Patent Application
20060114321
Roofing sites, including but not limited to roofing installations, removals, re-installation, and repairs, have a continuing need for project management and inspection. This need arises in part because roofing projects historically generate disputes and legal claims concerning issues of, among other items, alleged defective work or products. Often the various parties in the project, including the owner, contractors, design professionals, material suppliers and inspectors/consultants seek to shift responsibility for subsequent problems, such as leaks, to one another. Further, when roofers, roofing managers, or third party consultants or inspectors are involved in multiple projects, manpower may limit their ability to facilitate management inspection on a timely basis and may also increase over all project costs. While security systems at roofing sites have helped with some remote supervision, there remains a need for a monitoring system that allows for real-time communications with multiple roofing sites and project management through a centralized office. Additionally, a need exists to record a roofing project from beginning to end for use by both a number of parties, including the contractor, consultants and inspectors, materials suppliers including manufacturers and distributors, design professionals including engineers, architects and designers and the client/project owner.
In the roofing industry, the most qualified and experienced personnel typically assume management and supervisory responsibility such that they are physically located in an office, such as a corporate office, for a portion of their time, while having the need to supervise and manage multiple job sites. Qualified and experienced project managers and inspectors are in short supply, however, and on-site workers and installers are often inexperienced and often lack any formalized training. Historically, this has meant that roofing projects may be delayed until needed attention from supervisory or inspection personnel is obtained. Alternatively, substandard work may be provided where the assistance and management of qualified and experienced managers and inspectors is unavailable. Weather and travel needs may further impact the availability of project managers and supervisors at multiple job sites. Resulting delays impact the timing and cost of any given project. Thus, a need exists in the roofing industry to enable the most qualified and experienced supervisors and inspectors to monitor and supervise multiple job sites in an efficient manner and, more specifically, from a centralized location.
Additionally, on-site managers/supervisors are often fatigued from these same factors, i.e., travels and delays associated with multiple site supervision, which impact the quality of their work and supervision of the job site. Centralized project management would address this need area as well.
Related needs exist in connection with project documentation. From an owner's perspective, as well as from that of other parties having an interest in the project (contractors, design professionals and materials suppliers) one of the biggest expenses related to any roofing project is the hiring of a roofing consultant to monitor the progress and quality of the work on the project. Roofing projects can be one of the largest expenses of building or maintaining a structure. In addition, quality audits, as well as subsequent legal claims and proceedings can also be costly. As a result, owners and other interested parties, including warranty holders, can invest significant amounts of money in hiring consultants to monitor the progress and the quality of work of any roofing project. Full-time inspectors are extremely costly, however. Additionally, should something go wrong with a roofing project, owners and other interested third parties, with or without roofing consultants, can also spend significant money attempting to investigate the quality of the roofing work with uncertain results because of the lack of record evidence concerning the history of the project.. Similarly, roofing companies, as well as design professionals and materials suppliers incur expenses in defending their work in litigation without a concrete means for establishing how their work was performed and the quality of their work. A need exists for an accurate manner to document any roofing project for future use.
One embodiment of the present invention provides for a monitoring system for use at roofing sites. The system includes the use of at least one image-capturing device at a job site that is connected to a transmitter. The transmitter transmits the images to a receiver. Preferably, this receiver is located in a centralized location and functions with other receivers to permit review and supervision of multiple job sites in a single location. The receiver interacts with a display device to display the project images in real time at the project management location.
Another embodiment of the present invention builds upon the above-identified embodiment by adding a reciprocal communications system that enables real time communications between the location of the image-capturing device and the location of the receiver.
A further embodiment of the present invention provides for the addition of a third party interface, that enables third parties, such as clients/owners, design professionals, material suppliers and inspectors/consultants to monitor the progress of the roofing project. This embodiment can build on either of the above-identified two embodiments of the present invention.
Finally, the present invention can include a recording system that records and documents the project images from start to finish for a particular roofing site project.
The present invention also includes a method for simultaneous monitoring of multiple roofing site projects, with this method including the capturing, transmission and display of project site images at a centralized project management location. This method may also include centralized control and recording of the project site images, as well as an interfacing with third parties so that interested third parties can remotely view and control the project site images.
The phrases “roofing project” and “roofing site project” are used throughout this text to include, but not be limited to, any roof installation, roof removal, re-installation, and roof repair work. It will be obvious to those skilled in the art that the present invention can be applied to a variety of similar construction applications with equal success, including but not limited to road pavement, parking lot surfacing and resurfacing sites. All such alternatives are disclosed by and included within the scope of this application.
The above summary of the present invention is not intended to describe each and every embodiment or every implementation of the present invention. The figures and detailed description that follow more particularly exemplify various embodiments of the present invention.
While the invention is amenable to various modifications and alternatives forms, specific embodiments have been shown by way of example only in the drawings and will be described in detail. It should be understood, however, that the intention is not to limit the invention to the particular embodiments described. On the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives following within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.
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At the project management location (3), a receiver (15) receives and processes project site image signals for display on a display device (17) such as a monitor or projector. In one embodiment of the present invention, a room or amphitheater, with several display devices (17), can be designed at the project management location (3) to receive and coordinate all information received from and sent to the display devices (17). Preferably, a single office can be used to manage projects in a national or global marketplace, thus, significantly decreasing the number of on-site project managers, inspectors, consultants or other party representatives that are needed. The number of projects that can be simultaneously monitored is, in theory, limitless and is bounded only by the size of the office and the restraints of available technology. By way of example, but not limitation, the display devices may be selected from the group consisting of a monitor, a screen, a television, a computer display, a liquid-crystal display, a handheld or desktop computer, a camera or cellular phone and a projector or projection device. In the context of computers, a display is a computer output surface and projecting mechanism that shows text and often graphic images to the computer user, using a cathode ray tube (CRT), liquid crystal display (LCD), light-emitting diode, gas plasma, or other image projection technology. The display is usually considered to include the screen or projection surface and the device that produces the information on the screen. In some computers, the display is packaged in a separate unit called a monitor. In other computers, the display is integrated into a unit with the processor and other parts of the computer. (Some sources make the distinction that the monitor includes other signal-handling devices that feed and control the display or projection device. However, this distinction disappears when all these parts become integrated into a total unit, as in the case of notebook computers.) Displays (and monitors) are also sometimes called video display terminals (VDTs). The terms display and monitor are often used interchangeably. Most computer displays use analog signals as input to the display image creation mechanism. This requirement and the need to continually refresh the display image mean that the computer also needs a display or video adapter. The video adapter takes the digital data sent by application programs, stores it in video random access memory (video RAM), and converts it to analog data for the display scanning mechanism using an digital-to-analog converter (DAC).
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In operation, the project manager can view the roofing project in real time and control the focus and position of the cameras while monitoring the project. Referring to
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The present invention should not be considered limited to the particular examples described above, but rather should be understood to cover all aspects to the invention as fairly set out in the attached claims. Various modifications, equivalents, and alternatives to which the present invention may be applicable will be really apparent to those of skill in the art to which the present invention is directed upon review of the present specification. The claims are intended to cover such modifications, equivalence, and alternatives.
