How gNext Helps Improve Safety & Efficiency Across Industries

At gNext, we understand that safety is a popular topic in the infrastructure inspection industry.

Infrastructure inspections are essential to help asset managers understand the condition of critical infrastructure and ensure the integrity of the structure is maintained. Society is able to operate and develop reliable infrastructure as a result of this.

Inspections themselves can pose safety risks to human inspectors, other parties involved, and individuals in the inspection area. For example, inspecting tall buildings traditionally requires workers to climb up alongside or on top of infrastructure assets via climbing gear, ladders, and/or scaffolding. This is a major fall risk, which OSHA reported is the leading cause of death in the field.

Additionally, the use of resources is time-consuming and expensive. For assets like transmission lines, helicopters have been used to conduct inspections from above, with mounted cameras or handheld cameras and binoculars. With both of these methods, the quality of data captured varies between operators and is subject to various external factors like weather conditions. This can lead to lower-quality data capture, which impedes teams from making accurate insights.

The gNext Platform is a software designed with efficiency and safety in mind.

Drone Inspections as a Safety Solution

Due to the number of risks and conflicts that could arise from using traditional inspection methods, more industries are turning to drone technology to perform inspections safely and efficiently.

Recent data indicates that drone inspection is widely used in various industries, such as energy utilities, industrial plants, real estate, mining, oil and gas, transportation, and warehousing. The market is estimated to continue growing, so we can expect to see more drone inspections in the near future.

Drones have enabled safe data capture and better-quality insights across numerous industries. Using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for inspections minimizes the hazards operators often face, like extreme heights, defective structural elements, and more.

Many drones are equipped with technology and/or payloads that can help identify defects more rapidly. UAVs not only can be useful for construction and inspections but also for insurance purposes. Drones safely capture high-resolution footage and images of assets without obstructions. This allows adjusters to perceive the most accurate visualization of their assets, determining the property condition.

Industry professionals have also emphasized the necessity of digital resources to process mass quantities of high-quality data and streamline these processes. Meet the gNext Platform, a software designed with efficiency and safety in mind.

An Inspection Platform Built to Support Safety

As a mapping and analytics platform, our software allows you to visualize your data and gather valuable analytics in a secure, scalable, and shareable environment. Our platform runs on a powerful AI engine with Machine Learning, which aids users in finding defects and features of interest in the inspection process. This enables clients to direct their efforts to specific areas, saving time and costs.

The gNext Platform uses drone technology to support safety standards industry-wide. Drone-captured footage has provided a more accurate foundation for our digital models. Users can gain critical asset insights with PlanView, Elevation, 3D, Contour, Point Cloud, and DTM at their fingertips. In turn, this could prevent costly and devastating incidents from happening.

Safety as a Priority

The beauty of the gNext Platform is that its users can conduct infrastructure inspections from the safety and comfort of their office. You need a decent internet connection and a supported web browser to use our software.

No need to jump through hoops (or scale bridges) to inspect your assets. Your data is all stored in the cloud and secured with end-to-end encryption, so only you and authorized individuals may view or collaborate on projects.

gNext Platform Safety Features

With AI processing power, users can detect early forming cracks and defects that can be missed by manual inspections, leading to more significant infrastructural problems in the future. On average, manual bridge inspections miss 20–30% of defects.

gNext provides the processing capability that allows users to inspect infrastructure assets safely. Advanced change detection algorithms to view change-over-time condition monitoring can detect the subtle changes that would be difficult to monitor manually, increasing safety regarding asset management.

gNext understands that cyber threats are a concern within the infrastructure sectors, so we continuously release updates that strengthen security measures. All data processing and storage are secured and encrypted end-to-end in the AWS cloud.

Optimize Safety, Cost, and Time With the gNext Platform

gNext has made quite an impact across multiple industries. The sheer power of gNext shone through during the inspection of the Michael O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Bridge. Rather than somebody having to sift through thousands of photos from the data set, gNext automatically processed the data in roughly 20 hours. Overall, gNext cut inspection times and crews by up to 75% compared to traditional methods.

Thanks to automatic processing capability, you can perform infrastructure inspections five times faster with gNext. Our photogrammetry engine turns image data into actionable inspection models with ease. That means no photogrammetry skills are needed to use our platform.

gNext is also loaded with 40+ pre-defined asset types and can provide tailored solutions that address these assets’ unique challenges and requirements. We’re pleased to announce the availability of AI InspectAssist™, an AI-driven defect detection feature for concrete structures. All the inspector would have to do is review and visually verify the defect summary to validate the findings. Inspections are about to get even faster.

This new feature dramatically cuts down manual inspection time by locating, annotating, and quantifying results. These results can be exported to popular CAD systems as well as CSV files for tabulating results.

Support A Safer Environment With gNext

At gNext, we strive to create safer, more sustainable infrastructure by partnering with inspectors and surveyors, civil engineers, and those who own or service assets of infrastructure, transportation, energy, telecommunications, insurance, and more.

Look out for more exciting innovations on the gNext Platform. You can follow us on LinkedIn to receive updates. Be sure to request a demo to see how gNext is transforming the way inspections are conducted with a strong focus on safety and security.