Construction Progress Photography in Madrid: Monthly Site Documentation for Contractors and Developers

TKM Photo provides construction progress photography as a recurring service in Madrid and across Spain, with Portugal on request. Tarik Kaan Muslu, a Madrid based industrial and architectural photographer with 18 years of work behind him, returns to your site on a fixed schedule, typically monthly or aligned to your reporting or drawdown calendar, and photographs the same repeat positions on every visit plus the work in progress that week. Drone coverage from repeat aerial positions, a fixed timelapse camera for the duration of the build and a completion shoot at handover are optional. Each visit is delivered as one dated package with a contact sheet and a delivery note, and the programme is billed as a fixed monthly fee quoted per project.

Excavator working inside a metro tunnel under construction at night, lit by work lights, with rough concrete walls and services along the tunnel.

What a monthly visit includes

Repeat positions. On the first visit we walk the site with your site manager and fix camera positions that will still be reachable once the structure is up. Every later visit reproduces that list first, same standing point, same bearing, same lens, so any two months can be compared frame for frame.
Free frames. After the repeat set, the photographer covers what is happening that week: the pour, the steel going up, deliveries, temporary works, and anything your site team asks to have on the record.
The delivery package. One download per visit, organised by date: the repeat set in position order, the free frames, two renditions of each frame (one at full resolution for the archive, one sized for the report), and a contact sheet with thumbnails in position order.
The delivery note. A short document listing the visit date, the positions photographed, any position that could not be reached and why, and what the site team asked to have recorded. It is what makes the package readable two years later by someone who was never on site.

Options you can add to the programme

Aerial view of a construction site with steel roof trusses being installed, cranes and machinery on open ground.

Drone from repeat aerial positions. The same logic as the ground set, in the air: fixed waypoints, altitude and heading, repeated on each visit, flown under AESA operator registration. Equipment and deliverables are on the drone photography page.
Fixed timelapse camera. A weatherproof camera mounted at a fixed point on site for the duration of the build, powered on site or by its own solar unit, capturing at an agreed interval. We install it, check it on every scheduled visit and edit the sequence at the end, or at milestones if you want interim cuts. Quoted as a separate line with its installation.
Video clips. Short clips from each visit, ground or aerial, for internal updates and investor decks. Quoted as a separate line.
3D scanning and photogrammetry. Where the project needs measurable data, a drone photogrammetry model or a LiDAR scan can be added to a visit; see 3D scanning, BIM and LiDAR.
Completion and handover shoot. When the site is clean, a separate shoot of the finished building or plant for marketing, award entries, the annual report and the leasing brochure. The progress archive and the completion set together tell the whole story of the project.

Who the service is for

Contractors. A dated, independent record of the site each month, for the progress report, for claims and variations, and for the day a question comes back about a week nobody photographed.
Developers. The same record for the board and the investors, with aerials that place the project in its context and a completion set ready for the launch.
Logistics park, industrial plant and data centre builders. Large footprints where the drone set carries most of the story and the finished site photographed from the air becomes the leasing image.
Renewable energy plant builders. Solar and wind sites where visits follow the construction phases and the aerial positions cover the whole plant; the images serve the sustainability reporting cycle afterwards.
Lenders, investors and their monitoring engineers. When the record is specified by a facility agreement or a monitoring engineer's brief, we quote against that document point by point. The specification side is set out in our article on construction progress photography for lender reporting. This page is the offer; that article is the reference.

How the schedule works

The interval belongs to your calendar, not to the photography. Monthly is the usual rhythm on building projects because drawdowns and progress reports are often monthly, but a compressed programme or a milestone based facility may want something else, and the visits are planned around your dates. Each visit is confirmed with the site in advance, so the gate, the induction and the escort, where one is required, are expected. If a scheduled visit falls on a day the site is closed or an access route is out of service, the gap is written into the delivery note and the visit is rescheduled by agreement; a missed visit is recorded, never silently moved. The end point is agreed at the start: practical completion, handover, or the end of the facility term.

Photographer in a safety helmet, high visibility vest and safety boots standing with a camera on an active construction site.

Site access and safety on every visit

We hold a PRL (Prevención de Riesgos Laborales) certificate, the Spanish occupational risk prevention training commonly asked for on construction sites, and we arrive with our own certified PPE: helmet (EN 397), high visibility vest (EN ISO 20471 Class 2) and S3S safety boots (EN ISO 20345:2022), with the full kit listed item by item on our How we work page. Every assignment is covered by civil liability insurance, and the certificate is sent to your project manager or safety officer before the shoot. On a recurring programme the paperwork is done once: the induction at the first visit, the documents uploaded to your CAE platform where the site uses one, renewed when the site requires it. On site we follow your health and safety coordinator and the site manager, stay out of exclusion zones and photograph the work as it is.

Files, naming and the archive

Files are named by position and date so that a frame cited in a report can be found in the archive directly, the capture date is carried inside each file untouched, and originals are retained after delivery, so a question about a specific week can be answered without a return trip. How the images may be used by you, your lender and the other companies on the project is defined in the quotation, on the terms explained on our image licensing page. The full delivery specification is in the lender reporting article.

How the service is billed

A progress programme is billed as a fixed monthly fee for the duration agreed, quoted per project from three things: how often we visit, the size and layout of the site, and which options are included. Drone coverage, the timelapse camera, video clips, 3D scanning and the completion shoot are priced as separate lines, so a programme can start with the ground set and grow when the structure does. The first visit, which establishes the positions and the access routine, is part of the programme. Travel within the Madrid region is included; sites elsewhere in Spain and in Portugal are quoted with travel as a separate line.

Where we have done it

Aerial view of a completed logistics warehouse complex with white roofs, loading bays and trucks, surrounded by access roads.

Our largest construction documentation programme covered the Ümraniye metro line in Istanbul for Ayson Construction, part of the Doğuş İnşaat Group: multiple stations and tunnel sections across kilometres of underground works, photographed with a repeatable protocol so that phases could be compared and project managers, the regulator and the communication team served from the same visits. The metro construction case study shows the work. On the aerial side, the logistics warehouse in the Henares corridor was flown under a restricted airspace ceiling and delivered as the completion set for a 40,000 m2 asset, the kind of picture a progress programme ends with. Both sit inside our wider industrial photography work.

Where we work

Madrid and its industrial belt first, including the Henares corridor and the logistics platforms to the south, then the rest of Spain, with visits combined where a client builds in more than one place. Portugal is covered on request. Outside the Madrid region, travel is a stated line in the quotation and the visit calendar is set with it in mind.

Frequently Asked Questions

As often as your reporting needs. Monthly is the most common interval, fortnightly is used on fast programmes, and some clients ask for visits at milestones rather than fixed dates. The interval is set at the start and can be changed by agreement as the programme moves into a new phase.

Yes. Send us the calendar the visits have to serve, and the visits are planned so the package is in your hands before the report that uses it has to be submitted. If your lender or monitoring engineer has issued a specification, send that too and the quotation answers it point by point.

The visit is rescheduled by agreement and the gap is written into the next delivery note. A visit that quietly moves leaves two sets that look comparable and are not; a recorded gap keeps the series honest.

Usually yes, with lead time. The first flight on a site inside controlled airspace needs coordination filed in advance, with the notice period the airspace provider sets; after that, each visit repeats the arrangement. We handle the permits and the coordination; your team files nothing. Our article on planning a drone shoot in Madrid airspace explains what decides the timeline.

Yes, as an option. A weatherproof camera is mounted at an agreed fixed point for the duration of the build, powered on site or by its own solar unit, and checked on every scheduled visit. The sequence is edited at the end, or at milestones if interim cuts are wanted.

The quotation states what you, your lender and the other companies on the project may do with the images. Reporting use by the client and its lender is the normal baseline; marketing use and use by third parties are defined with it. The reasoning is on our image licensing page.

Yes. The first visit establishes the positions from the state the site is in, and the record runs from there.

Yes. Invoices are issued from Spain, and the VAT treatment for a company based outside Spain is confirmed at quotation stage.

More answers on the FAQ page, or ask us and you get an answer within one business day.

Ask for a quotation

Send us the site location, the expected duration of the works, the interval you need and whether you want aerials, a timelapse camera or a completion shoot. If a monitoring specification or a site plan exists, attach it. The fixed monthly fee, the option lines and a proposed first visit date come back within one business day.

Ask for a quotation for your site

Working with us

Crew: Standard crew is one photographer. A second photographer, a drone pilot or a lighting assistant are added by scope and quoted per line, so you can see what each one costs and decide whether the shoot needs it.
Booking and rescheduling: A non refundable booking fee reserves the date and is credited against the final invoice. Rescheduling is free more than 72 hours before the shoot. Weather is never charged: if conditions make the work impossible we move the date at no cost. If we cancel, the booking fee is refunded in full.
Licensing: Retail and brand work includes a broad commercial licence in the fee, because those images are made to be published. Industrial and architectural work is quoted with a licence line of its own, since the same photograph can serve an internal report or a global campaign and those are not the same thing. The parameters that set it are the territory, the duration, the media, and whether third parties such as suppliers or architects may use the files.
Insurance and site access: Every assignment is covered by civil liability insurance, and the certificate is sent to your project manager or safety officer before the shoot. We work with our own PPE. Site inductions, safety briefings and access paperwork are handled before the shoot day rather than at the gate.
Delivery and retouching: Final delivery runs 5 to 10 days after the shoot, in web and print resolutions, unless the service page or the quotation states a different delivery time, which then applies. Standard colour and perspective correction is included. Object removal, compositing and other advanced retouching is quoted separately, per image.
Confidentiality: We sign your NDA. Where a project is confidential, nothing from it appears in a portfolio, a case study or a social post, and that holds after the work is delivered and paid.