Delta Scan Customer Story

Who is Delta Scan?

Delta Scan is a specialized engineering inspection, digitization, and building information management (BIM) company based in Modderfontein, South Africa, with projects running in ten countries across the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and the U.S. The company combines drone and scanning technology with 3D digitization, engineering design principles, AI, and precision analytics. It assists international asset owners, engineering companies, petrochemical and mining firms, and other clients in performing engineering condition assessments, 3D digitization for BIM systems, drone surveying for geographic information systems (GIS), and other services.

The Challenge: Getting Large Volumes of Digital Point Cloud Data Out of Remote Locations

Delta Scan needed to conduct digital-driven inspections and mapping of around 1,000 structures in remote rural areas across an African nation. The work spanned remote, mountainous terrain, rural farmland, and isolated villages — areas with little to no access to electricity, mobile coverage, or running water.

Their scope of work included drone-based topographical mapping and roof audits, along with detailed internal scans using the NavVis VLX3 wearable LiDAR scanner and other proprietary technology developed for complex mapping, to generate digital point clouds.

Once data is collected in the field it’s processed at the company’s office, where as-built drawings are created in Autodesk Revit BIM software so the engineering team can can develop as-built surveys.

Combining drone data and ground data with advanced 3D reconstruction techniques and Gaussian splatting, digital twins are created on which professional teams can conduct condition audits, architects can assess compliance, and quantity surveyors can prep rehabilitation budgets.

All this data is centralized on Delta Scan’s Delta Cloud software platform built on AWS, making information accessible to all stakeholders across the continent. There is often a disconnect between digital data, engineering reporting, and what the asset owner receives on the other end. Delta Scan makes this data more accessible, integrated, and linked to professional engineering insight.

Challenge #1: The need for reliable transfer in remote areas 

The company’s first major challenge was connectivity: All areas to be surveyed are in extremely remote locations, either on farmland or in mountainous terrain, with no internet infrastructure.

To overcome this challenge, Delta Scan deployed a hybrid solution using solar power and Starlink internet.

But finding a user-friendly file transfer service that surveyors could use to quickly and reliably upload large datasets from the field proved extremely difficult. 

Challenge #2: The need to reliably move large datasets

Another roadblock the company ran into was difficulties in reliably transferring large geospatial datasets from the field. Their previous file transfer platforms — Dropbox, WeTransfer, and Resilio — couldn’t handle such large datasets, frequently throttling or outright failing mid-transfer.

WeTransfer Pro’s maximum upload limit, for example, is 200 GB, while files uploaded via Dropbox on a browser are capped at 375 GB. While Resilio doesn’t have upload limits, it can struggle when transferring large datasets.

Challenge #3: The need to meet strict deadlines

Given the scale of the project — Delta Scan needed to survey three buildings per day, per region — the company was under extremely tight deadlines to get data from the field to the office for geospatial data analysis.

That means they needed a file transfer service that could saturate all available bandwidth provided by their Starlink connection. Many file transfer services simply can’t do this, and some even purposefully throttle bandwidth to keep their infrastructure costs down.

MASV for Geospatial Data

MASV dramatically simplifies geospatial data transfer, seamlessly handling even petabyte-scale datasets from sensor to storage.

How MASV Supports Geospatial >

The Solution: Fast, Reliable, Cloud File Transfer That Handles Large Datasets From Anywhere

After researching file transfer solutions with ChatGPT, MASV was recommended as the top data-sharing platform for digital professionals and photogrammetry applications.

After testing MASV under real-world conditions by uploading a full dataset via Starlink — from the back of a pickup truck, on a mountain, with no mobile signal — they soon confirmed it was the right transfer tool for the job.

“MASV changed everything,” says Delta Scan Founder and CEO Darryl Epstein. “From the moment we integrated MASV into our workflow, the transfer issues disappeared.” 

MASV Portals for remote data transfer

Delta Scan says MASV performed flawlessly in all situations, allowing field technicians to upload large datasets without having to learn or install complicated software.

• That’s largely due to the power of browser-based MASV Portals file uploaders, which allow anyone in the field with internet access to upload large datasets using a drag-and-drop interface — no training or tutorials required.
• MASV Portals also feature no-code integrations with 30-plus cloud and connected on-prem storage platforms, allowing for automated data ingest from sensor to storage.

No transfer limits with dependable file transfer reliability

Unlike many file sharing services with volume or size limits, MASV Portals have no limits on file sizes or volumes transferred. Users can send an unlimited number of files or file packages of unlimited size using MASV.

• MASV also deploys relentless retries on every file transfer. That means that even if your network goes down or computer goes to sleep, your transfer will be retried until it’s delivered at maximum speed.
• Checkpoint restart ensures that interrupted transfers always pick up where they left off, without starting over from scratch.

Network saturation that makes the most of any connection

MASV saturates any network connection, allowing it to use all available bandwidth to its fullest capacity, helping it leverage the maximum speed of a network up to a blazing 10Gbps.

By breaking file transfers into chunks, MASV sends data via multiple connections for significantly higher throughput.

MASV also rides on the AWS content delivery network’s powerful network of hundreds of global servers, so it’s never very far until your data reaches an AWS datacenter and hops on our accelerated private network, getting off at the off-ramp closest to the recipient.

The Result: On-Deadline Data Transfers From Logistically Challenging Environments

While initially solving its connectivity issues in the remote African countryside using solar power and Starlink, Delta Scan still needed an easy-to-use, fast, and reliable file transfer service that could maximize bandwidth and send large datasets without failure.

“MASV unlocked the full potential of our satellite internet connection, enabling stable, high-speed uploads directly from the field,” says Epstein. “No more data bottlenecks, no more delays.”

The solution worked so well, Delta Scan plans to increase their data transfer activities to an estimated 70-plus GB per day per region (likely around 2TB per month, per region).

MASV’s browser-based file transfer and dead-simple user interface also meant that implementing the product and onboarding new users was a snap.

“I can’t say enough great things about MASV. The MASV app has been flawless. It has replaced everything—we no longer need Dropbox. We no longer need Hightail. We just use one simple MASV link, and the pricing made it awesome, too. It’s affordable.”

“In terms of performance, we can confidently say that nothing else compares to MASV,” adds Epstein. “Thanks to MASV, we maintained continuity in our processing pipeline and kept our tight project deadlines on track – even in one of the most logistically challenging environments we’ve ever operated in. MASV didn’t just help. It was the missing link.”

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Try MASV today for fast and reliable file sharing that just works.