Automated reporting software

Project background

In Japan, creating boards (reports) is crucial both for construction process and for compensation after the construction is completed. Construction photos are documentary reports showing that the construction process is based on blueprints and that the work is being carried out in accordance with specifications, work plans, and blueprints. 

Nowadays, in most Japanese companies, employees fill out these report boards manually. The process consists of cutting out a drawing from structural drawings and parsing the text from them. It takes a lot of time and manual work and is very time-consuming. 

Our client, one of the largest construction companies and a leader in automated reporting software in Japan, needed a fast and effective solution to create electronic boards or just e-boards automatically using data from design documentation and building structure drawings.

Business needs

Construction photos are documentary reports showing that the construction process is based on blueprints and that the work is being carried out in accordance with specifications, work plans, and blueprints. 

– Reports are especially important as the document confirms the quality and conformity of the progress of work for structures that cannot be checked after the completion of construction (walls, the interior of columns, etc.) To do this, it is crucial to managing the photos appropriately according to the catalog of the shooting sites. 

– In Japan,  creating boards (reports) is necessary both for the construction process and the compensation after the construction is completed.  

– Nowadays employees fill out these report boards manually in most Japanese companies. The process consists of cutting out a drawing from structural drawings and parsing the text from them. It takes much time and manual work.

– It is necessary to achieve full compliance with the drawing documentation and the data transfer to report electronic boards.  

– Our client needed a working product within 10 months.  

Product features

1. Log in. Log in to the service
2. Upload the documentation. Uploading general construction drawing documentation
3. Select the page. Selecting the desired page of drawings from the list of pages of the general document
4. Select the drawing. Selecting the desired drawing from the list of segmented drawings
5. Select the building board template. The system analyses the type of a construction object (structure) and offers the user the desired building board template
6. Transfer the drawings. Selecting and transferring the drawings to the Report Board datasheet
7. Automatic fill in. Auto filling of all required fields of the building board with the data from the drawing

Solution

The solution to the client’s business needs should be automatically filled e-boards (reports) using the data of design documentation and drawings of building structures.

– The service architecture provides scalability for all kinds of building structures.

– The architecture of the app is resistant to changes and enables quick adoption of new inputs.

– We used CV models for detecting objects and fields of drawings as a functional, and the OCR model for recognizing texts and inscriptions.

Our technology stack

• Amazon S3
• Amazon DynamoDB
• Amazon API Gateway
• Amazon Lambda
• Amazon CloudFormation
• Amazon EC2
• Amazon Cognito
• Amazon CloudFront
• NumPy
• CV2
• Tesseract
• Craft
• Torch
• Sklearn

Key achievements delivered

1. The automatically filled report e-boards developed by CHI Software have removed most of the manual steps in the validation procedure.
2. The product has simplified interaction between construction companies and municipality officials.