With nearly 15 years working with reality capture technology, Nathan from Beca knows what good site capture looks like. Here is why the Lixel L2 Pro has become one of his team’s most valued tools.
There is a wharf somewhere in New Zealand that would have taken weeks to document the traditional way. A Beca surveyor fired up a Lixel L2 Pro SLAM scanner, stepped onto a boat and had a dense, coloured 3D point cloud of the entire structure captured in just a few hours.
It is exactly the kind of project the L2 Pro was made for: complex access, a tight timeline, and a client who needed spatial context fast. For Beca, one of Australasia’s largest engineering and infrastructure consultancies with approximately 4,500 staff across New Zealand, Australia, and Asia, it has become one of a growing number of use cases where the scanner is changing how the team works.
“We scanned the whole wharf structure from a moving boat. That’s something you simply can’t do with a static tripod scanner. What might have taken days, or even weeks using conventional methods, was captured in just a couple of hours.” Nathan Cossar, Survey Associate – Spatial Technology & Innovation Lead, Beca.
The Lixel L2 Pro, developed by XGRIDS and available through Aptella, combines LiDAR sensing, a 48MP panoramic camera system, and an integrated IMU to produce real-time coloured point clouds as the operator walks. There is no tripod setup, no station-to-station repositioning. The result is a handheld device that can capture a site quickly, accurately, and in full colour, ready for review the moment you are back at the office.
3cm
Absolute
Accuracy
1M pts/m squared
Point Cloud density at 1mm spacing
48MP
Panoramic colour cameras
300m
Range on the 32 channel model
Real Time
Coloured Point Cloud Output on Site
Road Corridors
800 metres of road captured in less than half an hour. Road signs, street furniture and intersections documented rapidly for transport teams who need asset data fast.
Bridge inspections
Geometry and spatial context captured quickly and cost effectively, giving clients a useful 3D dataset without a full survey mobilisation.
Waterfront structures
Scanning from a moving boat unlocks capture that is simply not possible with static equipment. Complex coastal structures documented in hours.
Plant and service rooms
General layouts and condition inspections in confined spaces, with the all-in-one handheld design making access straightforward.
The team has also found unexpected value during client site visits, with engineers travelling to remote regional locations for a site meeting and returning to the office with a full 3D spatial reference ready for desktop review. “That’s a valuable use case we hadn’t really considered,” Nathan says. “But it makes perfect sense. You’re on site anyway. Why not capture the area while you’re there?”
What stands out about Beca’s adoption of the L2 Pro is the clarity with which Nathan and his team have thought about where it fits. Like any specialist tool in a surveyor’s kit, it delivers its best results when matched to the right project requirements. For Beca, that means concept design work, first-pass site capture, situations where clients need a spatial reference and there are no existing floor plans or drawings to work from, and any environment where access makes traditional methods slow or impractical.
“It fills the gap between a comprehensive survey and having no information at all. In a lot of cases, this provides enough information for the project to move forward and that’s genuinely valuable, when you use it right.”
Nathan Cossar, Beca
That thoughtful approach to matching the tool to the task is something Nathan is keen to pass on to others considering SLAM technology. His advice: invest time in understanding the device before taking it to a live project. Train your team on processing workflows as well as capture, and be clear with clients about what the technology is designed to achieve. “Educate your clients,” he says. “That’s how everyone can understand the technology.”
For Beca, choosing Aptella was not just about finding the right hardware. Nathan credits Aptella’s team as a key part of why the rollout has gone smoothly, from the initial sales process through to post purchase support and direct access to XGRIDS product specialists when technical questions arose.
“Louie Schutte, the Site Solutions Manager from Aptella, comes from a surveying background himself. That means he actually understands what we’re trying to achieve – not just the product features, but the real world context we’re working in. That made the whole relationship different.”
Nathan Cossar, Beca
The L2 Pro has spread through Beca’s teams organically, driven by word of mouth as project teams hear about successful outcomes and request access. With the device also supporting drone and vehicle mounting for extended coverage, and SLAM technology continuing to improve, Nathan sees the potential only growing. “The future is handheld and vehicle mounted, tripod’s may be a thing of the past soon” he says.”
