Digital inspection – how it works

You know how a site inspection works today. You show up, take photos, note measurements with a laser or folding rule, and drive back to the office to type everything into a spreadsheet or quote. Maybe you forgot to measure a window. Another trip out.

Digital inspection replaces that process with something simpler: you scan the room with your phone and get all measurements, photos and a complete 3D model automatically. This guide shows how it works – from the scan to the finished work description.

How does digital inspection work in practice?

A digital inspection with Wenn Property has three steps:

1. Scan the room. Hold up your iPhone or iPad and walk slowly through the room. The LiDAR sensor – the laser built into newer iPhone models – measures the distance to walls, floor and ceiling thousands of times per second. The result is an accurate 3D model, finished in minutes.

2. Document. Wenn Property automatically calculates every measurement: wall area, floor area, skirting lengths, window and door sizes. You take photos, add notes — and dictate observations with the Inspection Assistant, which transcribes and structures everything into a clean inspection note. Everything is linked to the right room and the right spot in the model.

3. Share. Once the inspection is uploaded, you share it with clients, subcontractors or colleagues via a link. They see the 3D model, photos and measurements – without installing anything.

What do you get that you didn’t have before?

The difference from a traditional inspection isn’t just speed. You get data you never had with manual measuring:

A complete 3D model. Not just individual measurements, but a model you can navigate afterwards. Wondering about the distance between the window and the corner? Check the model instead of driving back.

Wall elevations. See each wall face-on with doors, windows and exact measurements. Perfect for understanding the scope of work per wall.

Quantities ready for estimating. Export all quantities to Excel or CSV, or download the 3D model as an IFC file for use in design software.

Measurements to Norwegian standards. All areas and lengths are calculated following Norwegian measurement rules – not personal interpretations.

Norwegian standard measurements: gross, net and why it matters

When you calculate wall area for a painting job – do you deduct the windows or not? The answer depends on who you ask. And that’s exactly the problem.

Gross wall area is the entire wall surface, including where windows and doors sit. It’s the number you need to order wallpaper, or to know the total wall surface.

Net wall area is the wall surface minus windows and doors – the actual surface you’ll be working on. That’s the number for painting, filling and tiling.

The difference can be significant: in a room with large windows, net can be 30–40 percent below gross. Calculate with the wrong number and you order too much or too little.

In addition, floor area is calculated to internal measurements – the surface you can actually use – and skirting lengths as the length along the floor-wall junction with deductions for doors and openings.

Wenn Property shows all these numbers per wall and per room, calculated automatically from the 3D model. The point isn’t that you should read the standard – it’s that you shouldn’t have to. And when your quote is built on standardised measurements, the basis is the same for everyone: your quote becomes more credible, and you avoid after-the-fact discussions about what was included.

From inspection to work description

Half the time doesn’t disappear during the inspection – it disappears turning the inspection into something usable afterwards.

The work description in Wenn Property is a matrix showing work per room and per trade: rows are rooms (living room, kitchen, bathroom), columns are trades (painting, electrical, plumbing, carpentry). In each cell you describe what needs doing – “paint walls and ceiling”, “move socket”, “new flooring”.

You can fill it in manually, or let the AI suggest content based on your Inspection Assistant notes, photos and audio recordings. If you said during the inspection that “the bathroom needs a new drain, the tiles are cracked along the wall”, the AI suggests plumbing work and tiling work – sorted into the right cells. It’s a suggestion, not a finished product: you review and adjust. But you skip starting from a blank page.

The result: a painter sees all the painting work, a plumber sees all the plumbing work, and the client sees the whole picture. Fewer questions back and forth, faster prices from subcontractors, and a better basis for your quote.

Who uses digital inspection?

Contractors and tradespeople skip manual measuring and produce precise quotes faster. A painter gets exact wall area per room; a carpenter gets skirting lengths with deductions for openings.

Property managers document properties systematically and keep up-to-date models available digitally – useful for maintenance planning and portfolio overview.

Surveyors and damage assessors get precise documentation with verifiable measurements that follow industry standards.

Do I need expensive equipment?

No. 3D scanning with LiDAR requires an iPhone 12 Pro or newer, or an iPad Pro from 2020 – but digital inspection is more than scanning, and several of the paths work on any device:

• The Inspection Assistant turns voice notes into a structured report – on iPhone and Android, with or without LiDAR
• The drawing tool lets you create complete projects by drawing the floor plan in the browser
• The address lookup pulls roof area, roof pitch and wall area from public registers – no site visit needed

No tripod, no six-figure laser scanner, no special training. Just the phone already in your pocket.

Get started

Download the Wenn Property app from the App Store (search “WP befaring”) or Google Play, create an account and run your first scan. Scanning a room takes about five minutes, and you see the result immediately in the web app afterwards.

Get started →