand over video uploads. All of these changes will make OpenSpace an even more powerful tool for you and your teams.
Neel touched on the capabilities of OpenSpace Track for superintendents, project managers, and trade partners. User feedback on this product has been fantastic! One customer reported that OpenSpace Track saved three full days of work by automating manual drywall tracking with the platform. When combining your captures with our analytics tools, we can give you insights into your project like never before. Looking forward, in 2023, OpenSpace users will be able to further increase their productivity by automating double-layer drywall tracking for the first time. Newly launched features like BIM X-Ray will allow users to overlay BIM models with 360-degree video footage to make real-time comparisons for better quality control.
Watch Session 1 of Waypoint here.
Next, Nikiya Crisostomo, OpenSpace’s Head of Community, took the stage to share how the OpenSpace Community has grown since its launch at Waypoint 2021. Helio Monteiro, an OpenSpace Pathfinder from Venture General Contracting, spoke via a heartfelt video interview and shared his experience launching the program with us and the positive impact the community has had on his construction career. Helio described how being an OpenSpace Pathfinder has made him feel proud of all he’s accomplished in his career and how much he appreciates the product ideas section of the OpenSpace Community, where Pathfinders and others can upvote ideas and feedback directly to our product development team to help shape the future of our products. Finally, Nikiya handed out a series of coveted awards to members of our community, which you can read about in this Community post.
Are you getting the most out of OpenSpace? In Session 2, we heard from a few power users who shared their best practices for maximizing the benefits of our technology and walked us through how they’re achieving greater productivity, cost savings, and time savings.
The panelists from Broccolini Construction and Power Design revealed how OpenSpace helps them optimize every step of the construction process in their day-to-day work, sharing insights on how to take advantage of the treasure trove of data that OpenSpace scans provide. Some key takeaways from the session included:
Watch Session 2 of Waypoint here.
If you missed Session 3 of Waypoint, we highly recommend you watch the recording! This lively panel discussion featured builders and contech leaders who shared their perspectives on the future of the industry. Our very own Robert Shear, OpenSpace’s VP of Strategy and Business Development led the discussion, which featured executives from Suffolk Technologies, Shepherd Insurance, Nedbank, and Big-D Construction. These industry luminaries discussed how technology is helping teams become more agile and adaptable. Panelists also shared how OpenSpace helped their companies acclimate to remote collaboration brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, shift to digital reporting, and provide clients more data visibility from jobsites. The consensus was that to be successful moving forward amid growing economic uncertainty, construction companies need to become more customer-centric and provide accurate project timelines and to deliver the client experience that can meet rising expectations.
The panelists also discussed the complexities of building today, emphasizing the importance of sustainability, supply chain transparency, and rebuilding and updating aging structures to perform for the modern day. Carl McFarland summarized how scaling technology can help solve these construction pain points as follows:
“The key is investing in committed resources. This idea of construction technologists—they aren’t billable to projects. But when you look at what they do to help scale a tool like OpenSpace, and get rid of the white noise, you’re making better-informed decisions about where the resources go on which jobs at which times. I think it’s very important that as a general contractor, you invest in dedicated resources to get the best return on those investments in lieu of looking at them as costs.”
—Carl McFarland, Senior Vice President/Managing Director at Big-D Construction
Watch Session 3 of Waypoint here.
The OpenSpace team was thrilled to connect with the professionals making a difference in our field. We look forward to carrying this spirit of collaboration into Waypoint 2023 and our OpenSpace Community Summit. Session materials and recordings from Waypoint 2022 are available as an ongoing resource, and we hope you’ll share them with your colleagues.
Meanwhile, we hope to see you in person as we take our act on the road! We’ve launched a series of Waypoint City Tours to help bring our community together in local events across the globe. Register today to attend the one closest to you.
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