Supporting Web-based Collaboration for Construction Site Monitoring

Deviations from the original blueprints could often be found on building sites. To easily identify such constructional modifications, this paper proposes a smart digital twin for construction site monitoring that supports web-based collaboration with external experts to discuss possibly required solutions to this problem. Therefore, a system pipeline was designed that allows automatic detection and visualization of deviations between real and planning data. In addition, the pipeline allows generating an interactive difference visualization that uses the original planning data as well as the 3D scanned real data. The latter is recorded using an AR-capable mobile device or headset like the Microsoft HoloLens, whereas the mentioned differences are obtained via a point-cloud-based algorithm. The differences between real and planning data are then emphasized on the respective client, which uses X3-DOM for visualization. Besides the server part of the pipeline, the application consists of several clients that enable a collaborative discussion between the various stakeholders, such as an AR-based mobile viewer for the craftsman on site and a web-based viewer for the building owner at home or the architect.