About iBEAM: Our Story

iBEAM was founded in 2001 by Tom Allen, AIA, a commercial architect. Tom envisioned what was to become the first iBEAM Construction Camera in 1983 while administering the construction of multiple projects at the same time.

“I was on the phone with a site superintendent, solving a problem on the third floor,” he remembers. “On my next site visit, I went to the third floor to see my handiwork -- only to find a giant mess. Unbeknownst to me, the contractor had been standing on the fourth floor during our conversation.”

Tom knew there had to be a better way. He connected a security camera to his company’s first computer (an Apple Lisa), and bit by bit, line by line, an image formed on the computer screen.

“It took 20 minutes to build a grainy picture,” he says, “but I thought if I could somehow get the camera at the job site, I could see what he was talking about without having to travel to the site.”

Much has changed since 1983, but the need to problem-solve and document construction projects remains. iBEAM has developed several lines of construction cameras to meet the needs of all types of projects, and today iBEAM is the industry leader in construction monitoring, documentation and image management.