3.9.2 release – Making money by calculating volumes in Infrakit 

They say, “Money is in the masses”. Someone outside of our infrastructure construction community would first obviously think of mass marketing or mass production, but for us, that means something entirely different.  

Making money with those masses is easy in theory, you just need to know = You just need to control your mass balance effectively. What is hard is doing that in reality. 😀  

That is why our team of champions, the Infrakit developers, wanted to rise up to the challenge -> To make a tool for volume calculation utilizing DEMs, Digital Elevation Models. 

Get flashy with the DEMs 

Sit on a coffee table with your supervisor. Your armpits sweat a little, you know it is that discussion again… money discussion. Your supervisor looks to the right, out of the window into the site and the question. “What about that pile over there… what do we have there…”.  

Your face turns into a quirky smile. You know this is your time to shine. “Hey boss, why don’t you check that one from Infrakit yourself, you can always check from latest flight, even at your iPhone!”.  

The boss taps you into your shoulders, “Wow, that was amazing, I must make you the CIO of our company with your superior digitalization skills!”. 

Okay, maybe the online DEM Volume Calculation tool won’t make you the CIO of your company overnight… But it definitely makes you stand out when combined with all of the benefits of the Infrakit platform!  

PS. Big Kudos to Wolff & Müller for helping us with this test data! 

Researching the greatest secrets of brewing data 

You people on the site have been rocking lately! The amount and quality of the coffee beans you have been pushing to Infrakit has been superb! Where do you even get those?? 

“What in the world is that blog writer again writing there in Infrakit…” you must be thinking. Coffee beans? Okay let me explain – by coffee beans I mean the data you feed into our systems. Now what we want to do as the coffee machine to that data is to: make all the best coffee types for you! Espresso, macchiato, marocchino, americano… from one machine.  

We invested again a lot of time and passion in researching how to brew the best way possible to put a smile on your face. And now for the 3.9.2 version, we found out a lot of new methods!  

To name a few, we found a way to improve the performance of preparing americano (DWG/DXF) a lot, enhanced the appearance of espresso (IFC) by a mile, and elaborated the level of details of macchiato mixture (3D collaboration model) greatly! 

Using software must feel right 

The promise of our software uniting all stakeholders around the same data brings also the responsibility of making using our software accessible for all. “It just feels right”  is what we want you to say when using Infrakit.  

How to make it happen? Paying attention to detail and being passionate about discussing with you on how to simplify things.  

For this version we focused a lot on bringing these wishes of simplification into life, here is a couple of the greatest ones:  

– We built you a way to use custom icons for external documents, to make things more visually simple 

– We designed many pieces of Infrakit to be more responsive on different screen sizes, especially to help you to use Infrakit Files page on mobile devices 

– We polished our mobile applications to have more intuitiveness in how to operate with the data.  

– And we also now enable you to select photos to preview by area on the map page 

Yet another successful version of Infrakit was released with yet another odd blog post about it… 😊  

Check more details on what is new in the 3.9.2 version from our release notes! 

We serve you the secret for Chef’s Special Menu: Infrakit release 3.9.1

Right from the first step into the restaurant, you can feel it, you can smell it: The Menu of this season is crafted with incomparable attention to detail, making the whole experience feel rich and effortlessly smooth.

Now we know building infrastructure and managing projects certainly does not always feel like running a Michelin Restaurant, rather more like preparing those smashed potatoes with too little salt and some overcooked vegetables… But that does not mean, the recipe of everyday meals could not be enhanced with some senior chef’s guidance, to make it more manageable!

That is precisely why we wanted to polish the everyday recipe and toolset of using Infrakit, to pursue our long-lasting vision of being the best cloud platform for infra projects, which in its essence, will become a reality only by you, the everyday chef using Infrakit for cooking, enjoying the experience and getting stuff done without everything being such a pain in the…

But what does the menu look like, and what tools to use to make it? Should we have a look?

Starters: The Soup of Simplicity

Starters never have to be shiny, but what they need to do, is bring an appetite and show that the restaurant can handle its recipes, and carry its water so to speak.

For your restaurant, where we want to give you recipes and tools to become a Star Chef, we created some features to enhance the simplicity of use. These will not only make you sweat less when cooking with Infrakit but also appear like a consistent, always-delivering master of mystic arts.

Infrakit area tool update comes with snap-to-model and snap-to-right angles. It’s also possible to create a Truck area directly from the measure tool. Small, but effective.

3D visualization has a new context menu that introduces “show model breaklines” and the possibility to render more vector data files in 3D (Survey formats like GT). More is more.

Map capture and export function comes with new options, you can hide stuff from it and update your company logo there from the organization admin page, to make it look like yours.

LandXML deviation vector rendering on map and AIS stream support for maritime vessels, to keep all the tools for cooking near to your hand.

Main course: Faster than McDonald’s, better than your local steak house

Time is money. Quality over quantity. How on earth should your restaurant connect those worlds? 

Well to be honest, I am no chef to tell you that… But for infrastructure construction, there is a way!

Now quality and speed do not always need to compromise each other when some intelligent solutions are brought in place. With this version, we have paid extra attention to optimizing various bottlenecks of mega projects. This includes much faster cross-sections, file listings across the system, and faster access to project settings. You do not only have to bring high quality but you can also do it fast now!

Dessert: For all the admins out there – welcome Archive project function

A good restaurant experience tops always on the dessert, which leaves a sweet taste in the buds to make you smile all the way out of the front door. With Infrakit, what could be a better dessert for you to serve to the project, than letting everyone know everything is safe and sound, stored as an Archive project. 

As with everything else, see how to prep this nice desert for your project by archiving your project admin page. Access to the project is removed from all users and equipment easily. Everyone is happy, everyone is safe. What a nice menu it was from the start ‘til the end! 

Now recipes and tools are only for us to focus on the most key part of cooking -> Doing it. That will be the same for building, we can only help you, but you are the Michelin Chefs of our industry, so remember to be proud of that!

Without great restaurants, so many dates, family reunions, and celebrations would be lost.

Without great infrastructure, we would never even get to those restaurants on time safely. Without great infrastructure, there actually would not be much of a society even…

Thank you!

See more in release notes

Mastering Infrastructure Tenders: Proven Strategies and Smarter Tools for Success

Winning construction tenders for infrastructure projects requires a strategic combination of expertise and effective communication. Tailoring your approach to each project is essential, but three key considerations consistently enhance your chances of success:

Thorough Understanding of Project Requirements:

• Showcase a clear understanding of client/owner objectives, project scope, and relevant technical or regulatory considerations.
• Get to know the existing conditions and then tailor your bid to address specific tender requirements, emphasizing how your expertise aligns with project needs.

Innovative and Sustainable Solutions:

• Differentiate your bid by proposing innovative and sustainable solutions that exceed basic requirements.
• Highlight environmentally friendly practices, energy-efficient technologies, or cost-saving innovations aligned with client goals and industry trends.

Effective Communication and Relationship Building:

• Establish strong communication channels with clients through pre-tender discussions and have simple ways of sharing information.
• Know the competitive landscape and their relative strengths/weaknesses, and the projects they’re working on.
• Understand and nurture relationships with key stakeholders, subcontractors, and local supplier partners, showcasing a collaborative and reliable approach to project delivery.

Our amazing customers have streamlined their bidding process using our solutions by leveraging our cloud platform as a shared hub for the tender team, facilitating faster collaboration and communication (both internally and with external stakeholders).

With the ability to have PDF documents, DXF/DWG and other design sources, orthophotos, and other base maps, you can work from a common source of truth all on a shared map.

Tools, like Infrakit FIELD (mobile app), and Infrakit OFFICE combine to offer simple workflows to capture and tag photos for undocumented risks during site trips and help tender teams, who generally lack easy access to BIM tools, to visualize 3D elements in the office or the field.

Users can also capture dronemaps for work phase planning, taking advantage of different seasons for comprehensive ground condition assessments.

Book time with our experts to discover how these solutions can be leveraged for improved efficiency and success in winning your next construction tender!

Black week offering of Infrakit in terms of version 3.8.7!   

Black Friday, nowadays seemingly more like a black week or two, is without a doubt the most notorious sales day of the year. There are pros and cons to it, but all in all, if you make smart purchase decisions during it, it will be very good time to buy Infrakit as a Christmas gift for your loved ones… Oh… no… I, I meant buying something nice can be smart… Though Infrakit is very nice, maybe I would not give it as a Christmas gift for children. 😀

Ookay jokes aside, our products are maybe not be the ones that are the hottest of the hot during Black Friday, but we still wanted to give you something a bit extra this time, in terms of developing more awesome stuff into our products! Let’s go check them out!

Capture your map beautifully!

How wonderful would it be if you could think of something, and Infrakit would do it as you wish?

Undoubtedly awesome, and even if that is not yet the case today, we took one step towards it by enabling you to select an aspect ratio and area with OFFICE  for your Map image capture tool! We added also some options to modify the legend contents!

Let me teach how to do this via this video!

Powerful metadata in the palm of your hands

Knowledge is power they say. Clichés are clichés not because they are dumb but because they are too true too often.

We want to make you powerful by having all your knowledge of the project in the palm of your hands (especially, if you keep your laptop mouse in your palm). For this, we brought the plan features metadata visible to you, when you click the LandXML!

Watch the video to make this power yours!

Simple but fast… we upgraded your use of files and images into next level

Images and files… So simple things, but yet they can be such a burden so often when they become too many.

If we say knowledge is power, then we say speed is… well, speed. What is interesting in the case of using software like Infrakit, is that speed is not only made by how fast something works, but also how much there are roadblocks to take away your speed. Those roadblocks can be tiny but when you have plenty of them, they become a burden.

We took extra care as a Black Friday gift for you to remove as many small roadblocks of utilizing and viewing images and uploading files in Infrakit. For example image direction is visualized on map helping users to understand the insights from field in deeper depths!

As always it is impossible to tell you everything we did within one blog or you would have to read it as novel… so these are the highlights, but if you have interest on diving deeper to what new we have out there, check them from the Release notes in our Knowledgebase!

We have heard you. You have clearly not been satisfied with our Infrakit FIELD app, especially on Android devices. You as users and we as developers as well, want it to be a nice and smooth app, which helps you to do your work. (Note: These changes informed in this blog are only considering Android devices, if you are using iOS, you can skip reading this and continue your day!)

To make that smoothness and niceness possible, a while ago we made a decision to reconstruct the FIELD app completely, according to your needs. That process required us to acknowledge, that there is a strong differentiation within the user needs of the app. Some of you needed it for surveying purposes with integrations to GNSS equipment to take points, but some of you needed it rather for taking photos and managing project information.

We saw these different worlds in one app being an impossible combo to keep it simple and intuitive for all. It’s like having Food delivery and Social media platforms in one… Just too complex. Thus, we decided to take action, renew ourselves, and separate the app into two. From now on, there will be two apps, Infrakit FIELD, and Infrakit SURVEY. Now, I bet you are wondering “What are they then about, which one should I have?”. Do not worry, you have the right questions, and this blog can provide you with the right answers!