The Multivista story began two decades ago when electrician Luis Pascual and engineer Graham Twigg embarked on one simple mission: embed digital photographs onto interactive floorplans so construction teams can easily see and share exactly what was built, where, and when.
“Luis always had an entrepreneurial mindset,” Twigg recalls, “but this time, for once, it was not a terrible idea so I said, ‘sure give me a week and I’ll make that program.’ I didn’t really know how to do it, but I was a young, arrogant engineer and I figured I could make it up as I went. It took longer than a week, but it worked.“
Launching the company in famous ski destination Whistler, Canada in 2003, Twigg and Pascual realized early on there were two types of clients who could benefit from Multivista’s photos-over-floorplans tech. “Trades, facilities, and technical people wanted detailed photos of exactly what was behind the wall,” Twigg says. “And owners—at first it was just homeowners—they wanted to see the overall progression of how their home was coming together in real time. That quickly grew to include developers, health authorities, school districts, and more.“
“We also realized early on that software wasn’t the only key to it,” Pascual says. “Because taking the photos and getting reliable, standardized information from a jobsite onto a digital floorplan…that was more difficult to do. We realized early on that for this to work we’d need to offer it as a service, not just as software.”
Eventually the duo expanded Multivista’s services to nearby Vancouver BC, and soon grew to include markets in the US in 2006. Since then, Multivista has grown into a global leader in construction reality capture with over 47,000 projects completed and more than 10 billion square feet of jobsites captured around the world.
“We had to introduce this concept to an entire industry,” Twigg says, adding that as construction reality capture evolved, it became increasingly difficult to stay on top of the new capture technology. “From the start we had dreams of things like measurable photos, or fully digitized 3D scans, but building or integrating those devices and systems is not easy. Joining the Hexagon family in 2016 was instrumental in allowing us to step up our game and start working with the most cutting-edge tools and tech in the industry.”
“We found a way to solve a problem,” Twigg adds. “The technology changes but those problems are the same—people need to see and share their jobsite data so they can make better decisions and build better projects.”
As Multivista celebrates its 20-year anniversary, Luis and Graham want to thank all our clients, partners, and team members for the past two decades of continued growth and support.
Check out below the Multivista 20th anniversary video:
