Reality mapping experiment breaks new ground at the Oracle Industry Lab, yields new insights into growing area

Reality capture and reality mapping continue to grow in importance across multiple industries, including engineering and construction, as organizations seek new and better ways to derive digital representations accurately and reliably from physical landscapes.

In construction in particular, 2D and 3D reality mapping can improve how organizations handle documenting and communicating project progress and quality, logistics planning, safety inspections, and assessing as-built conditions throughout a structure’s lifecycle. Interest in reality mapping is rising as organizations see benefits across project cost, time, quality, and safety.

A team of experts at the Oracle Industry Lab in Chicago, including Oracle partner Reconstruct Inc., joined up with several leading E&C companies and tech partners on a groundbreaking, first-of-its-kind reality mapping experiment. Their overarching goal: to explore what combination of tool, process, and team are best for conducting an actual reality capture and mapping project on a construction site.

A truly pioneering initiative of considerable complexity and scope, the experiment used the lab’s realistic environments to test a variety of potential use cases that marry reality mapping technologies and their associated processes with construction management and other project delivery activities and workflows.

A new whitepaper titled “Reality Mapping Experiment at Oracle Industry Lab” captures the entire experiment from the planning and mapping activities through the final lessons learned. The whitepaper is available to download here.

Among the takeaways, readers will learn how:

• To select which reality capture tool, process, and team is right for your job
• Different reality mapping methods possess unique strengths tailored to specific tasks
• Contractors can optimize reality mapping to improve jobsite efficiencies
• Reality mapping augments industries facing major labor shortages
• Precise reality mapping results in fewer errors during construction
• The experiment also applies to telecom, utilities, manufacturing, and data center opportunities

How the lab serves as a field test bed

This groundbreaking work showcases the unique value of Oracle's lab to create the space for innovation in construction methods, as well as hands-on validation and measurement of outcomes in real-world environments.

In its inaugural year, the lab has built its reputation as a test bed for high-level innovation across multiple industries including construction, energy, food and beverage, hospitality, manufacturing, public safety, and communications.

For this experiment, the Oracle lab team worked closely with Reconstruct, a founding partner tenant at the lab that offers a visual command center solution for reality mapping and project monitoring.

Integration between Reconstruct and the Oracle Smart Construction Platform enables construction managers to interactively map their schedule activities into BIM data—at both the master schedule and task levels.

The resulting 4D BIM communicates construction sequencing to owners, trade contractors, and other partners. Users can easily create simulations using 4D BIM and manage project changes, among other benefits.

Other organizations that participated in the reality mapping experiments at the Oracle lab are:

• Pepper Construction
• Clayco
• Skydio, an Oracle technology partner
• FARO, an Oracle technology partner

Partners and customers were eager to bring their people, scanners, surveyors, and drone pilots for the reality mapping experiment. They know that the lab is a safe space where organizations can work with the ecosystem to learn and improve. There was a great deal of excitement as the idea for the reality mapping experiment unfolded—and they supported the process with their ideas.

The reality mapping experiments

It’s important to note that the experiments are not meant to compare products. Rather, the experiments serve as the basis of creating guidelines that help project teams choose the process best suited to satisfy the needs of a given use case and what level of effort and cost is needed for each solution.

Since each reality mapping method is unique, strengths that can be tailored to different use cases unfold as the experiment progresses. The experiment ultimately produces a guideline with a range of factors that can affect the outcomes, since results can vary.

Given the variables, the experiment provides guidelines that will shape the future of remote technology in reality mapping. The work also underscores the value of Oracle Smart Construction Platform, its trusted applications, common data environment, and connectivity to the larger technology ecosystem. The Oracle platform is helping shape how the Oracle Industry Lab enables partners and customers to accelerate innovation, turn data into insights, and build powerful workflows to boost productivity.

“It was refreshing to be a part of an unbiased evaluation exercise during which all the participants got a chance to objectively evaluate the process and the data outcome in a very transparent fashion,” says Tomislav Zigo, CTO and vice president at Clayco. “What was truly surprising is how the quality of data has significantly improved over the past several years and the amount of useful information that this team managed to produce during the experiment.”

Download the whitepaper, "Reality Mapping Experiment at Oracle Industry Lab," for the full story.

The Oracle Smart Construction Platform combines our industry-trusted applications with a common data environment and an ecosystem of partners to help owners and delivery teams work together and continuously improve performance. The platform connects teams and data, synchronizes work, and empowers individuals to make informed, proactive decisions. Power performance with proven Oracle Construction and Engineering solutions for scheduling, portfolio management, construction project management, project controls, construction payment management, and more.