I'm a construction project manager, and I started out as a site engineer. For years, that job came with a second one: looking after the site photos.
I'd ask the team for photos and they'd come through WhatsApp, often a day or two after the work. I saved them into OneDrive folders straight away, because otherwise I'd forget what they were for. With five engineers taking photos all day, it turned into a full-time job, and it kept me from the engineering and management I was there to do. I stopped enjoying it.
The hardest moments were with clients. I'd tell them I had the photo, then scroll through my phone while they waited. It made me look unprepared, and that kind of trust is hard to win back.
Sometimes a photo would turn up days later on someone's phone, and I couldn't be sure where or when it was taken.
So I built a construction photo app
You use Thanex like your normal camera. Choose the project and tags, take the photo, and it's filed in the right place with who took it, when and where.
My team now uses it on the project I manage. I get a notification when new photos arrive and check them, and we've picked things up before the concrete went in. Snag lists go out as PDFs with an action on each photo, and the supervisor works through them one by one.
If I'd had Thanex when I started as an engineer, I'd have done my job better. That's why anyone who takes site photos for work can download it free and start their first project straight away.
Juliano Thana MCIOB
Founder of Thanex
