The ground doesn't remember what was there before. Neither does the project record, unless someone documented it. Imagine a construction site with several large stockpiles of aggregate. The material has been delivered, placed, and shaped. Weeks later, someone needs to verify how much material is there. A survey is performed, the surface of each stockpile is measured, a three-dimensional model is generated, and the software produces a volume. A very precise volume. But there's

British photographer Margot Raggett chose the title Remembering Elephants very deliberately. It sounded premature, and that was exactly why it worked. Memorials are usually created after something has been lost. Her elephants were still alive. But the title forced people to confront the possibility that one day photographs might be all that remained. That idea stayed with me for a completely different reason. We tend to think about documenting places after something happens t

The drone industry spends a lot of time asking one question: What can the drone produce? An orthomosaic. A point cloud. A 3D model. A digital surface model. Progress photographs. Measurements.Contours. Those are useful answers. But they may be answers to the wrong question. The better question is: What can the project team do with what we produce? That changes the conversation. A 3D model may be impressive to look at. But what happens when a superintendent can use that model