The evolution of Bluewren Photos Suite

The Bluewren Photos Suite has been under development since 2008 through the complimentary combination of graphics, coding and engineering skills of Robert Bleeker and Geoff Farrar. The evolution process was driven by the challenge of new projects to design, monitor and surveill, combined with enthusiastic feedback from people using the earlier versions on suggested improvements.

In the time from inception, the Suite has been extensively developed and field tested, through initial use on simple directional signage projects to construction surveillance of large scale infrastructure projects. Use on larger projects commenced in 2010 with the Dickson and Lyneham wetlands in North Canberra, and the Edwin Land Parkway road construction, Queanbeyan, NSW in 2011. The delivery of a whole suburb in Gungahlin ACT, Moncrieff, concurrently by four separate contractors was completed in 2015 and from 2019 the ongoing construction of the suburb of Whitlam amongst other projects is being monitored and recorded including with regular drone aerial map recording through an older version of the Photo Record Tool.

Initial projects were through use of the Photo Record Tool by Civilscope Consult using Garmin GPS cameras, then Black Mountain Construction Assurance and a move to use on an ipad, and now the development and use of the Suite and smart phone image capture by Bluewren Partners.

A dilapidation survey for Canberra Light Rail Stage 2A in May 2020 included capture of approximately 19,000 asset condition photo records along the proposed route. This project further expanded the capability of the Suite to allow for quick retrieval and appreciation of asset condition at any given location through the careful selection of tags and comments during the survey.

Further development of the Photo Record Tool (PRT) App has seen the release of the App for use on an iphone in early 2021 with extensive use by a range of App users from this time. An Android version of the PRT was released in mid-2022 and more recently we have focused on the end of project transfer of the data with the development of a special off-line photo viewer. This enables the provision of electronic photo records as jpegs and database tables for storage on a local server with similar off-line view and search functionality as the on-line Photo Viewer.

We trust you will find the Bluewren Photos Suite useful and of value in meeting your needs. We do not want the evolution to stop, so please let us know if we can help to make the Suite better. We would be happy to work with you and your team to improve our product to better meet your requirements.

Cheers and enjoy,

Robert and Geoff