Reality captureGleeds and OpenSpace
Gleeds grew its OpenSpace-based reality-capture service from 16 pilot users to 1,900 and reports £2 million in client savings for 2025
Visualise, a Gleeds consulting service built on OpenSpace, pins 360-degree site photos to floor plans. Gleeds says it has been used on about 340 projects in ten countries.
- Platform users, November 2026
- 1,900More than, per Gleeds and OpenSpace
- 2022 pilot
- 16people
- Client savings, 2025
- £2 millionAround, as reported by Gleeds
Each square is one Visualise user. The 16 in the 2022 pilot sit at the top left.
Gleeds, an international property and construction consultancy, announced on November 10, 2026, that it will expand Visualise, its reality-capture service, after using it on about 340 projects in ten countries. Visualise runs on OpenSpace, software that places 360-degree photos from a site walk onto the project's floor plans. Gleeds says the service has grown from a 16-person pilot in 2022 to more than 1,900 users and helped its clients save around £2 million in 2025. The work it changes is the site record behind progress reports, change orders, claims and defect closeout.
What it does
One 360-degree site walk becomes a dated record placed on the floor plan
On most jobs, the record of what an area looked like on a given date lives in a superintendent's phone, a stack of daily reports and the memory of whoever walked the floor. When a ceiling closes over ductwork that later leaks, or a trade says its work was in place before a change was issued, a project engineer has to rebuild that record by hand.
Visualise follows the order of a site walk.
A site walk drawn as a plan: capture points along the path, a Field Note pinned in one room, and one room left out
- Walk path
- 360-degree capture point
- Field Note
- Area the walk skipped
A team member walks the site with a 360-degree camera mounted on a hard hat. Gleeds says the camera captures images automatically as the person walks.
OpenSpace's software works out the camera's path. IN Site, a UK construction trade publication, explains that it uses image-based simultaneous localization and mapping, or SLAM, which estimates where the camera is by tracking how features shift from one frame to the next. The images are then pinned to their locations on the floor plan.
The result is a walkable, dated record of each area. A user can open the same room on different walk dates. Gleeds' service page says its teams use split views and BIM Compare, which sets the photo beside the model, to find defects and verify work.
During the walk, or later from a desk, users add Field Notes. A Field Note is a photo or a point in the 360-degree image with a description, markup, assignee and due date. OpenSpace says Field Notes sync both ways with Procore Observations and Punch List items and with Autodesk Issues, and export to PDF reports.
At Gleeds, the users are consultants working for owners, such as project managers and cost managers. On a US general contractor's job, the camera would go to a project engineer or assistant superintendent. The PM, the superintendent and whoever prices change orders would read the record.
Evidence so far
Gleeds and OpenSpace report about 340 projects and more than 50,000 Field Notes entries
The evidence is Gleeds' announcement, OpenSpace's press release of the same day, and Gleeds' service page. Every figure comes from those two companies. IN Site describes the savings figure as a company-reported outcome.
These claims come from Gleeds and OpenSpace:
- 1,900users, more than
Visualise began in 2022 as a 16-person pilot and now has more than 1,900 platform users in ten countries.
- 340projects, approximately
It has been used on approximately 340 projects, from office fit-outs and listed building refurbishments to Peru's Bicentennial Schools Programme, which spans several sites.
- 50,000Field Notes entries, more than
Teams have logged more than 50,000 site observations, issues and actions in Field Notes against live project records.
- £2 millionclient savings in 2025, around
Clients saved around £2 million in 2025.
- 75%improvement, up to
Teams report improvements of up to 75% in progress reporting, change management, claims assessment and defects resolution. Gleeds' service page compares this with traditional manual methods.
- 10,000hours of remote viewing, nearly
Users logged nearly 10,000 hours of remote site viewing, according to OpenSpace.
Six of the eight reported figures carry a qualifier such as “more than” or “up to”
| Measure | Value | Qualifier | Unit | Period | Reported by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Users in the original pilot | 16 | none given | people | 2022 | Gleeds and OpenSpace |
| Platform users | 1,900 | more than | people | 2022 to November 2026 | Gleeds and OpenSpace |
| Projects | 340 | approximately | projects | 2022 to November 2026 | Gleeds and OpenSpace |
| Countries | 10 | none given | countries | 2022 to November 2026 | Gleeds and OpenSpace |
| Site observations issues and actions logged in Field Notes | 50,000 | more than | entries | 2022 to November 2026 | Gleeds and OpenSpace |
| Hours of remote site viewing | 10,000 | nearly | hours | 2022 to November 2026 | OpenSpace |
| Client savings | £2 million | around | GBP | calendar year 2025 | Gleeds and OpenSpace |
| Efficiency improvement in selected activities | 75% | up to | percent | not stated | Gleeds and OpenSpace |
Dividing the totals by the project count shows the scale on an average job. The figures below are a Construction Metrics calculation from the reported figures. They average four years of work across projects of very different sizes, so treat each number as a rough order of magnitude.
Spread across about 340 projects, the totals come to about 147 Field Notes entries per job
5.6
platform users per project
1,900 users across 340 projects
147
Field Notes entries per project
50,000 entries across 340 projects
29
hours of remote site viewing per project
10,000 hours across 340 projects
Caveats
The £2 million and the 75% figure come without a breakdown so far
A breakdown of the £2 million by project or by activity, and the baseline behind the 75% figure, are not yet public. Bricks & Bytes, a construction technology newsletter, wrote that splitting the savings into fewer site visits, faster decisions, less rework and fewer disputes would make the business case clearer. It also pointed out that Gleeds delivers the technology inside its consulting service, with a defined purpose and a growing user base.
“That means decisions can be made with greater confidence, issues can be resolved faster, and less time is lost trying to piece together fragmented information.”
How to measure it on your projects
Four activities, four units to track, starting with the hours behind the monthly progress report
Gleeds names four activities where it sees gains. Each one has a unit a contractor already tracks, and the table pairs them.
Each activity Gleeds names maps to a count of hours or days a contractor already keeps
| Activity | What the visual record supplies | Unit to track in a pilot |
|---|---|---|
| Progress reporting | Dated 360-degree images of each area to compare across walks | Hours to assemble the monthly progress report |
| Change management | Images of an area before and after an instruction was issued | Days from change event notice to agreed scope |
| Claims assessment | Time-stamped evidence of which work was in place on a given date | Hours spent reconstructing site conditions per claim |
| Defects resolution | Field Notes pinned to the floor plan with photos and an assignee | Days from defect logged to closed |
Start with progress report hours, the staff hours spent each month collecting site photos and writing the owner's progress report. It maps to the first activity on Gleeds' list, and the PM can log it each month without a new system. Capture the hours on the last three monthly reports before the pilot, split into photo collection and writing.
During the pilot, log the same split each month and record how many scheduled walks were completed. IN Site points out that areas the camera skips stay undocumented, so a missed walk shows up later as a gap in the record.
The other metrics below need a few weeks of baseline from mileage logs, calendars and the issue log.
Each baseline comes from records the job already keeps: report hours, mileage logs, calendars and the issue log
| Metric | Definition | Baseline to capture before the pilot |
|---|---|---|
| Progress report hours | Staff hours spent each month collecting site photos and writing the owner progress report | Hours logged on the last three monthly reports |
| Site trips for verification | Trips made only to check a condition or measure installed work | Count from mileage logs or calendars for the last 8 weeks |
| Days to close a field issue | Calendar days from an issue being logged to being closed | Median for issues closed in the last 8 weeks |
| Disputed conditions resolved from records | Share of disputed site conditions settled from existing photos without a new site visit | Count for the last 10 change events or back charges |
Our post on NCC and Buildots shows how one contractor measured a 360-camera tool that compares captures with the schedule. If closeout is the target, pair this pilot with the document tracking in our post on Zutec Handover AI.
First step on one jobAsk the PM to log the hours spent on this month's owner progress report, split into gathering photos and writing.
Availability and cost
OpenSpace prices its Core and Enterprise subscriptions by annual construction volume
OpenSpace sells two subscriptions, Core and Enterprise, priced by the customer's annual construction volume. Enterprise adds single sign-on, access to OpenSpace's APIs and extra onboarding. Progress tracking, sold as OpenSpace Track, is an add-on to either tier. OpenSpace says an annual subscription can cover a single project, and buyers get a price through its quote form. For a progress tracking product that lists a per-square-foot price, see our post on Track3D.
Visualise itself is a Gleeds consulting service for Gleeds' clients. Its service page sends inquiries to Sheldon Atkinson, head of Visualise, in London.