Several weeks ago, we caught up with Quantapoint CEO John Wilson to get an update on the company. Wilson, who’s been at the helm for six months, shared his plans for what’s next.
Quantapoint has long been a leading supplier of scanning services with a worldwide presence in offshore, power, oil and gas as well as architectural markets. Unlike most, if not all of its peers in the services sector, until last year, the company executed all of its projects with its own proprietary scanning hardware.
Today’s Quantapoint is quite different. The company offers a complete service solution suite that includes hardware, software licenses, integration capabilities with several 3D CAD products (Autodesk, AVEVA, Bentley, Intergraph), and its flagship services of creating Laser Models and analysis. It has also expanded its international partnerships. And, last November, the company bought six FARO Photon Laser Scanners. These steps are all in line with the company’s value-add strategy. Wilson explains: “There’s a fairly close link between our software and our hardware and our data acquisition and our CAD services—one of the values that we bring is that we’re able to engineer all that together.”
Quantapoint announced a new, million points per second, Class 1 eye- safe scanner on March 27, SceneModeler 9.0, for its now 20 scanner fleet. The FARO fleet supplements Quantapoint’s proprietary equipment options. Wilson says, they’re continually evaluating current market options by other manufacturers and future possibilities, as well.
“We still focus and have a strong capability in R&D around camera technology,” Wilson says. “I view camera technology today at the low end of the food chain of laser scanning. To a certain extent, as you see in most technology industries, that becomes a little bit commoditized… I do think that as the technologies mature, people become more plug-and-play with the cameras.”
Software – that’s a different matter. On April 22, the company announced the release of PRISM 3D / QuantaCAD 9.0. PRISM 3D capabilities include Laser Model visualization, measurement, annotation, virtual demolition, and linking of scan data to other facility databases. QuantaCAD allows integration of Laser Models and clash detection with leading design applications including Autodesk AutoCAD, AVEVA PDMS, AVEVA Review, Bentley AutoPlant, Bentley Microstation V8XM, Intergraph PDS, SmartPlant Review and SmartPlant 3D. “What users end up with is a ‘Digitized Facility’ on the desktop,” Wilson says, adding that software market share helps Quantapoint as a company and makes it easier for customers to procure their services.
“Developing software is not a low-cost activity,” says Wilson. “You don’t want to sell two copies at very high prices—you want to sell lots of copies at relatively inexpensive prices. I see progression of the software ‘ecosystem’ being quite important. That’s not to say that we’re going to build it all, but I think there’s a lot of work to be done in terms of interfacing with other applications and value-added applications and offering a full solution for the customer.” Unlike in the past, you don’t have to purchase Quantapoint services to get a license. Contact Quantapoint for pricing on PRISM 3D or QuantaCAD.
The customer is everywhere for Quantapoint. The company has expanded its market coverage through its Houston office that was opened in 2006 and its recently opened Los Angeles office. With a growing number of big contracts for multinational customers, Quantapoint is taking steps to work more closely in key growth markets overseas, such as deep offshore projects in Brazil, the Middle East and West Africa. Their goal is to deliver the same high quality services wherever their global customers need them and to deploy a number of different business models to achieve this.
