Multi-Storey Point Cloud Registration in Toronto
120+ scan positions registered into a unified coordinate system for a 6-storey office complex.
The Challenge
A property management firm in Toronto was planning a major base-building retrofit across all six floors of a downtown office tower. The scope included structural upgrades, mechanical system replacements, and electrical distribution changes - work that required precise spatial data from every floor.
Multiple engineering consultants needed access to the same dataset. The structural, mechanical, and electrical teams each required accurate reference data, and all three needed to be working from a single, consistent coordinate system to avoid conflicts during the design phase. Discrepancies between independently sourced measurements had caused coordination problems on previous projects.
The building was fully occupied with active tenants on every floor. Scanning had to be completed with minimal disruption and within a tight window to keep the retrofit design schedule on track.
Our Approach
Scanning was scheduled floor-by-floor over 3 days, coordinated with tenant schedules to minimise disruption. Each floor was captured in sequence, with mechanical rooms, stairwells, and elevator shafts scanned during off-peak hours when access was least constrained. Building management provided advance notice to tenants, and our team worked efficiently to keep individual room occupancy times under 5 minutes per scan position.
A total of 120+ scan positions were captured across all six floors. Registration was performed using a combination of cloud-to-cloud alignment and surveyed control points placed in common areas accessible from multiple floors. This hybrid approach ensured that the floor-to-floor alignment was as rigorous as the within-floor registration.
The final dataset was delivered as a single unified coordinate system. A documented registration report accompanied the delivery, detailing overlap quality, control point residuals, and floor-by-floor accuracy metrics. Individual floor exports were also provided so that each engineering discipline could load only the data relevant to their scope.
Deliverables
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Registered point cloud - full building, unified coordinate system
.RCP .E57
- Registration report with overlap analysis and control point residuals
- Floor-by-floor point cloud exports - individual files per storey
Results
Three engineering disciplines - structural, mechanical, and electrical - were able to work from the same verified spatial dataset simultaneously. Each team loaded the floor-specific exports relevant to their scope while maintaining alignment with the unified coordinate system shared across all consultants.
The unified coordinate system eliminated discrepancies between trades and reduced coordination conflicts during the design phase. Issues that typically surface during construction - clashes between proposed ductwork and existing structural members, for example - were identified and resolved during design instead.
Point cloud accuracy was verified at better than 4 mm across all six floors, exceeding the project's accuracy requirements and providing the engineering teams with the confidence to make dimensional decisions directly from the scan data.
"Having all six floors in a single, verified coordinate system saved us weeks of back-and-forth between consultants. Everyone was working from the same data."