Construction documentation delays cost Michigan project teams in avoidable RFIs, extra site visits, and change orders — most of which don’t show up as a visible line item until a project is already over. If your building has been scanned, the documentation exists. The only question is how fast it gets to the people who need it.
This post is for project owners, GCs, and facilities teams who want to understand where those costs come from and how to close the gap.
What Do Construction Documentation Delays Cost Your Project?
The cost is usually invisible. It shows up as extra site visits that confirm what the documentation would have told you. It shows up as RFIs that delay the next trade. It shows up as change orders on work that didn’t match the field conditions the team thought they had.
A project manager at a Michigan commercial general contractor described it this way: her team was managing a renovation in an occupied office building. The design team had drawings from 2011. The building had been modified three times since then. Her field team spent over a week of the project’s first phase verifying conditions against drawings that didn’t reflect reality.
A single Matterport scan before demolition began would have given everyone an accurate current-conditions record. The field verification time would have dropped from weeks to hours.
Why does traditional documentation take so long?
Three structural reasons:
Manual measurement is linear. One person measures one space at a time, records it, and moves on. A 20,000 square foot building takes a full field team most of a day just to measure — and that’s before any drawings are produced.
The drawing step adds a bottleneck. Field notes and measurements have to be converted into drawings by someone who wasn’t there — usually a drafter or junior engineer. That conversion step takes time, introduces interpretation, and requires review before distribution.
Distribution is sequential. The documentation gets produced, reviewed, revised, and then sent. By the time it reaches the subcontractors who need it to submit bids, days or weeks have passed since the field visit.
What a scan creates is a record, not just a deliverable.
Most documentation gets used once — for the project that ordered it. A Matterport scan works differently. The model remains accessible after the project closes, which means the documentation from a 2022 renovation is still available when the 2026 capital planning conversation starts.
That’s not a feature of the technology. It’s a practice that supports how buildings actually get used over time. The same space gets touched by multiple teams, multiple decisions, and multiple events across its life. Documentation that only serves one of those moments is documentation that’s been underused.
The question worth asking at the start of any renovation, facilities project, or acquisition: what do we already know about this building, and where does that record live? A Matterport scan ordered for one purpose has a way of becoming useful for the next one.
How Much Do Construction Documentation Delays Cost?
The pattern is consistent: every decision that waits on documentation adds time. Every site visit to confirm a condition the model would have answered is an unnecessary trip. Every RFI caused by a discrepancy between drawings and field conditions typically costs between $1,000 and $3,000 in project time — and most commercial renovation projects generate dozens.
Construction documentation delays cost Michigan teams most visibly in RFIs and change orders. The less visible cost is the coordination time that disappears into email chains, site visits, and scope confirmation calls that a model would have answered in minutes.
Scanning a 20,000 square foot commercial building typically costs between $600 and $1,200, depending on interior layout and exterior requirements. The documentation it produces can eliminate weeks of field verification time on a renovation project. For more on how Matterport fits into AEC workflows, see Matterport’s AEC resources.
The harder question is: why aren’t more teams doing it? Often, it’s because no one on the team knows what the Matterport scan actually produces, or because the decision-maker hasn’t seen the workflow in action. We can walk through both in a 15-minute call.
Honest limits: when speed doesn’t solve the problem
Faster documentation doesn’t help if the underlying scope is wrong, the design is incomplete, or the project has conditions that documentation can’t resolve.
A 24-hour delivery also doesn’t eliminate the time required to act on the documentation. If the project team receives the model and no one reviews it before the next coordination meeting, the speed advantage disappears. The model has to be used to have value.
For teams that want to build a documentation workflow into their process rather than treating scanning as a one-off service call, we’re happy to discuss how that works operationally. Some GCs in West Michigan have added scanning to their standard pre-renovation checklist. Once the workflow is established, the coordination overhead is minimal.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I find out if my building has been scanned before?
Start with the current property owner. If P3D scanned the building, contact us — we can look up any prior project by address. If the building was scanned by another operator, the owner’s Matterport account would have the model.
Is there a cost to access a prior scan?
Not for models we’ve delivered. We retain access to models from all our completed projects. If your project team needs access to a prior model, we can share it at no cost as part of an active project relationship.
What’s the minimum building size where scanning makes more sense than hand measuring?
There’s no hard rule. As a general guideline, if a space requires more than a half-day of field measurement to document adequately, scanning will typically be faster and produce more complete output. For most Michigan commercial projects, that’s any building above 3,000 to 5,000 square feet with multiple distinct spaces.
How often should a building be re-scanned to keep documentation current?
It depends on the pace of change. For occupied office buildings with periodic renovations, each major renovation is a natural trigger. For active construction sites, every four to six weeks gives the project team a reliable progress record. For stable facilities, a scan at major milestones — acquisition, renovation, pre-sale, post-loss — is usually sufficient.
Can we use the model as the basis for a change order?
The model provides a clear visual record of conditions at the time of scan. Many project teams use it as supporting documentation when change orders involve discrepancies between drawings and existing conditions. For legal disputes or formal claims, consult your legal team on the specific documentation format required.
Related Reading
- Why 24-hour scan delivery changes how your team makes decisions
- What buildings get the most value from a 3D scan
Ready to put documentation to work on your next project? Call 616-312-3947 or visit perspective3-d.com/contact.