Gleeds expands Visualise visual intelligence: coordination gains for project teams
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Gleeds has scaled up its Visualise reality‑capture service, built on OpenSpace’s Visual Intelligence Platform, from a 2022 pilot with 16 users to 1,900 users across ten countries on 340 projects, reporting client savings of about £2m in 2023. The system creates a searchable, time‑stamped visual record of site conditions, giving project teams verifiable as‑built evidence for progress checks, variation claims and clash or defect resolution. For engineers and project managers, this reduces reliance on disputed site reports, cuts unnecessary site visits and supports remote coordination on complex programmes.
Technical Brief
- Reality-capture output is organised as a fully searchable visual archive of site conditions over time.
- Time-stamped imagery provides evidential backing for construction decisions where written records are incomplete or contested.
- Shared visual context reduces reliance on fragmented email, photo and note trails during issue resolution.
- Remote access to site conditions is being used explicitly to cut inter-office and site travel.
- Faster issue resolution is framed as a key benefit, reducing programme slippage from information gaps.
- Similar visual-intelligence workflows could be integrated with BIM/4D planning to validate actual versus planned construction sequences.
Our Take
Gleeds’ roll-out of Visualise across 340 projects aligns with its recent wins on large, complex UK frameworks such as Hinkley Point C and Anglian Water’s commercial assurance services, suggesting the firm is standardising visual intelligence tools on major infrastructure as well as building work.
In our Software category, only a subset of the 42 stories involve consultants rather than contractors or tech vendors, so Gleeds’ in‑house adoption of OpenSpace’s Visual Intelligence Platform signals that cost and programme managers are now active drivers of site data capture rather than passive recipients.
The reported £2m in client savings from Visualise, even with an initial user base of just 16, implies that scaling usage across Gleeds’ wider UK portfolio could materially influence how it prices and evidences value on future frameworks with clients like Morgan Sindall Construction and EDF Energy.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
