When renovation began on the passenger terminal at Hector International Airport in Fargo, North Dakota, USA, the team at McGough Construction felt the familiar tension between visibility and disruption.
The work needed to proceed in an active, occupied space. But the owner’s priority was clear: keep the terminal looking like a terminal. The ceilings had to stay in place, the atmosphere had to remain intact, and yet the team still had to understand what was going on above those acoustic tiles.
In earlier projects, that would have meant working blind until demolition. This time, McGough took a different path.
They decided to see the space as it truly was, without taking it apart.
Seeing above the ceiling
McGough, a St. Paul, USA-based builder with national reach recognized for integrating advanced VDC and reality-capture workflows across its $2 billion annual portfolio, used the NavVis MLX, an agile handheld scanning system ideal for confined spaces, to capture the concealed geometry above the ceilings.
Every ten or twenty panels, they lifted one tile, held the device up through the gap, and rotated it in a slow arc while the screen displayed a live preview of what it was collecting. The scanner recorded both lidar and panoramic imagery; a small puck light resting on the ceiling grid supplied color and clarity in the dim void above.
From those simple movements came a clear view of what was otherwise hidden: the network of ducts, pipes, and joists that would determine what the design could and couldn’t do. The data exposed a conflict between a gravity-fed storm pipe and the proposed duct routing, as well as a mismatch between fire-protection lines and the intended ceiling height.
Armed with that knowledge, McGough and the design team rerouted the affected systems and lowered the ceiling elevation by six inches in a few critical areas. Each discovery led naturally to the next – a sequence of early corrections that reshaped the project before a single tile was removed.
“It was a cascading effect of fixes,” said Sam Burke, VDC Project Manager. “Being proactive in pre-construction saved so much time and money later.” 
Figure 1: Results from McGough’s above-ceiling scans with NavVis MLX indicating the need for an alternative chase location; changes were then coordinated based on scan data in Revizto during the precon phase.
Proactive verification as a mindset
For Grant Moline, McGough’s Director of VDC, the project with Fargo’s airport demonstrated the value of scanning early and often.
McGough’s use cases now include design verification, MEP verification, and structural validation. If the design team can start with accurate conditions, coordination becomes simpler. If site crews can check their work against the same dataset, rework becomes rare.
NavVis MLX turned out to be especially suited to this kind of task. Weighing roughly nine pounds and operating independently of external lighting, it let the team collect data quickly without disturbing the finished surfaces below. The built-in display showed progress in real time, giving users immediate confidence that they were getting the coverage they needed.
Figure 2: Using NavVis MLX, McGough’s above-ceiling scan identified critically tight areas where the ceilings needed to be raised. The team then used the scan data to confirm whether a large duct could fit between the existing structural steel and the new ceiling.
From scan to coordination
Once processed in NavVis IVION, the point clouds were exported into Revizto for design coordination.
This step turned raw data into a shared visual reference. Architects, engineers, and trades could see precisely how their systems related to one another, grounded in measured reality rather than assumptions or legacy drawings.
“It’s so easy to convince design teams that we have a problem, thanks to the quality of NavVis scan data,” Burke explained.
That clarity changed the tone of coordination meetings. Instead of debating whose drawing was right, teams could focus on solutions visible to everyone.
Verification in the field
When construction began at Fargo Airport, McGough continued its commitment to proactive verification using NavVis VLX, a wearable scanning system designed for fast, accurate, and affordable reality capture of large, complex sites.
To illustrate the benefits of this workflow, McGough also shared an example from a different project, where NavVis VLX was used during the heavy civil phase to verify pile caps, anchor bolts, and sleeve locations.
Superintendents on-site had concerns about whether certain anchor bolts were placed at the correct angle or position. By scanning the area and overlaying the data with the coordinated model in Revizto, the team confirmed that most placements were precise—and quickly corrected the few that weren’t.
They also used the same scan to validate the location of sleeves, ensuring that all openings aligned perfectly with the model. NavVis VLX’s capture speed and point density made it possible to walk large areas quickly while still capturing fine details such as spray-painted field markings visible in Revizto.
“Rework is a killer,” said Grant Moline, Director of VDC. “Scanning ahead means you’re never caught off guard.”
By integrating NavVis VLX data into their verification process, McGough demonstrated how scanning can prevent rework and confirm accuracy even under the time pressures of active construction.
The combination of NavVis MLX for confined spaces and NavVis VLX for open areas allows McGough to maintain a continuous thread of spatial truth from preconstruction through construction. Every phase builds on the accuracy of the last.
Figure 3:Example from another McGough project where NavVis VLX was used to verify anchor bolts and sleeve locations during the heavy civil phase; high-density scans overlaid in Revizto confirmed placement accuracy and helped prevent rework.
Immediate return on investment
The cost benefit was tangible. McGough estimated that proactive scanning at Fargo Airport avoided roughly $50,000 in rework and delay costs, enough to cover the price of the scanner on its first major use.
“If you’re using it properly, you’ll make the money back very quickly,” said Moline. “Maybe even the first time you use it.”
What mattered just as much was cultural change. Project managers who had never trusted laser scanning became advocates once they saw how quickly the data proved itself.
“After doing one scan and bringing it into the model,” Burke recalled, “it clicked for them. You can bring the real world into the model space.”
Lessons carried forward
For McGough, scanning is now a standard part of every project, not an experiment. Control networks are routine, datasets align precisely with design models, and new features like cross-dataset alignment in NavVis IVION are set to make coordination even simpler.
“NavVis paid for itself,” said Sam Burke. “But more than that, it changed how we plan. Once you see what’s really there, you can’t imagine working any other way.”
The Fargo Airport project proved that laser scanning is foresight, not just documentation. A way to control the controllables, limit uncertainty, and make decisions on measurable reality.