Reality capture technology is reshaping how contractors plan, track, and deliver civil construction projects. To understand how the industry has evolved and where it’s headed next, we sat down with Giffory Dew of Trimble. Dew brings nearly eight years of hands-on construction experience to the conversation, having worked as a GPS survey intern, construction manager, and project manager on major infrastructure projects, including a $570 million design-build job through Kansas City, before joining Trimble roughly six months ago.
From Owner-Requested Deliverable to Contractor-Driven Value
Reality capture has undergone a fundamental shift in the civil construction space, according to Dew. What was once an owner-requested deliverable that contractors reluctantly fulfilled has become something contractors now actively want to use. Whether through drone imagery, laser scanning, or a combination of both, reality capture helps contractors plan more effectively, communicate with owners, track progress, and mitigate risk.
The benefits extend beyond efficiency, reaching all the way to the bottom line. Dew remembered hearing about a contractor who received an insurance reduction after using OpenSpace to capture 360-degree imagery of their job site, a clear example of how reality capture can translate directly into financial savings.
Even with this progress, Dew sees a persistent gap in how point cloud and scanning technology is used today. High-fidelity scans, he explained, tend to be reserved for narrow, high-risk as-built cases, largely because parsing that data still requires specialized technical expertise that remains in short supply. Looking ahead, Dew expects that as AI accelerates data processing, high-fidelity point clouds will find far broader application across entire job sites rather than isolated use cases.
Building a Well-Integrated Reality Capture Workflow
When asked what an effective reality capture workflow looks like, Dew walked through the process from field collection all the way to actionable office insights.
It starts, he said, with matching the collection method to fidelity needs. Low-fidelity requirements call for fast and passive tools such as 360-degree imagery capture, while higher-fidelity needs call for scanning total stations or drones along with more technical users to manage capture and analysis.
From there, collected data needs to flow into a common data environment with as little manual effort as possible. The smoother that transfer from field to office, the better, and ideally it happens automatically or with minimal touchpoints. Just as important is tagging that data at the point of capture. Tagging with project numbers, flight numbers, mission numbers, or work orders makes information easier to find and parse later, and it lays the groundwork for future agentic workflows that can act on that data intelligently.
Once inside the common data environment, Dew emphasized the importance of visualizing that data in 3D with seamless geo-referencing. Rather than retrofitting coordinate systems after the fact, data should be geo-referenced from the start and layered so teams can toggle between older and newer captures. This capability matters not just for tracking progress but also for resolving disputes, and it’s this foundation that ultimately makes a true digital twin possible.
Finally, once technical staff in the office have parsed and analyzed the data, there needs to be a clear, efficient pathway to communicate those insights back to the field. As Dew put it, field teams don’t need all the raw data regurgitated back to them, they need the key findings delivered quickly and clearly.
How Trimble Business Center Expands UAV Capabilities
Dew pointed to several ways Trimble Business Center, or TBC, has broadened reality capture’s reach for contractors. Perhaps most significantly, TBC now enables in-house processing of raw reality capture data, giving contractors control over the pace and volume of their work without relying on third-party services.
Beyond processing, TBC also automates the process of referencing reality capture data against constructible models. Both the model and the reality capture data can be exported to Trimble Connect, opening that combined context up to far more stakeholders than just the data prep team. TBC has also introduced features that streamline the production of deliverables like orthomosaics and the conversion of point clouds into digital surfaces, allowing contractors to respond quickly when owners ask for updated site conditions.
The most exciting development, in Dew’s view, is feature extraction. Paired with hardware like Trimble’s mobile mapper, TBC’s feature extraction models can automatically identify pavement cracking, lane lines, and other features directly from point clouds. That automation frees data prep teams from manually tracing every feature by hand, giving them more time to focus on building machine control models instead.
Where AI Fits In
AI’s current role in reality capture centers largely on feature extraction, a space Dew expects to keep expanding, not just at Trimble but across the industry. He pointed to Meta’s SAM2 model as one example of a broader trend, noting its ability to extract data from 360-degree imagery.
Beyond extraction, Dew sees AI increasingly helping with data discovery. A single project can generate hundreds of massive datasets, and AI agents can help users quickly locate specific missions or flights rather than manually clicking through libraries trying to remember what was captured when. He also expects AI to keep streamlining the production of deliverables like surfaces and as-builts, speeding up processes that currently require significant manual effort.
The Most Underutilized Use Case: Frequency, Not Novelty
Asked about the most underutilized reality capture use case with untapped potential, Dew offered a different way of framing the question. In his view, it’s less about a specific unused capability and more about how often companies actually leverage the tools already available to them.
The use case he considers most valuable, and most underused, is field planning and communication. Giving field teams direct access to reality capture data, on their phones, for example, allows superintendents to explain plans to their crews without physically walking the site with them. Dew described this as a meaningful time-saver and a powerful communication tool, one that reduces miscommunication, cuts down on phone calls and text messages, and ultimately leads to better project outcomes overall.
Closing Thoughts
Reflecting on the conversation, Dew offered a simple takeaway: reality capture is, in his view, the best communication and planning tool contractors have in their toolbox. As he put it, a picture may tell a thousand words, but a thousand pictures stitched together and geo-referenced can meaningfully reduce miscommunication and drive better outcomes across a project.
