As with most things the final decision comes down to pricing. How much does a product or service cost and as the buyer of those goods or services do I perceive that amount of value? If I see the value, I transact the deal. If I do not see the value, I find an alternative solution or do nothing at all.
The Fixed Cost: Determining the Cost of On-Location Scanning:
At TruePoint Laser Scanning, pricing the actual laser scanning service is fairly straightforward we charge a daily rate. And since we have industry-proven experience in determining how many scans can be accomplished in a set period of time, we feel confident in quoting an accurate price.
The Variable Cost: Determining the Cost of Deliverables:
However, when determining the deliverables section of the quote it gets a bit more challenging. Often clients say we want a model of everything and since the thought process is that scanning captures everything the client would like everything in the model.
Defining Everything:
However, like the humor in this article, what we often find is that people have different meanings for everything.
– Some clients quite literally mean that if it is in the scan data they want it in the model.
– Other clients say they want everything, but really just mean that they want the dimensions of the space.
– And most often times the real desire is somewhere in between well, we actually just want certain piping, structure, and these key areas of interest.
Now Down to Brass Tacks:
Our job as the scanning provider is to listen to our client, ask the right questions, decipher what the client is interested in and define it into a scope of work. Having engineers and architects on staff with real world experience helps us understand what our clients really need and define the scope in order to determine right price.
The important thing is that we understand the scope so that we can make sure we are not providing too much, creating unnecessary costs, and certainly not too little and have a client be disappointed in the deliverables. Additionally, we can often suggest other workflows and deliverables to assist our clients in getting more benefit and value out of the data.
Finding the True Value:
Once we have the scan data, there are so many things that can be done with it! Often times, we can bring the most value to our clients that think of us as consultants or partners with an active role in their project.
Case Study
Task:
To create, as part of the overall engineering survey, an as-built of the interior and exterior of the entire building structure, which included 6 stories of parking garage, 2 floors of retail space and 8 levels of office space.
Challenge:
The project changed hands during the development phase, and there were no existing drawings for the new construction management firm that was hired to complete the project. In addition, the project was in various stages of completion so the new CM needed to be able to verify and document the percentage of completion for all disciplines. Given the size and complexity of the project, field measurements would have been timely, incomplete and inaccurate.
Solutions:
By utilizing TruePoints laser scanning services, the client was able to receive an as-is model of the entire interior and exterior of the structure; at the same time, many other objectives were accomplished, including some that were not even part of the projects original scope.
Deliverables:
TruePoint provided a variety of deliverables to the client, including the following: a 3D Revit model of the building structures interior and exterior; 2D sectional plans in .dwg, .rvt and .pdf file formats; TruViews, which are 3D photogrammetry overlaid on top of point cloud data; contour maps of concrete floor elevations; and colorized point clouds in .pts (un-indexed) and .pcg (indexed) point cloud files.
Added Value:
In addition to the aforementioned deliverables, the client was also able to collect other useful information from the LiDAR data, from clash detection of piping and elevator shaft alignments to floor flatness analysis and volume calculations. Furthermore, the floor flatness analysis not only shows the high and low elevations, but it can also be used to determine the amount of epoxy material needed to raise the floor to an optimal flatness, as well as how much weight the material would add to the structure.
Most importantly, in order to make sure that the client, as well as the firms using the client’s data, would get the most benefit out of the large amount of data and deliverables provided, our team sat in on meetingsand even presented some of the datawith the client and the firms using the data, sharing our knowledge and expertise of the subject and offering guidance.