What Clients Get Wrong About Reality Capture

Episode Transcript

Mollie (Host)
Welcome to {Brief}ly Speaking, the SEH podcast where we break down big topics in architecture, engineering, and construction into quick, practical conversations. Reality capture has become the biggest buzzwords in the AEC industry. Drones, laser scanners, point clouds, digital twins. There's a lot of excitement around the technology, but there's also a lot of misunderstanding. Many clients still see reality capture as a flashy add-on, marketing visual, or just a faster way to take pictures in the field. In reality, the biggest value often has nothing to do with the technology itself. It's about reducing risk, improving decision-making, avoiding costly surprises, and giving project teams a much clearer understanding of existing conditions before design and construction begin. Today we're digging into some of the biggest misconceptions clients have about reality capture, where the technology actually delivers value, and how teams can avoid collecting data that just never gets used. Joining me is Josh McDonald, SEH's reality capture services manager. Josh brings extensive experience leading complex reality capture projects across the AEC, manufacturing, industrial, and heritage sectors. His background includes everything from terrestrial laser scanning and aerial LiDAR to digital twin development and geospatial strategy, with experience managing projects ranging from large commercial facilities to highly complex industrial environments. He's also helped develop advanced workflows that integrate multiple technologies and data sources into usable, decision-ready information for clients and project teams. That's a lot, but Josh, welcome to {Brief}ly Speaking.

Josh (Guest)
Mollie, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited today to be able to help have a conversation and kind of dissect some of these common misconceptions that are in and around reality capture.

Mollie (Host)
Yeah, I think it's a really important conversation. So, let's start with the biggest misconception then. When clients hear reality capture, what do they usually think it means versus what it actually means in practice?

Josh (Guest)
Well, first off, I think that's a great beginning question. The biggest misconception about reality capture. I guess I would start that by saying many clients think reality capture is simply creating a point cloud or a 3D model. But in practice, the value comes from turning field conditions into trusted digital information, that can be shared across various reality capture ecosystems, ultimately to improve project decisions. As an example, multiple scanners from various manufacturers may collect the data, but the real benefit happens when the collected information is combined and integrated into these high-power design softwares or published to collaborative cloud-based viewer platforms. This all said, and combined, project teams can then collaborate and validate existing conditions before design and construction begins.

Mollie (Host)
So why do you think so many people still view reality capture as a quote unquote "cool technology" instead of a project decision-making tool?

Josh (Guest)
Sure. When I think of that question, immediately I put "cool technology" in quotations. I see that and if you think about the industry, I'd say the industry often focuses in on scanners, drones, and the visuals because they're highly visible and they're often impressive when demonstrated. Clients see the scanner, they see the drone, or they see a mobile mapping system, but they don't always see the downstream business impact. When project owners, clients, contractors, the other vested or interested parties can interact with that set of scans as a digital twin, and then immediately collaborate, they can measure, they can mark up, they can verify site conditions, they can coordinate their stakeholders, and they can resolve these issues remotely, that's when the reality capture really becomes a decision-making tool rather than a technological demonstration.

Mollie (Host)
And I mean, in reality, it is cool technology, but it has so much more implications down the road, like you said. So they're not wrong, it's just way more powerful than cool technology.

Josh (Guest)
Cool technology is very attractive and it often poses questions. This stuff does happen often in the public sector or in and around people, vehicles. It's places that we have to take the equipment and people just naturally have questions. So it's always fun to help answer those questions because they're very interested in it as well, not just those stakeholders, not just those engineers.

Mollie (Host)
Yeah, exactly. So you mentioned those downstream effects for businesses and municipalities. A lot of clients assume that more data automatically means better outcomes, but where can that mindset actually create problems?

Josh (Guest)
I think the adage of does more data always mean better results. I think naturally people would want to say yes, but I would say not necessarily. If you think about it, a multi-million or near billion point data set stored on a server, it provides little value and nobody can access it or use it easily. Successful reality capture projects define the required accuracy, the level of detail, the intended use case before data collection even begins. Collecting excessive data without a clear purpose can create storage challenges, processing delays, and this crazy term that we like to say in the industry, analysis paralysis. An alternative goal and reality capture mindset that I like to go with is kind of really honing in and focusing more on collecting the right information, not always the most information.

Mollie (Host)
I think people can really understand that in a more practical way. Now with AI, as you're asking it questions, you have to be very focused in what you're asking because there's so much out there, it can pull anything left, right, and center. You have to be a little bit more specific with it. So having all the data might not be the best-case scenario, you wouldn't have the right data. And that's something that you guys help with in this.

Josh (Guest)
Correct.

Mollie (Host)
So now what separates a successful reality capture workflow from the teams that do just collect those huge amounts of information and then never really use it all?

Josh (Guest)
Fabulous question. I think it's another great question and I think it's a question that a lot of the others in the industry face. So talking to multiples, talking to others, talking to folks that do this particular type of work, I think a lot of us have a common mindset. And what we do is when we think of a successful reality capture team, program or project, we often begin with the end in mind. So we focus in on the deliverable and we work from deliverable stage backwards. So before scanning starts, the team knows whether the data will support the design, whether it's for construction verification, whether it's for asset management, is it a digital twin, or is it ultimately for facility operations? Companies and organizations that receive the highest value typically establish these workflows where captured data moves seamlessly into software and viewership platforms rather than remaining as an archive point cloud and are rarely revisited or rarely used.

Mollie (Host)
Yeah, so again, it's that you want to have the right amount, you want to have enough data, but you don't need excessive, excessive amounts because that can cause other problems.

Josh (Guest)
Yes, it's very easy to want to throw everything at a project and that naturally lends and tends to be a situation where you over collect.

Mollie (Host)
So are you seeing more people bringing reality capture in or how often do you see projects relying on some outdated drawings or incomplete field information? And then second part of that question, what kind of risk does that create during destruction if they don't have reality capture?

Josh (Guest)
Well, there's no question risks to outdated drawings. If you think about the plant, the industrial, or the existing facilities type projects, even as well as renovation projects, outdated drawings are often very common, and they're more common than I think many teams realize. Facilities can undergo decades of undocumented modifications that never make it back into record drawings. Reality capture allows project teams to then validate actual field conditions before design begins. Integrating these captured conditions and design and construction workflows really do help eliminate assumptions that often lead to the clashes, the change orders, the rework, and or scheduled delays.

Mollie (Host)
Yeah, and I could imagine over the years, right, you do one little change here, one improvement there, update this, but after a while, those changes add up and make a big impact and they're not documented. And so I could see that being one reason how these are outdated. The other I would think is that some clients hesitate because they think reality capture is expensive. So how do you help them compare that cost of the service against the cost of rework, change orders, schedule delays, or missed conflicts?

Josh (Guest)
Addressing those cost concerns is ultimately conversational sometimes. It's not so much a matter of education, it's stepping through that process. It goes back to your previous question about working from the deliverable stage backwards. By identifying things, it helps establish these cost concerns. Many clients initially compare reality capture costs to a traditional survey. So a potentially more meaningful cost comparison is positioning the reality capture effort against the potential cost of rework, those field modifications, those schedule impacts, and those missed conflicts. When accurate existing conditions are available within design and viewership platforms, project teams can often identify issues well before the construction. Avoiding even a single major conflict can frequently justify that investment of the reality capture effort.

Mollie (Host)
I think keeping a project on track is imperative, right? So if we could be proactive, find any issues ahead of time, that's insurmountable. So we're talking costs, we're talking investments and risk. Where does reality capture tend to provide the biggest return on investments for clients today?

Josh (Guest)
I would say the greatest return is typically found on projects where uncertainty is highest, such as brownfield industrial sites and facilities. Those are sites that often have something to do with contamination. There's a lot to do in order to move projects forward. Documenting that can be very difficult. Other areas you may see this would be manufacturing plants, utility type projects, data centers, healthcare facilities, campus renovations, or large infrastructure projects. These environments often contain complex existing conditions that can be extremely difficult to measure with traditional methods and hard to model from drawings alone. Reality captures solutions, reduces that uncertainty, and increases the confidence in the design decisions.

Mollie (Host)
Okay, so we mentioned in the beginning here in the intro, we talked about the cool technology. So we're going to go back to that for a second. The technology keeps evolving quickly. How do you help clients focus less on specific tools and more on the outcomes that they're trying to achieve?

Josh (Guest)
Well, you're right. The technology does change rapidly. If we think about this, five years ago, many clients were discussing scanners. Today they're discussing digital twins, connected data environments, AI, and asset intelligence. So we're moving away from this hardware-centric environment where we have, in a sense, a singular deliverable, a point cloud, and we're moving into all these other offshoots or interactive ways to explore and maintain this reality capture. So I would encourage clients to focus on business outcomes, such as reducing that risk, improving coordination, accelerating their designs, or supporting facilities management. Once those objectives are defined, it's easier to determine what platform or combination of platforms is best for that solution.

Mollie (Host)
And in having some of those conversations, we have a lot of different people and collaborators involved, right? So how is reality capture changing kind of that collaboration between owners, engineers, contractors, and field teams?

Josh (Guest)
Improving collaboration, one thing really comes to mind. I would say reality capture creates a common source of truth. That source of truth, that singular source of truth or that common source of truth as referred to by a lot of the folks in the reality capture industry, it can be shared. It can be shared across owners, engineers, contractors, and field teams. Stakeholders can move beyond photos, markups, and assumptions by accessing the same spatially accurate digital twin data set. And that all significantly improves coordination, issue resolution, and stakeholder alignment.

Mollie (Host)
Yeah, exactly. And that's so important in these larger projects where you do have multiple people. Having that single source of truth to go back to and make decisions is so important. Okay, now this one is, I think, a little tricky, especially in your field, just because it is changing so rapidly, as we just talked about. But looking ahead, what do you think clients will expect from reality capture workflows five years from now that still feels advanced today that we're just not quite there yet, but we're getting to?

Josh (Guest)
Sure. And I think it's a great spin from the last question. It really does kind of expand upon this idea of a singular source of truth. In five years, I think clients will likely expect reality capture to function almost as a continuously updated digital twin, not just a digital twin. So rather than being a one-time project deliverable, we're going to have something that perpetuates, it's continuous, it's evolving, it's an evolution of things. Current industry standard platforms are posed as digital reality solutions and they're already actually moving in that direction. I think owners will increasingly be able to expect searchable facilities, AI assisted asset identification, automated progress tracking and near real-time condition monitoring.

Mollie (Host)
And then for clients who are considering reality capture for the first time, what's the most important thing they should understand before getting started?

Josh (Guest)
Mollie, I'd say the most important thing for clients to understand is that reality capture is not a scanning project. It's actually a business intelligence initiative. The scanner is simply the collection tool. The real value comes from how projects and organizations leverage these hardware, software, and viewer platforms to transform field conditions into actionable information that in essence reduce risk, improve collaboration, and it enables better decisions throughout the scanned asset life cycle. Mollie, during our introduction, you had mentioned various components of reality capture. In specific, we've highlighted and talked about drones, we've talked about laser scanners, we've talked about SLAM scanners. I in particular am coming from a geospatial background, 24 years in the industry, a strong believer and proponent in the principles of measurement. So as a surveyor, I'm naturally attracted to the scanner of all the reality capture devices more so than some of the others, even though I'm a firm believer and they all have a place where they can work together as a combined effort. But that said, if you're evaluating reality capture, don't ask what scanner you need. Ask what decisions you're trying to improve. What problems are you trying to solve? And once you understand that outcome, the right combination of hardware and software technologies becomes much easier for us to define.

Mollie (Host)
I love that. I think that is a great thing for them to understand ahead of kind of getting this involved in their projects. So as we heard today, reality capture isn't really about drones or scanners. It's about a single source of truth and confidence that projects can move forward with fewer surprises, delays, and costly corrections. The technology will keep evolving, but the goals stay the same, helping project teams make smarter decisions with better information. Josh, thank you so much for joining me and helping separate the hype from the real-world value behind reality capture in the AAC industry. And thanks to everyone listening to {Brief}ly Speaking. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future conversations on the trends, challenges, and innovations shaping our built environment.