PHOTO courtesy of EarthCam
A 6-megapixel EarthCam
shot captures the Methodist Richardson Medical Center in Richardson, Texas.
Jobsite cameras take
scheduled photos from static positions and stream them to private users or
public websites, stringing together the images as movies of projects going up
or to archive for later use. While the cameras are a hit with developers and
marketers of high-end residential buildings and flagship projects, they are
becoming a general construction staple, written into specs from the start, say
users and vendors.
Sources also say the
range of job-cam uses and paybacks is as broad as the roles of people accessing
them.
Mark Penny, a senior
vice president for the Dallas region of Manhattan Construction Inc., says his
company, a large, self-performing general contractor, has used many vendors,
although it most recently has turned to EarthCam. "We have a lot of
high-profile jobs that people want to see. They are a great opportunity for us
and the client to showcase the construction, which makes the job of selling
what we do a lot easier," he notes.
Penny says the cameras
can improve security, but "that's not the primary use." The
photographic record also can verify that activities, such as concrete placement,
are done on schedule. But, he says, "in the end, we have a time-lapse
video that's just a great wrap-up marketing piece."
Penny says Manhattan
doesn't use job cams for safety monitoring, either. "We have on-site
safety guys. If we are doing that on a webcam, we may feel we are missing the
mark," Penny says.
However, Warren
Andres, senior vice president at general contractor Andres Construction, also
in Dallas, which uses many subcontractors, is far more hands-on with his job
cams. He prefers ePlanit, a local vendor with whom he has had a long
relationship. "It's awesome because it is totally mobile. It's cell-phone
signals and solar panels on a trailer. Within hours, they can have it on the
jobsite."
Andres says he has
three monitors on his desk. One shows live feeds from all his cameras. If he
sees unsafe work, he sends a photo to the superintendent and demands action.
Similarly, he says he can spot slow work crews and do enough quality control to
send the message that management is watching. "You can't see everything,
but you can pan, tilt and zoom and count the screws on the sheathing."
With hour-and-a-half
drive times to get across town, Andres says that, "with a camera, I can be
there right now and in more places at once. Productivity goes up, and the value
you get in one day sometimes pays for it all."
Jason Burns, vice
president of technology at Hunter Roberts Construction Group,New York City,
says he often recommends Hackensack, N.J.-based EarthCam to clients. But
besides arranging jobsite placement and bringing together owners and vendors,
he has little other involvement. "The PR value is for the owner," he
says. "EarthCam is icing on the cake. It's nice to show jobs you have
done, but it's not providing me much for construction. But [EarthCam] has the
software and the know-how to build a job in a two-minute time lapse and make it
look good. You're buying that."
Hardware and plans
vary from low-resolution off-line cameras that store images for retrieval to
ultra-high-resolution units that have big zoom lenses and internet-operable
controls. Users can vary shot frequency and pan, tilt and zoom, or PTZ, at
will. The images stream to websites and storage systems. Costs vary from a few
hundred dollars a month to $30,000 or more per camera per job, depending on the
level of sophistication and service.
"We try to be
realistic about need," says Penny. "On most projects, we only put one
up—although, on the George W. Bush Library, we had two because there were huge
landscape features on a 23-acre site. As a builder, we don't necessarily need a
Cadillac package.
"I don't know
that the proximity of the vendor means anything for service in web-cams,"
Penny adds. "We interact with their office at a phone number. Service and
how they accommodate our needs is more important."
For example, one of
his clients wants a 60-minute delay and, if an accident were to happen,
assurance that public streaming stops immediately.
Vendors say the
drivers for the growing use include the rise of building information modeling
and its increased need for accountability; as well as companies chasing work
beyond usual areas of operations and needing to extend supervision while
holding down travel of staffs trimmed by the recession.
"A lot of
companies shrank. Those people went into other industries and haven't come
back," says Chandler McCormick, president of Atlanta-based OxBlue, one of
the two most widely known providers. "I've heard from clients that there
is a gap in the [ranks of] middle management. The cameras give a better
understanding of what's happening at the jobsite and lets more experienced
personnel keep an eye on [more] projects. They use it as a training tool for
new hires."
The picture is
clouded, though, by a bitter legal action under way since 2011 between EarthCam
and OxBlue. Filing suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of
Georgia, Atlanta Division, EarthCam sought a jury trial on civil and criminal
complaints. The plaintiff claims that OxBlue executives and employees have
conducted, since 2002, a campaign to steal EarthCam technology and intellectual
property and damage its business. It seeks OxBlue's profits as well as damages.
OxBlue denies the claims, asserting they are either untrue or un-actionable.
Its motions to dismiss have been denied, however, and filings have been piling
up as the case works forward.
But there are also
innovations in the job-cam market. One Tennessee photo-grapher, Bruce Cain, a
retired civil engineer, has developed a business called Elevated Lens. His
system raises his laptop-manipulated professional camera as high as 65 ft on a
truck-mounted telescoping boom. "It's a pneumatic mast with valves in the cab
that you can turn on to raise or lower," he says. "The camera is
connected to a computer, so I see what the camera sees. I can pan, tilt, zoom
and set the f-stop and speed." He says he obtains the job-cam look of a
site vista photo with an 18-mm-to-200-mm zoom lens; employing it on a regular
schedule, he can create time-lapse sequences of progress. "This works so
good for construction [because] I get the aerial perspective, but, unlike in an
airplane, I am really close. I can take several shots and stitch them
together—you can't do that with aerial photos." Cain charges $200 a visit
and delivers up to 75 photos each time.
Also, an Australian
firm, photo-Sentinal, has entered the field with a self-contained, weatherized,
low-power, G3-communications-equipped housing to let any construction
photographer offer job-cam-style services, especially time-lapse videos, using
their own favorite camera.
