Waypoint 2024 FAQ: simplifying construction with images + AI

Waypoint 2024 was a great success! Over 300 people from the construction industry joined us as we announced what we’ve been working on over the past year—a new product, features, and partnerships that will fundamentally simplify how the world gets built. Our audience was engaged and very active in our live Q&A chat, so we thought we’d publish questions and answers here for your reference. And if you’d like to watch any of the sessions, all the recordings are available on demand.

Where is the Shepherd Savings program available?

Shepherd Savings is currently available in the U.S. However, they are starting conversations with insurance providers in the U.K.

Background: Shepherd CEO and Co-Founder Justin Levine joined us to give details on a partnership with OpenSpace. His company is offering OpenSpace customers an insurance program called Shepherd Savings which gives you significantly reduced premiums—even covering the entire cost of OpenSpace. Watch the on-demand session to learn more.

Is your milestone tracking offering with Disperse available now?

We are currently piloting our integration with Disperse with a select group of customers, and plan to deliver this milestone tracking offering to customers more widely in early 2025.

Background: We announced that we’re bringing the best of two worlds together, OpenSpace and Disperse, to expand our current progress tracking to include milestone tracking. (OpenSpace Track quantifies work in place for materials progress tracking.) With the new partnership, you’ll be able to define and automatically track milestones across a wide range of tasks. To learn more, watch our session with VP of Product, Neel Sheth.

When will OpenSpace Checklists be available?

OpenSpace Checklists, our newest add-on feature to OpenSpace Capture, is currently in Beta and expected to be available through a limited release in early 2025.

Background: We announced a new feature that digitizes your QA/QC checklist processes and ties them to your reality capture data in OpenSpace. If you’d like to learn more, please reach out to your OpenSpace representative.

What framework will you use for your new usage APIs?

OpenSpace is using the OpenAPI standard to define all of our external APIs.

Background: We announced our first usage API: reporting API is in Beta and will be available at the end of 2024. With this feature, you can connect to OpenSpace via an API in order to get a ton of useful statistics like where captures are being taken, how often, and for what duration. You can pull this data into your tool of choice and create dashboards. Learn more in the product announcements session.

When capturing with OpenSpace weekly, or monthly, do I need to start and stop my walks in the same sequence each time?

You aren’t required to walk the same path every time you capture, but it is best practice to walk a similar path, especially on floors or areas where there is active construction. To learn more about capturing, you can take our Capture Your Site course in the OpenSpace Academy.

What are best practices for capturing projects larger than 500K square feet with ceilings higher than 20 feet? I’m worried about location accuracy deltas for such a large area and uploading that long of a video.

We recommend capturing in areas with active construction. Also, large areas should not affect accuracy in OpenSpace Capture. When you want to capture in tall ceilings you can use a selfie stick. Note that part of our investment in improving user experience is our overhead capture Beta feature, which will allow you to see where on your capture path you’ve raised your camera to capture overhead conditions.

I understand that your technology automatically pins 360 image captures to 2D floor plans. Can you also connect BIM models to captures?

Yes, you can import your 3D model into OpenSpace and use our BIM Compare feature in OpenSpace Capture to view your BIM model side by side with your captures. Watch a short video in this Support article to learn more about BIM Compare. Additionally, with our add-on product, OpenSpace BIM+, you can take advantage of even more powerful ways to connect BIM to your OpenSpace Capture data. Features include uploading point clouds to perform visual clash prevention within OpenSpace, communicating and calling out discrepancies with BIM Compare Field Notes, uploading multiple models so you can focus on the area you want, and overlaying BIM elements on your 360° photos to see if anything is missing or items are installed in the right place.

I am part of a large healthcare system. Is there a way to revise a small section of an uploaded floor plan without losing my captures on that floor?

Yes, we can help you with this. Reach out to the OpenSpace Support team at support@openspace.ai for assistance in updating your floor plans (sheets).

Can you use OpenSpace in heavy highway construction projects?

Yes, we have many customers using OpenSpace on civil projects, including highways. Feel free to refer to our case study with Anser Advisory, who works with developers and municipalities on heavy civil construction projects, including freeways, ramps, and interchanges.

Can you use OpenSpace on small projects and for day-to-day property maintenance?

Yes! You can use OpenSpace on any size project—we scale with you from quick renovations to multi-year megaprojects. And when a job is complete, you can use OpenSpace for facility maintenance and as-built documentation. You can also use Field Notes—complete with images—to document completed installations, equipment, and other post-construction conditions for warranty purposes.

I have a deep foundation project where I don’t have GPS or a network connection. Can my OpenSpace captures still be mapped to the correct location on my floor plans?

Yes, since our technology tracks visual features from images across time, we can still automatically pin your images to your floor plans without GPS. You can also capture without an internet connection. For an overview of documenting with OpenSpace, check out our documentation use case page.

Regarding the feature to automatically pin mobile photos to floor plans in OpenSpace, will there be an issue if we upload photos for projects that have similar looking spaces?

We are still testing what the limitations will be for this new feature—but before we roll it out we’ll be ready with guidance and best practices for uploading photos to projects with similar looking spaces.

Background: We’re using our Spatial AI technology for a new feature that auto-pins mobile photos alongside your other reality captures, with the ability to manually override. When OpenSpace finds matches of your mobile photos to a 360 capture, we can automatically locate where the mobile photos were taken and pin them in the proper location, giving you all your imagery in one place and easy to find. This feature will be in Beta at the end of 2024. Learn more about upcoming mobile photo functionality as well as AI-assisted image search in Neel Sheth’s product announcements session.

With scale and enterprise in mind, do you have plans for providing users access on a folder basis rather than project-by-project basis? In other words, automatically providing access to any new projects created within that folder?

You read our minds! This very feature is in progress and we expect a Beta to start later in 2024.

If my organization is capturing on a project with OpenSpace and our contractors are also capturing, can we share captures?

We currently do not support sharing OpenSpace Capture data between different organizations, but it’s a great idea! We will track this as a new feature request.

Do you need to upload your construction schedule to OpenSpace to use progress tracking?

To use OpenSpace Capture, you do not upload a project schedule. For tracking against your schedule, our partnership with Disperse (currently in a closed Beta) will provide customers with comprehensive and flexible tracking without requiring up-to-date or highly detailed BIM models (which most projects don’t have access to for every scope). You will be able to define milestones/tasks across a wide range of scopes which we’ll then sync with your OpenSpace data, enabling you to report on progress at any level. Stay tuned in 2025 for additional updates on progress tracking solutions available through OpenSpace. To learn more about our partnership with Disperse, watch our session with VP of Product, Neel Sheth.

I see great benefits of OpenSpace for contractors. What are the benefits for owners?

During the build you will have complete visibility into what is happening on-site at your project, along with the ability to communicate and share with other project stakeholders using Field Notes. At the end of the project, you will have a full visual record—all the documentation you need—that a facilities management team can reference when doing future upgrades or changes. Learn more about OpenSpace tech for owners.

As you’re talking about the features enabled by AI, I’m wondering if you’re able to provide blurring of faces, similar to Google Street View?

Yes! We already offer face blurring for your OpenSpace captures. If you’d like to turn on this feature for a project, simply reach out to OpenSpace Support at support@openspace.ai. You can also learn more about face blurring in our Support article.

How are 360 captures in OpenSpace associated with planning tasks? What are the steps between capture and planning?

Capturing your jobsite with OpenSpace is an excellent way to document a moment in time, delivering on the “time capsule” vision KEO spoke about in their Waypoint session. And if you need to create a plan to remedy an issue on-site, update other team members about existing conditions, or simply take a note about something going on during that time period, you can use Field Notes. We built this popular feature to help with planning these types of actions, including the ability to add images (and much more) to show exactly what you’re talking about. Learn more about Field Notes. And to dig deeper into how you can use your OpenSpace images in workflows, check out our coordination use case page.

Will your Spatial AI technology be able to convert images into rendered 3D graphic designs, for architectural purposes?

We are constantly experimenting with the latest techniques to convert videos into high fidelity 3D meshes. Currently, given limitations in the camera technology and AI, it is challenging to get a high quality 3D rendition of a space using just the camera.

Learn more

The excellent questions above packed in a lot of information! But if you’d like to learn more, here are links to the recordings of each Waypoint 2024 session:

• Welcome & OpenSpace vision + how construction tech reduces insurance costs & boosts ROI
• OpenSpace product announcements
• KEO & construction technology: solving problems & delivering projects early
• From implementation to ROI: how PCI is innovating & winning with OpenSpace
• Consigli Construction: revolutionizing project delivery with leading-edge technology
• Under the hood: CTO insights on spatial computing + generative AI

Plus, here’s a quick list of the products and features discussed in this blog post:

• OpenSpace Capture
• Field Notes
• OpenSpace BIM+
• Use cases for OpenSpace
• Milestone tracking with the OpenSpace + Disperse partnership: contact your OpenSpace representative for more information
• OpenSpace Academy
• OpenSpace Track