Digital & AI transformation

Transformation

Turning places, photographs and conversations into data, models and working systems, from the first aerial photos in Cebu to hotel digital twins in London.

2014
01 — Approach

Capture, model, automate, deliver

The same four moves run through every project on this site. A building, a coastline or a booking desk is captured, turned into a model, given some automation, and handed over in a form people can use.

01

Capture

  • Grid and oblique drone flights, with “overlap set for reconstruction, not just for pretty shots”.2
  • Matrice 4E-class drones with a mechanical shutter and RTK positioning.2
  • Architects' general arrangement plans as the interior source.1
  • CAA licensed and UK insured, GVC qualified.18,1
02

Model

  • DJI Terra for photogrammetry meshes and, since V5.0, 3D gaussian splatting, up to 30,000 images per job.2
  • Floor plans scaled into Blender as underlays: slabs, walls, cores, lift shafts and stairs.1
  • NeRF and photogrammetry in the field, from Riyadh to London.10
03

Automate

  • Machine learning on photographs, starting with whale-shark identification.6
  • Tourism chatbots trained in Cebuano, Filipino and English.8,9
  • ChatGPT used to generate and score candidate interviews.12
  • Claude driving Blender to sequence a 1,000-drone show.14
04

Deliver

  • 3D Tiles for web viewers, PLY splats, FBX meshes, LAZ point clouds and GeoTIFF orthomosaics.2
  • Guest-facing 3D tours and navigable building records.1
  • Public 3D, notebooks and datasets on Sketchfab, Observable and Hugging Face.19

The newest work joins the two halves of the practice: the drawings that describe a building and the drone capture that records it.

The method starts from the architects' general arrangement plans. They are imported into Blender to scale and used as underlays for modelling the structure: slabs, walls, cores, lift shafts and staircases. The exterior is captured by drone photogrammetry and gaussian splatting, so the finished model combines the interior design intent with the as-built outside.1 The deliverables are to-scale 3D models that match the drawings floor by floor, photoreal exteriors, guest-facing 3D tours and navigable building records.1

The post frames this against the gap between PDF-only records and the structured information the UK BIM Framework and ISO 19650 expect: “That gap is where our digital twin work starts.”1 It is the same pattern as the timeline above, applied to one building. Capture what exists, model it, and make it usable.

ContextISO 19650 is the international standard for managing information over the life of a built asset using BIM. The UK BIM Framework is the UK's implementation of it.
Gallery

Sites in transition

Photographs and renders from his own posts on bartsakwerda.com. Open one for the full image and its source.

02 — Where it applies

Who it's for

Each sector below is named in his own posts, with the source next to it.

Hospitality & buildings

Hotel operators, architects, contractors and facilities teams who need floor-by-floor models and navigable records.1

Tourism & real estate

Interactive 3D tours. Tourism has been part of the practice since the Cebu chatbots.2,8

Architecture & engineering

Accurate meshes and point clouds for design and construction.2

Megaprojects & air mobility

Digital solutions for real estate, megaprojects and eVTOL flights in the Middle East.15

Science & heritage

Gaussian splats for marine biology, and photoreal records of buildings and sites.16,11

Games, VR & film

Captured scenes reused for previs, games and VR.2

03 — Case studies

Five turns

One project for each date on the timeline, with a link to the page that covers it in full.

2014 · Capture

Aerial work after Haiyan

The interest in aerial surveying begins with the reconstruction after Typhoon Haiyan, on Bantayan Island.4

Aerial Data Ops → 2016 · Learn

Whale-shark identification

Machine learning on tourists' photos to identify individual whale sharks in Oslob, Cebu.6

Gen AI & Data → 2018 · Converse

Tourism chatbots

A year building booking and information bots between Cebu and London.8

Philippines → 2023 · Reconstruct

Riyadh, splats and a hackathon

Drone, NeRF and photogrammetry in Riyadh, and ChatGPT-based candidate assessment at the Saudi hackathon.10, 12

Gen AI & Data → 2026 · Twin

Hotel digital twins

To-scale hotel models from floor plans, with drone-captured splat exteriors.1

Read above ↑

I am a technologist and entrepreneur drawn to organizations experiencing accelerated growth.From his LinkedIn profile summary3

Sources

References

    Contact

    Start a transformation

    Digital twins, 3D capture, data and AI automation for buildings, tourism and operations.

    LinkedIn ↗ All links ↗ Investment →