Commercial drone Services
WHAT Drone services do we provide?
Following are some of the core services we provide to assist you and your team:
- Commercial building drone roof surveys
- Building facade drone inspections
- Block management drone property inspections
- Drone land surveying and orthogram map creation
- 3D Drone building models (digital twins)
- Thermal inspections by drone of solar farms and commercial buildings
- 3D Virtual reality building tours
- 3D Virtual reality landscape capture and tours by drone
Building Management, Reparations and Insurance Reports
Ongoing building or asset maintenance is essential to avoid additional costs of reparations, safety and integrity of the structure. Increasingly insurance companies are requesting a regular (often annual) building condition survey report for them to approve insurance renewals.
In order to identify as early as possible any reparations needed to buildings, towers, bridges etc. has been traditionally carried out by using scaffolding, cherry pickers and rope access teams or in retrospect once an issue has occurred.
Our team provide you with a rapid BMI (building management information) service, including annotated report outputs by using high quality image capture drones.
Output files can be requested as:
- Drone photography
- Drone videos
- Annotated report (included as standard)
Building Models For Building Changes, Design and Repairs
Whether it is a bridge, block, church, wind turbine or heritage property they all need regular inspecting and maintenance. A standard building inspection by drone will provide the base data required for smaller projects, but for larger projects that will involve multiple teams and contractors a 3D model (aka a ‘twin’) gives far great project control.
The models are created by flying all aspects of the property or asset, roof, vertical facades, capturing geo-located images and then creating a 3D model from hundreds, if not thousands of images.
When the images are stitched together the model can then be inspected remotely by one or more persons to identify repairs, assess how the architecture can be developed or built upon and create calculations for quantities – often carried out by a skilled quantity surveyor utilising the model. Measurements can be as accurate as ground surface distance (GSD) of 2.5cm (1”) subject to the drone model in use.
The project manager can mark and tag areas on the model, assign them to teams and type of changes needed e.g. concrete, cladding, maintenance team and so forth. The team can update the project to advise what costs are involved, actions taken so that the workflow is dynamic.
Land Surveying For A Wide Range Of Projects
Whether it is for checking boundaries, preparing plans for building or change or land use capturing land areas accurately normally requires a ground-based surveying team.
In certain terrains like the side of steep hills and large plot areas this can be a very expensive and long process whilst it is still the most accurate method. Advances in drones and mapping (known as orthogrammetry or NADIR) have come along in bounds in the last 10 years. Drones with high-resolution cameras, ground control points and lasers mounted on drones that can achieved up to 2.5cm accuracy or greater in some instances.
The results can be translated into CAD/AutoCAD and other applications to then apply rendered housing models, plan in the use of planning and wide range of other applications. Working in conjunction with ground-based surveyors provides a powerful combination when planning construction or other high accuracy projects.
Identifying Water Incursion Risks and Thermal Qualities
Visible inspections using standard cameras and video are ideal for most scenarios however, to identify issues such as leaks, underlying water in roofs and the thermal insulation levels of commercial buildings requires a different approach.
Thermal cameras have been used for many years to assess from ground level differences in infrared energy of objects, that, once read correctly, provide additional clues to the root causes of problems. Thermal cameras on drones carry out the same process of identifying these differences and capturing them often as a heat or video images
Larger surface areas on commercial buildings including facades, roofs, solar panels can be measured rapidly by using drones and we then created a video or photo output report where we note our assessment and translate the images. Very often this helps to identify water pooling on flat roofs, evidence of blockages/backing up of water and in specific cases faults or non–operational solar panels.
Buildings that have heat ‘leaking’ through roofs, doors, windows or venting can all be captured to provide a report for improving the buildings’ thermal efficiency and in turn reducing energy bills.
Please note we only offer this survey for larger commercial premises and solar farms, unfortunately we cannot offer this service for residential properties and in some cases within dense urban areas.
VIRTUAL REALITY TO EXPERIENCE BUILDING INTERIORS AND EXTERIORS
Projects where a visual ‘virtual reality’ element are advantageous include renovations, newly constructed buildings and promotion of premises. Creating a ‘virtual tour’ allows stakeholders to get deeply immersed in the premises wherever they are in the world.
Using low-cost VR goggles a user can then literally walk through a premises to experience it, in addition we can capture the exterior of the premises using a VR technique so that the building has context within its location.
- Property developers – to showcase a new site or commercial premises
- Hospitality managers – to promote their business and conference facilities
- Interior designers – to showcase their projects
With the addition of ‘hotspots’ extra information, videos, photos, links to websites, can be embedded into the tour increasing the interactions. Creating an opportunity even for e-commerce or lead generation.
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