As the donations pour in to aid the reconstruction efforts of the fire-damaged Notre Dame cathedral in Paris and the French government opens the question of whether to rebuild the 850-year-old landmark as it was, engineers, architects and contractors can turn to 3D laser scan data of Notre Dame to help with the government’s pledge to reconstruct the building within five years.

“Having laser scans [of Notre Dame] is critical in shortening the reconstruction time frame,” says John Russo, president and CEO of Architectural Resource Consultants and president of the U.S. Institute of Building Documentation. “If you don’t have that data, where do you go? You are going back to hand drawings that may not exist and those are going to be two-dimensional and not have as much information. As far as answering questions and shortcutting the timeline on doing the repair work, 3D scans are going to shave an incredible amount of time off.”