Hello everyone. Thanks for joining us for our Ground Verification Masterclass. My name is Chelsea. I’ll kind of be facilitating the webinar. So I’ll be hosting the Q and A at the end of the session. So feel free to shoot those over throughout this chat or as questions pop into your head, and we’ll make sure to get to them at the end.
John Walls will be leading this webinar. So super knowledgeable on this entire workflow.
At the end, we’ll kind of go through all of your questions and we’ll have a little link above John’s head right now. There’s the ground verification toolbox. So after this webinar, you’ll redirect to that page. We also have the link above that you can review, at any time. But with that, I will kick it off to John.
Yeah. Thanks, Chelsea. On the right side of the screen, you should see a q and a box. So throughout this, throughout this webinar, feel free to drop any questions you have in that chat. We’ll get to that towards the end.
And currently, only myself and Chelsea can see those questions, so feel free to put everything in there, and we’ll get to that towards the end. Any questions we aren’t able to get to, I will provide follow-up.
And in that ground verification toolbox link that you see above my head, it’s a whole host of resources that we’re gonna be able to leave behind for you that you can go back and reference after this call, including the the presentation you see today as well as some other video and, reading resources that tie into the existing ground discussion. So thanks for joining everybody today. I know it’s beginning of the year, season’s kicking off. You’re probably going through some bid phases, getting your back backlog built back up.
Also, all the views out there in the East Coast, hope you’re staying safe, staying warm. A lot of ice out there. So maybe it’s a good opportunity to sit in the office and catch up on some emails, learn some really cool things about what Propeller can offer and see how we can best fit and improve your processes this year. So to give you a bit of background, I’m a revenue enablement manager here at Propeller. I have been here for just over four years and I did start off as a solution engineer. And so I was able to have dozens and dozens of conversations with project managers, foreman, estimators.
They’re all dealing with that most expensive assumption in earthmoving. And that’s the idea that the engineering topo is accurate or correct. So most of us, they’re bidding off what we like to call the liar’s topo. So it’s not that the engineering firm is trying to trick you, it’s just the data is outdated.
It’s ten years old, it’s been sitting on a shelf, it’s from a publicly available dataset from God knows how long ago.
Or it was collected with some really broad interpolation or some just kind of haphazard data collection methods.
Or maybe we didn’t capture all the best information in that low brush or high tree canopy. And that’s going to impact what volumes you see on the ground. So if you assume that topo is right, you’ve already started losing money before you even begin to mobilize. So today we’re going to be talking about some checkpoints to find those mistakes while you can still do something about them.
So what we’re going to cover today, we got about forty five minutes to cover a lot of ground.
My notes here say to pause for laughter. Chelsea, I didn’t see a laugh at that. Not for sure. That was a good one.
For those of you, I have a three year old daughter, so dad jokes are on point. So we’re going be walking through where margin does actually leak out of your project in those first thirty days. I’m going to show you the specific verification checkpoints that our customers are currently using, and then we’ll get into the software to show you the workflow for catching a quantity bust and how to address it. And then we’ll finish with how to apply this to your next bid so that you aren’t eating that costs on an owner’s bad data.
So let’s talk about the people who are actually protecting that project margin. So that bad ground data creates what we essentially will call a black box, where teams eventually start pointing fingers at each other. First up, estimators. You guys are the gatekeepers. Your biggest risk is what we call the winner’s curse. That’s winning a multimillion dollar job that you’re mathematically guaranteed to lose money because you trusted that topo that didn’t account for reality. So you need to be using accurate data and a platform that lets you run those volume comparisons between the design and that actual ground before you commit your firm’s name to that price.
Next up, we got project managers. You’re the field marshals. So you inherit those estimators assumptions. If they’re wrong, you’re the one that’s in the trailer trying to explain one hundred thousand dollars import bus on day one. You need those visuals for planning and documentation to prove site conditions to your subs and the owner before you end up moving dirt twice or three times.
And finally, the buck stops here, the owners. You’re managing that entire P and L. Your challenges are decreasing win rates and that profit fade. So you have a job where you bid at a fifteen percent margin, but it closes at two percent.
Almost every customer that we interviewed mentioned that Propeller is that best insurance policy that they have. It’s the tool that proves you did the work correctly or that a site condition changed before you even arrived.
So it stops that internal fighting and secures your reputation with that high value partnership.
So I’m gonna take a quick sense of the room. Those of you in the chat, you should see a poll pop up here in a second. Chelsea’s working on that right now.
So on a scale of one to five with, you know, how much do you trust the topo that you’re handed? One, pure fiction. You assume it’s a work of art. It’s not actually data. Three, more of that close enough. You expect a few of those oh shit moments, but nothing that’s gonna kill the job.
Five, you have the holy grail, right? You bet your house on those numbers. So drop that number in here. We can see the results here coming in shortly. I’ll give you a few seconds to see what that looks like.
Yeah. And it pops up in the top right hand corner. So just hit vote, and then those will come through.
Yeah. Perfect. So one thing I love, I’ve not seen anybody mark a four or a five. So skepticism is the name of the game and that’s a good way to look at it.
Again, all the customers that we’ve interviewed, everybody was at that one or two level. You’re in that suspicious zone. So that’s where our most successful customers are going to live. They’re not going to assume they’re going to verify.
So let’s go to the next poll. Want to see for those of you who did mark that, which is everybody, how are you currently validating your original ground, your baseline files? So we’ll launch that poll here next Chelsea.
And that just came through.
And there it is.
So are you flying a drone with photogrammetry? Are you flying a drone with lidar? Are you doing a walking topo, and creating a surface that way and then bringing it in to say a CAD program or something like propeller and then looking at any volume discrepancies that way?
Maybe you’re just doing a quick spot check of elevations, like just doing a quick walk around the site, checking tie in locations. What’s that method look like? We’ve got a couple of customers that I spoke to that we’re doing that method.
Maybe you don’t do any of this stuff. Maybe you’re just free willing to see how it goes or something else I didn’t list at all.
Give that a few more seconds here.
A lot of drone flights, that’s great.
Photogrammetry and LiDAR, that’s awesome. Couple walking, couple spot check elevations. So we’re all feeling pretty good about that. Again, the good thing is nobody’s in here saying I don’t do any of that verification or at least we’re in the right lane here showing what we can do.
That pretty much everybody? Perfect. So we’ll go to the next thing. Let’s, sorry, thank you Chelsea. All right.
Is the screen back up? There we go. All right.
So why verify ground control is that prevention tool? So project bleed to chain reaction. So the bid looks fine on paper, then you clear that site and reality hits. The quantity shifted.
The whole plan is now broken and suddenly your fifteen dollars per ton import is now a nightmare. So think about a sixty thousand cubic yard bus on a private job, dollars seven to fifteen dollars a ton, that’s a two hundred thousand dollars swing or more found immediately instead of mid project. One of the customers interviewed Brian Borger at Fritzscheerd says, engineers like to hide a bunch of stuff and sometimes they try to make water flow uphill. So without verification, you aren’t managing a project.
You’re managing a series of expensive surprises. And if you don’t find that dirt before you move it, the change orders are now an argument. And when you verify, it’s now become fact.
Let’s talk about those margins. We’re talking about just a few truckloads here, but that few truckloads can then expand into dozens and dozens of truckloads. We’re looking at fifty thousand to three hundred thousand cubic yard bus that can sink a firm. It can also be a dozen smaller issues that compound over the lifecycle of that project. So we’ve identified five critical checkpoints where doing the work of verification secures your profit.
One, again, things you’ve already talked about and most of you are already doing anyway, checking that verification, verifying your foundation.
Think about your last few projects. How many of them did have volume issues you didn’t see until month two or month three into the project?
One of our customers I interviewed, Goodfellow Bros, they checked on the existing ground on an actual major road project And they found about a three hundred thousand cubic yard discrepancy.
Now they went through that due diligence of doing their own surveys, processing propeller, doing that comparison analytics, and then they bid higher to account for that reality and ended up losing the job. So they lost to a competitor in the same space who likely didn’t check that ground or they’re going with the assumption, well, we can get a change order later. What the guys at GBI call it, they call that winning by losing. So because that project was a guaranteed disaster for whoever won it, they won it blindly.
So how Propeller will fit into that model? One, photogrammetry and LiDAR support. You know we are going to give you three centimeters on the X, Y and Z when you’re running that correctly, giving you that option to verify what you’ve been provided in that bid package. Now if you have the flexibility to fly that site beforehand, this is a much easier conversation to have when you’re processing the photogrammetry and LiDAR. So again, through that thicker vegetation before the sites even be cleared if you have access to that data set. So the alternative, which some of you already said you’re doing those spot checks of the elevation, what’s a five hundred acre survey going to how long is it going to take someone to do that internally or externally if you’ve got a one man or two man crew doing that?
What’s the timeline on getting that data collected, turned around, and then analyzed for that bid?
What’s the cost for that?
Again, other customers that we spoke to, they’re outsourcing some of that survey before bid project, before the bid even takes place. It can cost you between twenty five to fifty grand to have that done.
Whereas with Propeller, you can fly that, process it, get that information back in the same day or the next day for a much lower cost.
Checkpoint number two. So that’s pressure testing that design.
So testing the design itself is really important. Don’t again just assume things right off the bat. Most people assume that the metadata and CAD file is correct. I’ve worked in GIS for ten plus years. Always look at the metadata, always verify the metadata. ASN Constructors, another one of our big customers, they caught a file where the metadata claimed that the units of measurements were in US survey feet.
The data was actually an international feet. Someone had messed up creating that metadata. But they discovered this during the tie in check. And so no EG Topo was even conducted.
But a very simple yet effective way to validate what they’ve been given was to ensure the work is done correctly on day one. The project itself was about sixty acres. That total shift would have been about five feet vertically and horizontally. So think about the timeline if you have to rework or redesign that project when you’re thirty percent of the way through that job.
What’s that going to do to your margins if your tie ins are off by five feet? Wipes out that entire margin instantly. You also have cases where clients refuse to fix improper road curves beforehand. This came up during our interviews. One customer paid eighty thousand dollars to reprofile a road after it was built because the owner didn’t listen to those verbal warnings. So you do need to get yourself that information in writing, backing it up with data.
All of that is available in the Propeller platform. The visuals, the data storage, the comparisons, the reporting, all of that’s backing up and basically becomes a CYAinsurance policy.
What about checkpoint number three, production planning?
Again, during the discussion, there’s something as simple as a export to an import can make a huge difference. So day one doesn’t just change your numbers. It changes the entire equipment loadout. So if your estimator bid the job for scrapers because they assumed a certain cut, but site reality forces you into on road trucks, your cost is gonna quadruple instantly. Scrapers have a forty five second loop. If you miss that, you’ve destroyed that margin before the first week is even over. This is where your project ramp plan either succeeds or fails.
Accurate volumetrics tell you exactly how much manpower and yellow iron you’re gonna need to mobilize. You shouldn’t be guessing if you need six scrapers or ten. Asa and EQs, uses these early volumes to decide on equipment purchasing and loading. Make sure they don’t have too much or too little manpower sitting on-site.
This scenario that I bring up, this came about from one of our customers who they initially had bid on a project, they won it, but it was an import job.
Or I’m sorry, it was an export job and it turned into an import job. So they were going to use all the material that was already on-site. But then once they got out there, realized it had to be filled in. So they start hauling in dirt and topsoil from another location.
But again, that cycle time goes from just under a minute to fifteen to thirty minutes. So you’re moving dirt much less efficiently. So that’s where you can catch that right away. So you’re not renting too much or you’re renting the equipment and allocating your resources where necessary.
You also need to look for where you can quote unquote lose dirt.
Granite, another one of our customers had a five mile long project along a highway and they checked the side slopes in the bid phase. Now if those slopes are low enough to absorb a few extra tents of dirt, they avoided hauling off a lossful amount of dirt. And that one decision was able to save them around one hundred thousand dollars out of that bit. So they were able to be a bit more aggressive and win that job while actually protecting their profit.
A little extra due diligence in the beginning phase can be a massive game changer and these are things that we’ve heard from our customers.
Checkpoint number four, again, post clearing verification.
That’s that reset. Once you’ve cleared and grabbed that site, do another Topo so that vegetation is going to hide the truth. Now if you don’t have a LiDAR sensor on-site or you don’t have access to someone to come out and fly LiDAR for you, it’s not a problem. You’re just doing one extra step before you get going. So that photogrammetry and heavy brush can be off by a foot or two. Once you clear that site, you do have that one time window to lock in a new true baseline.
This creates that site clarity downstream. It means that for the rest of the project, every stakeholder, the PM, the super, the sub is working off the exact same spatial reality that you bid with. You can even upload surfaces from multiple sources, basin rover topos, terrestrial scanners, and drone data.
Everyone stays on the same page because you’ve locked in that reality once those obstacles were gone.
And then number five, that defensible documentation. So all of the first four, it’s all about collecting data in a timely manner, in the correct manner, verifying the information that’s been provided. But then what do you do with all that data? How do you provide a documentation that’s defensible to agencies, to client ownerships, to GCs, to accept any change orders?
That foolproof documentation is also available here in Propeller. This is where you stop those disputes before they even start.
Our customers are using Propeller to share site data directly with owners and GCs to keep everyone on the same page.
Another one of our big customers down in Texas, Fritcher flies their sites before mobilization to prove that silt runoff or environmental issues already existed before they’ve arrived. So they have they had several examples where they’ve saved themselves from massive EPA and state regulatory fines just by doing a preflight and some site documentation before they get equipment out on-site. Once that’s all been documented and saved in Propeller, you then have the tools like PDF reporting, takeoff grid maps, hydrology tool sets, CSV point validation that proves that work.
So this level of transparency builds the trust with those other partners that you’re working with to maintain a good relationship that keeps your backlog filled and keeps you successful on the rest of those projects.
That level of transparency has also helped Fritzsche. They’ve built so much trust with their clients that they’re now being brought projects directly to them, skipping that negotiation phase so they don’t have to go through that low bid fight entirely. So what’s the benefit here? It’s something small, something minimal that you’re doing, providing that level of insight into your site conditions and providing that trust back to your, your client owners.
So what does Propeller do? Those of you who may not already be familiar with Propeller, again, we’re walking through this, there’s a lot of talk about estimating. So full stop, we aren’t an estimating tool.
We aren’t trying to replace AgTech or Bid2Win or any of the other really robust estimating software out there. But we are that central hub for all of the spatial data on your project.
What I want to do is I want to go through and show you how we provide that accurate data that feeds those tools. At the foundation of everything we’re talking about is the accuracy of that data. So we’re to look at a few things, our surface comparison tools, our report generation, as well as inviting our additional stakeholders into the platform that lets you catch data misalignments in minutes, not just weeks.
So I’ll jump over to this screen here.
Everybody see that? We’re all good there. Chelsea, thank you very much. And again, just a reminder, I’m walking through this, please feel free to put any questions in the Q and A as we’re walking through this and we’ll get to those towards the end. Okay. So what we’re looking at here, this is a subdivision site. This is the Propeller platform, so you’re able to see it, that data in two d and in three d.
Now whether your site is on a project grid or you’re working in UTM or state plane, we’re able to process that data to within three centimeters or a tenth of a foot on the X, Y and Z. Pretty straightforward. And we do provide that accuracy verification in our processing report.
Now, since we have that calibration of site, we can also bring in our design phase. So our subgrade line work, you can bring in plot lines, you can bring in any of that data that you want to use to visualize on your project.
So now we can see where that work needs to be done so we can generate a heat map. We can generate those takeoff quantities and we can run that comparison from one survey or our topo to that design.
So what we’re going to do, we’re going to basically mimic what an estimator would do just to track those volumes. So we’ll go to the major tab, order our phase one. Now we’re comparing the original ground topo that was provided in the bid package to to the subgrade design file.
So once that draws in, you’re able to see in pretty clear detail where your cut and your fills are with some contour lines in here. And then on the right side, we’ll see the pop in of the actual volumes in comparison to from both of those surface. So let’s change this design to the original ground.
So this is a phase, you know, this is a multi phase project, but we’re looking at this first phase section here.
And so we’re seeing the original ground topo, we’re comparing it to the subgrade. We see the cut in the fill and we can see we’ve got about eleven thousand cubic yards of import.
We’ve got one hundred and fifteen thousand cubes of cut, one hundred twenty seven to fill, a net import of about eleven thousand nine hundred and twenty yards.
Pretty straightforward. This may be what you’ve bid on. You’re bidding on an import job. But let’s compare that current topo to the original ground topo that was provided. So in a simple dropdown, I just changed surfaces from our drone topo to our design, our original ground. So do we see any discrepancies here?
Now, current surface OG Topo, we actually see about an eighteen thousand, almost nineteen thousand cubic yard discrepancy between those files. Now, the discrepancy between number of things. It could be the vegetation, it could be a vertical misalignment, it could be just a settlement of land, could be a whole host of reasons why this number is off by about twenty thousand cubic yards. So now in the same dropdown, we can just change this current surface. Now let’s compare that to the actual subgrade of that first phase.
Within just a matter of clicks, we’ve gone from a eleven thousand cubic yard import to a seven thousand cubic yard export.
Again, what I mentioned earlier, if you’re planning on exporting data or just moving, if you’re nearly balanced on-site, you don’t have to worry about overland trucks.
But this one, they’ve scheduled trucks to import almost twelve thousand cubes.
Now we’re exporting about seven thousand cubic yards. So that’s a bit of a difference there. So just from a scheduling perspective, before we’ve even cleared this site, we’ve already made an adjustment. We’ve already can quickly simply make an adjustment to that bid.
Now, Propeller is not a full blown CAD program.
We have some adjustments we can make. And one of those things we can do is we can make adjustments to our design files. So we can do offsets, vertically offset so we can raise or lower a surface to look for any potential changes. So simply by going into the original line service and applying that vertical offset, we can bump this up by 1500s.
So looking at the subgrade tri mesh, let’s change that to the 1500s adjustment.
Are we a little closer to balance on that first site by doing a simple design revision by fifteen hundredths of a foot?
How much will that make an adjustment to our overall earthworks plan?
So by making that minor adjustment, we’re now closer to balance with a net difference of four seventy eight cubic yards.
Very simple, very straightforward. Now again, this is the entire design not in different regions, but this is some of the things you can do in Propeller to help you with those, the site documentation and that justification. So then what do you do with the data at this point in time? Now, the Propeller platform has the ability to bring in up to forty users for free with various level permissions.
You can share this site here with multiple stakeholders internally or externally by just clicking and adding in their email address. And then we have ten different levels of permission from viewing the ortho, viewing designs and measurements that have been created all the way up to creating measurements and exporting data. That’s one option. The second option we have is our mobile application.
All of these measurements I just showed you in here can be done or viewed in our mobile app as well.
So if you’re out on-site with your estimator, with a PM, you can literally just, or with a PE, can just lay your walker on the site, run these calculations on your tablet, on your cell phone, and then provide that information back to your PMs, your owners, back to those client owners.
The third option I think is probably the most valuable is you can then just generate a PDF report. So we’ve got these different designs in here where we’ve got the OG Topo to Subgrade, your Drone Topo to Subgrade, and your Drone Topo to the Subgrade right there.
Now all of this information, we can then go into the outputs tab and generate a PDF report.
And so what this does, it allows you to provide that visual evidence of volumetric differences from one survey to the next one surface comparison to the next. It’s got a timestamp of when that site was flown, when was the report generated with those visuals. Again, really easy to see any volumetric calculation.
This is the preview.
If we were to export this whole thing out, you’d see all of those majors as we created. But this is then you take this out, print it, attach it to a change order. You have defensible justification to ask for a change order or to adjust your bid or your schedule.
Something very, very simple to provide. And again, shortcut that dispute that may come up a little bit later on.
Again, the other tool in here that I think is really, really helpful or that will be really, really helpful as well is our media tab.
So the media tab allows you to upload any number of images, whether that’s just a snapshot from your cell phone or a full panoramic three sixty from the drone or from a three sixty camera where you can see site conditions before you’ve even started.
Now, not available at this moment in time, but something we’ll be able to mention in a couple of months.
We are going to release full support for Insta360 walkthroughs. So your walk will be available to be shown as well as a full panoramic view, basically a Google Earth walk of your site.
Again, a lot of customers that I talked to are using this feature specifically to document those site conditions. Again, Fritcher had, in conjunction with our hydrology features, we’re able to create Swift maps in the app because we’re able to see where water is going to flow on-site, where your potential errors for collecting is. Is water going to run off into the adjacent property? Again, Fritz’s example was they captured site conditions beforehand and then they had a dispute with a landowner next door that had some crop damage.
Not having this CYA option in Propeller would have cost them upwards of sixty thousand dollars in remediation and lost revenue from those damaged crops.
The damage was there before they even began the project. So something as simple as that protected that entire margin and paid for propeller for literally two years. So something very, very simple to consider all those different tools we have in place to provide insurance visibility into the project.
So that’s the main portion of the platform that I didn’t want to cover. We’ll jump back over to the presentation.
So in summary, let’s talk about the four things you guys can do to again just make sure that you’re defended right away on day one. So one, align on that reality early on.
If you can get to a site while you’re in that bidding phase, great. Go in there and see what conditions are like before you’ve even submitted a bid to that project.
If you don’t have access to that site, be conservative. But understand before if you’ve been awarded that bid, do your due diligence, which again from the checkpoints or from the poll we put in earlier, A lot of you are already doing that.
A lot of you are in that were suspicious.
We do believe it’s a work of fiction. Some of it’s close enough. Is that close enough?
How much of that close enough would improve your margins from a eight percent to a fifteen percent end of project profit decision? So that’s how many things can we improve on just incrementally something as subtle as a hydrology model run to ensure runoff compliance, documenting those site conditions, something to cover your butt in the event something comes up. Having that documentation is going to be really, really helpful.
Plan with those accurate volumes. Again, something as simple as an import versus an export or export versus an import makes a big difference.
Do you need to rent more equipment? Do you not need to rent more equipment? Do you need to allocate resources from another project?
All of these things can be done immediately with good visuals in the propeller platform with accurate data, either from photogrammetry, from LiDAR, or from your own existing ground based surveys.
Lock in that baseline before and after clearing. Again, understanding what the true reality is before you actually get started on the rest of that project, before you bring in scrapers, before you just start that rough grading, understand where you’re starting from and lock that in. Then finally, it’s always good practice just to document literally everything with PDF reports and that shared portal access. So this is how you stop reacting to site surprises and start managing that margin.
So if you change orders are being challenged or your PMs are constantly surprised by what they find on day one, is it time to change that workflow? We can also help you capture conditions on the ground. We have that mobile app available, we have that three sixty walkthrough function coming in February. So capturing ground level conditions alongside your drone data is a powerful addition to that tool belt.
If anybody in here are thinking like, wow, should reconsider this, I want to challenge you to that poll that we have right here.
So having gone through all of this information we’ve covered in today’s, again, lot of it’s, I would say, anecdotal evidence, but multiple customers that I spoke with have kept repeating the same thing. Like it’s something as simple as doing a tie in check, a preflight analysis.
One thing that did surprise me, two of those customers that I spoke with, they were telling me that their competitors are not doing any of this work. They’re not doing any sort of verification. It’s a lump sum job. I’ll get out there.
I’ll move it. If I have to move more, great. I’ll just put in a change order and that’s it. But what does that mean down the line if you’re way behind on schedule, if you’re way behind on equipment, on labor because you didn’t do that due diligence from the very beginning because it it might be too costly.
The timeline may not match up. So something as simple as that.
So on that scale of one to five, one, I’m good. I’m going to keep doing what we’re doing today. I just assume the risk of site surprises. Three, maybe we got that evaluation is necessary.
We’ve been burned by bad data recently, Starting to see that leak. I’m ready to adopt. Number four, we’re tired of the internal finger pointing. We need a single spatial hub.
Or number five, you know, urgent need. You got toasted last year.
You wanna do something better for this season, we need to adopt these today. We’re losing money reacting to those conditions, instead of knowing what they really are.
So, these are coming through. We’ve got nine in right now.
Great. I got some evaluation necessary, couple ready to adopt.
Nobody says I’m good. All right. So that’s good. At least I’ve hit something right there. Minimal change is fine.
At least you’re doing your due diligence. Right? Again, the point of this is not to again, not trying to come in here and say, you need to buy Propeller.
I mean, it’s a great thing if you do, but that’s not the goal. The goal of this is to just make sure that you’re doing the due diligence.
If you want to bring this in house, if you want to start, if you’re subbing this type of workout or you’re just reacting later on, we can help you with that.
And so, great to hear. Glad that’s working out. Move on to the next thing. That’s that Q and A session. While we’re going through this, again, want to point out two resources for you. One, that link in the top, the ground verification toolbox is going to take you to external resources that you can share externally with anybody else that could be interested in reviewing this. It’s going to be a copy of this webinar as well as the presentation I just walked through and some additional video resources and customer success stories.
There’ll also be a link into, set up a meeting with our inbound SDR Madison. You can also scan this QR code right here to get to her calendar if you want your set yourself up with a thirty minute phone call. So, that’s gonna give us right about, twenty minutes for the hour.
So, Chelsea Good questions do we have?
Yeah. Good stuff. Thanks for calling that out. So we have the QR code. There’s also a little schedule console button in yellow right above John’s head. So lots of options. So we have a couple of queue questions coming through right now.
The first one is, is there any way we could make an assumption of topsoil depth before topsoil stripping?
Oh, that is a good one.
So what you can do.
So similar to what I showed you with the vertical offset of the design, if you were to do some spot check elevation differences of your topsoil depth, you could go through and you could do a vertical offset of the entire topo to remove that potential volume, which you would call topsoil.
So we have a function that you can either a, do that that way or if you do a volume calculation in the platform, you can do a depth too. So let me pull that up.
So let’s just say we know that this is let’s just say this is, eight inches of topsoil. So I’m just gonna draw a we’re we call it the stockpile tool, but I’m just gonna draw this polygon here around this entire site.
Now this is accounting for the entire, the entire elevation.
Then once we get that stockpile tool built in, then we have ways to readjust that base. So you can go to say a reference surface, reference surface elevation. It’s gonna be just be a flat flat terrain.
So down in the bottom right, you see my elevations are pretty pretty inconsistent. There’s also a pretty steady slope. So that might not be the best tool. So then we have what’s called our custom surface elevation where it allows you to set the elevation of all of the vertices. So custom surface.
I’m gonna hit save and I’m gonna click on these three dots, and I’m gonna hit edit shape.
And so I’m gonna uncheck the snap to ground so that way I can adjust the actual vertices.
I’m gonna do a select all, and I’m gonna do an offset by point seven five.
So now we’ve dropped down everything about, what is that, about eight inches. Hit save, and now we can see what that volume is of topsoil.
Now you would have to determine what that depth to topsoil is to set in that number, but that’s how you would do that here in Propeller.
Awesome. Okay. Well, thank you very much. We have a few more filing through. So the next one is what export options do I have with Propeller, specifically dot DWG shape files and similar files that import to CAD?
Yeah. Perfect. So if you process with Propeller, we do provide a DXF of a tin surface.
If you are a Trimble Business Center customer, you can also select a TTM to be exported.
DXFs of the contours as well as geo tips of the orthophoto and the DSM, digital surface of the digital train models. And then we also have a point cloud export as an LAS or an LAZ. So that’s every dataset that we process from raw.
We also have the option to export in a dynamic format. So basically what you’re looking at here, I just drew this polygon.
So I actually click the same polygon and click export.
And then we can bring up all of these options here. So orthophoto as a JPEG or a GeoTIFF, whatever you prefer, you can set your resolution. That comes out via email. We have a boundary that can be set as a DXF or a KML. Again, your surface can be tint surface or a mesh, and then you can adjust those resolutions or your contours can be a DXF or a shapefile.
And then you can set your interval this way. So a lot of flexibility in how you get data out and this is what we provide for you with every single dataset from a dynamic standpoint. There should be a point cloud option here as well. But under the outputs tab is that file option for all of those things. So your DXF, 3Ds, your contours, your orthos. Not listed on this site specifically, but we also have another option for a .obj file, which can be brought into any three d vertical software.
Awesome. Thank you. Next question. Is there a desktop or a local version of Propeller?
Don’t know if you could still hear me. Chelsea, can you still hear me? Yeah. Okay. I can you, but I can see you talking.
It’s on me. I do actually see in the q and we got a is there a desktop local version from Garrett? So Propeller is a desktop, I’d say desktop solution, but it’s a browser based. So you can access it from any desktop as long as it has Internet access. So you don’t download software to a specific machine like you would with Carlson or TBC or Autodesk. So it’s available in any machine. So therefore we also don’t have an offline version either.
I’m reading through these because I still can’t hear you.
Perfect.
Got it? Can you hear me now?
I can’t hear you, but I can see you talking. So hopefully everybody else can hear you.
So yeah. Just to reiterate again, at the top is that ground verification toolbox that you can use to go in and schedule any sessions with our Oh, sorry. How do we recommend setting tolerance thresholds for quantity differences? Yeah.
Great question.
That’s actually up the discrepancy of the PM and the owner.
Five percent to one company may be vastly different than five percent to somebody else. We have customers in the ENR four hundred in the top five. We have customers that are not even listed on the ENR four hundred.
So that margin is going to be dramatically different for everybody. So it’s really up to you to determine what you feel you could absorb and not eat away your profit or put your company at risk.
What I can tell you is that Propeller from an accuracy standpoint, from a volumetric standpoint on things like stockpiles and cut fill comparisons, we feel confident saying that our numbers are within one percent when you run that comparison. So if you’re at ten percent of say, stockpile inventory, on the ground inventory, cut fills from a hand topo or just doing truck counts, that’s another common issue we hear.
We ran we ran a hundred eighty five cycles today.
We moved this much. Did you actually move that much? If you’re within five percent then, is that okay for you? We would say you could get better at one percent. So for those of you who did list that, we’re good on three, we probably can get a little better. This is where we start to increase those, improve those margins incrementally by adjusting a few small things here and there.
Number three, how do you set up consistent boundaries and naming so volume stay comparable across updates and phases? Yeah.
More often than not, in the line work, you’ll have something like a limits of discernments or a project boundary.
Instead of free handing a calculation like you see here, what we can do is we can just use an actual design surface like an LOD.
So like this has a fence line.
So you could use this boundary as a basis of your measurement. So We have enough customers that are, we have the GC as well as the subcontractor, both using propeller, both flying independent of each other. Then there’s a potential dispute once we get to the end of the month for a billing cycle. Now is it an actual dispute or is it just an inconsistent boundary?
And that’s actually more often what we’ve seen is someone free handing a line versus just right clicking on a design file or limits the disturbance boundary and doing the comparison that way. So make sure that you’re using one, is everybody on the same calibration? Let’s start there. Two, are you all using the same boundary to create those calculations?
Does this one have a property boundary? Here’s another one. So make sure that you’re at least consistent. Consistency is the name of the game here. We want to make sure that we’re all using the same the same data.
That’s the most important part.
The other thing is, as I mentioned, having the ability to look at different portals without incurring a seat license, Invite your GC, invite your subcontractor into the data so that they can see where that boundary has been set.
Where are you drawing that line that maybe is different from them?
The other great thing about this is if you saw this boundary that I created earlier, you can export that out. You can export the outline as a DXF or a KML. Send them the boundary of the measurements that you created so that they can bring that into their system as well, whether it’s a CAD program, Google Earth, or Propeller. Both of those things could be true at the same time.
Let’s see. One more question.
What metrics do you typically see teams track to prove this workflow is paying off, time saving, fewer disputes, etcetera? Yeah, great question. And it’s all of those things.
Time savings, it’s really more of a schedule protection. Again, we’re delayed consistently because we knew where we were starting from.
If we’re all running a mile long race, are we all starting at the same start line? Well, if we’re going to run a mile but you’re a quarter mile behind, did you run that mile in seven minutes? I think it’s how fast my fastest mile time was.
That was a long time ago. But anyway, time saving schedule protection is one thing. Fewer disputes.
You’ve established that trust and that credibility with those different stakeholders on those projects, whether it’s a you’re consistently going back to the same land developer who likes how you work, likes the data you provide, likes the insights you’re providing, the transparency. Again, Fritzsche talked about that in interview with them.
They’ve bypassed a lot of the early bid phases. They’ve gone right into project work. They’ve kept their backlog going. So something as simple as that will make a big difference. So that’s that’s what I would see.
Again, margin protection, schedule protection, lack of disputes and repeat business over and over again. What’s going to make you better than the other guy in the same region doing the same type of work? It could be something as simple as having access to the site. One of the customers I did interview, I can’t say their names because they were dead set on not having me tell you who they were because they are cleaning house and the reason that they’re in by winning all of these bids by not just this workflow, but just using Propeller in general.
He’s like, don’t tell anybody that we’re using this. I don’t want to be on any marketing campaign. I don’t even listen any webinar. I’m not saying who it is, but he was very adamant about don’t tell anybody who’s using this because it’s an edge that we have that nobody else has in this region.
So I thought that was pretty dynamic. I thought that was quite telling that we can’t tell you who it is, which maybe, I don’t know, that’s probably not the best way to talk about a webinar, but it just it stuck out to me quite quite fervently. So cool.
Anything else, Chelsea?
Yeah. Are you able to hear me yet? Or are we still muted? No.
Still can’t hear you.
So Submit it through the chat.
Thanks again, everybody, for joining, and I did see somebody gave me a nice compliment. So thank you for that. Best one ever. That’s pretty good.
Click those links, the ground verification toolbox right up top, as well as that QR code. Hopefully you guys were able to get scheduled with Maddie. And hopefully I talk to some of you in the very near future. Thanks for joining everybody. Thank you.
