Propeller Advanced Workshop Recap

From daily planning workflows to advanced drone photogrammetry, the back half of the day at Propeller’s Advanced Workshop in Denver went deep and got specific. Here are the moments worth taking back to your team.

The story so far

In case you’re just joining us, the Advanced Workshop covered two parallel tracks across the afternoon, plus a closing Q&A with Propeller’s CTO. Here’s what the day looked like:

• Joe Ballandby: Daily field-to-office workflows
• Zach Miller: 3D measurements and analysis
• Carl Breer: Advanced field methods
• Jacob Richter: Product Q&A and what’s coming next

Who this is for: Project managers, foremen, survey managers, and engineers who want to get more out of the Propeller platform on active sites.

The throughline: Data is most valuable when it’s shared. Workflows stick when teams build them together.

The map is the meeting

Joe Ballandby’s session on daily field-to-office workflows started with a reframe that stuck: the map isn’t a reference document. It’s your morning briefing.

The workflow he walked through begins before the shift does. Office teams set up workspaces, mark hazards with severity levels, and link design files so that by the time the crew arrives, the plan is already on their phone. Field teams aren’t just viewing data, they’re creating it. Polygon measurements against design surfaces. Elevation checks in real time. Point updates pushed back to the office the moment they happen.

The media function got a reframe too. Pinning a photo to a location sounds like a documentation habit. Joe positioned it as something closer to margin protection: a geotagged image tied to an exact survey point is a timestamped, verifiable record. That matters when a subcontractor disputes a quantity, when a client wants proof of progress, or when a regulatory audit arrives. The photo isn’t just a photo. It’s evidence.

Zach’s track: make your measurements work harder

Zach’s session was a masterclass in the gains that compound. Save your first stockpile measurement as a custom template, set a target folder, turn on auto-save, pin the tool to a hotkey. What used to be a draw-name-configure-save loop for every pile becomes shift-click, shift-click, done.

A few other moments that got the room’s attention:

Terrain cleanups aren’t just for aesthetics.

Got a truck sitting on top of a stockpile or a power line that didn’t get filtered in processing? The cleanup tool lets you edit the surface directly, draw a polygon, add breaklines, push it to the correct elevation. Raw output files don’t include those edits. The custom measurement export does. That distinction matters more than most people realize until it doesn’t.

The design-to-measurement conversion.

Instead of redrawing a polygon around your design perimeter, click the design until the yellow line appears, convert to measurement, and run your cut-fill directly. One less step nobody loved doing.

Coming soon: 3D measurement tools in Labs.

Measure vertical faces, get bridge clearances, draw crane radii on the model. Early access is available now, so ask your CSM.

Jacob’s Q&A: what’s coming and why it matters

Jacob Richter, Propeller’s CTO, closed out the formal program, and the energy in the room by that point made for a genuinely good conversation.

AI is already in the platform in ways most people don’t realize.

“Magic Polygons” and background photogrammetry processing are AI-driven today. What’s coming is more active: automatic feature counting (manholes, solar panels, drain pipes), bulk workflow assistance, and early experiments in light CAD design creation directly in the Propeller platform. For customers who need something more specific, Propeller is already helping some build custom detection models. One European customer is using a trained model to count 1-inch steel plates along a 300km gas pipeline, where a missing plate means a $1,000 fine per day. Jacob’s vision: eventually you’ll be able to tell the platform what to find, and it will.

Closing the field-to-office gap is the Q1 and Q2 mission.

Three things coming: 360 camera support via an Insta360 partnership, giving teams a Google Maps-style walkthrough experience tied to their site map; handheld scanning using a phone to capture photogrammetry-type scans; and field forms, digitizing paper processes like dig permits so they can be managed inside the platform. Offline mode is also in active development, with the ability to pre-cache maps and design files so the app stays functional in areas with poor connectivity.

The LiDAR roadmap got a lot of attention.

Propeller has seen significant growth in LiDAR adoption over the last 12 months and is planning a full revamp in the second half of the year: better turnaround times, more classification options, manual reclassification tools, and expanded support beyond drone-mounted sensors to handheld LiDAR scanners.

Jacob closed the session the way he opened it, direct. “Tell me your complaints, what pisses you off, and what you wish you saw. You telling us what’s wrong is how I know what to fix.”

That’s the kind of Q&A that makes people stay for happy hour.