In a second iPad pilot project, three superintendents working on a large apartment project needed a way to stay up-to-date with all of the changes that the owners made during the construction process.

The team looked at several plan-sharing apps before settling on PlanGrid. The makers of that app also developed a very useful photo annotating app called Photopen. Using the two together helped create a work flow that allowed the field superintendents to complete the following:

• Take project photos on a mobile device;
• Make notes on them to generate RFI’s or document punch list items and associate these photos with the drawings; and
• Allowed the users to document the project in real-time and develop project photo archives to reference in the future.

Photopen lets the user in the field take a photo and add notes to a photo which can then be imported into the PlanGrid app for managing safety or punch list items. Marked-up photos can also be uploaded to Twitter, an iPad camera roll, or emailed. 

One drawback that has been seen is that the app resets itself after each photo has been annotated. Once the process is finished, users cannot go back and redo or add to the previous mark ups. 

The app is free on the App Store for iPhone and iPad. The full post from the Construction App Guru can be seen here.

This post is a part of a series by The Construction App Guru who runs a blog which offers mobile technology advice for the construction industry. The author is a Risk Manager for a construction firm based out of Georgia who is on a mission to educate the construction industry about the uses for new technology on projects.