LAS VEGAS — The Trimble Dimensions Conference in Las Vegas offers a rare glimpse into the construction industry’s future. This year’s gathering featured innovative tech on display, underscoring a drive to redefine how projects are managed and built. Central to this vision was Nathan Patton, Trimble’s Product Marketing Manager for Construction Technology, who shared insight into the possibilities that AI, robotics, and data capture bring to construction. With his background as a former surveyor, Patton is as much a storyteller of Trimble’s journey as he is an advocate for its transformative potential.
Patton’s path to Trimble is notable. Before joining the company, he was a surveyor using Trimble’s equipment on job sites. “I was a customer of Trimble long before I ever came to work here,” he explained. This gives him a unique perspective as someone who understands the practical realities of Trimble’s technologies and what they mean for the people using them. His role today involves taking Trimble’s sophisticated innovations — tools like terrestrial scanning, mobile mapping, and cloud data management — and distilling them into solutions that construction firms can understand, trust, and deploy.
With the Trimble Reality Capture Platform Service, users can facilitate seamless collaboration with a central source of data for visualization, issue tracking, model comparison, measuring and more — all inside Trimble Connect’s web-based interface.
Las Vegas — Against a backdrop of rapid technological advancement, Trimble’s CEO delivered a powerful keynote at this year’s Trimble Dimensions conference in Las Vegas, presenting a vision for the future of construction and design centered on connection and transformation. Rob Painter set the stage with a compelling metaphor, drawing a parallel between Trimble’s journey and the relentless progression of the Olympic Games, where world records are shattered, new techniques are introduced, and the very definition of excellence is redefined with each passing year.
Painter invited the audience to imagine 1988, the Summer Olympics in Seoul, where American sprinter Carl Lewis took gold in the 100 meters with a time of 9.92 seconds. Fast forward to the most recent games in Paris: the last-place finisher in this year’s 100-meter race crossed the line faster than Lewis’s record-breaking time. This moment, Painter argued, encapsulates the dizzying pace of advancement not only in sports but in the world of construction and design as well. “Even if you’re at the top of your game today, one year—or one moment—might not be enough to keep you there,” he said. In a world moving as fast as ours, companies must keep pace with change or risk falling behind.
This year, Trimble framed its strategy around what it called the “power of connection.” Using the Olympics as a metaphor for continually rising standards, Painter urged attendees to embrace an industry redefined by digital connections, integrated workflows, and artificial intelligence. “The power of connection is the core of this revolution,” he emphasized, outlining Trimble’s plans to link people, data, workflows, and ecosystems into a connected digital fabric that will underpin the construction industry’s future.
Propeller Aero, a global leader in drone surveying and site data management, is at the forefront of transforming how industries such as construction, mining, and civil engineering handle their work sites. At the 2024 Commercial UAV Conference in Las Vegas, I sat down with Hamish Hawthorn, VP of Corporate Development at Propeller, to discuss their latest innovations and the growing impact of their technology on the industry.
Revolutionizing Site Management with Smart Survey Solutions
“Propeller is a smart survey solution that allows project teams to map, measure, and monitor their work sites with unprecedented accuracy,” Hawthorn explained. The core of Propeller’s platform lies in its ability to collect high-precision data through drone flights equipped with Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) modules and Propeller’s AeroPoints, smart ground control points thatanchor drone data to the Earth for accuracy. Once this data is uploaded to Propeller’s platform, it generates highly accurate 3D models that allow teams to monitor changes, measure progress, and make critical site decisions efficiently.
Propeller’s technology is designed to be user-friendly, enabling teams with minimal surveying experience to leverage advanced data in real time. “Our platform is built to make things simple, so our users can measure and manage their sites without needing specialized skills,” Hawthorn noted. “It’s about connecting the field to the office and delivering precise insights that can save time and money.”
