This article is part of a blog series on drones, exploring what they are, and what they can do for the construction industry.
Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are now very sophisticated and used extensively by professionals in a variety of industries. The AECO industry has seen drone usage increasing year over year. It is now part of the toolkit of many companies in the field of construction. Using an intuitive, camera-embedded drone helps you to get low-cost, high-definition aerial imagery of construction sites. The quality of data obtained is very valuable and will help overcome initial concerns when first surveying a construction site with a drone.
Drones require some training, but with experience, they become an invaluable asset in monitoring, surveying, and mapping construction sites. Drones can be equipped with different cameras: high definition and ultra-high definition, night vision, and thermal imaging.
Drones can fly slowly and hover in specific area. They are cheap, functional, affordable, and produce better image quality than conventional airplane-based imaging.
Drone technology brings new benefits and challenges, as described below. The new approaches and methods help you to solve issues easily, meet the BIM construction standards, make the decision-making process quicker, and improve collaboration.
Traditional methods of obtaining visual data of a construction site with helicopters or terrestrial techniques are very expensive, not always accurate, and very quickly obsolete. Drones produce better quality and more precise visual data, faster, at a cheaper price, and in real-time. Below are some of the other benefits drones bring to the construction industry.
Various stakeholders like contractors, engineers, subcontractors, and architects working together on a construction site, need to accomplish specialized tasks, within strict and tight deadlines. To be successful, they need frequent updates to make sound decisions collaboratively.
Drones provide a full and accurate picture of the construction site when required. All stakeholders can see and interpret the data simultaneously to speed up the decision-making process.
With drones you can comprehensively reconstruct site maps rather than relying on obsolete plans and communicate what remains to be done, and the quality of what has been accomplished so far, with aerial visuals. They produce detailed images, to track progress during the construction phase and help make accurate decisions by using the same and most recent data.
In addition to site maps and pictures, you can see the following important information from data captured by drones on a single flight:
Collecting data with drones is fast and easy. It shortens the labor and time-intensive data collection in the field. Capturing topographic data with a drone is up to five times faster than with land-based methods and requires less manpower.
With drones, you can reduce surveying time by scanning a field in one hour and get better quality data. In one flight you can map almost nine times more than with traditional methods.
The more you survey the site the better your documentation will be. It will be very useful at each stage of the project’s life cycle. With traditional methods, it is cumbersome and labor-intensive to monitor and document progress, detect faulty construction, track mistakes, and who was responsible.
With drones, stakeholders can review and find mistakes when they happen. The data produced through the construction process are clear, accurate, retrievable, repeatable, analyzable, and reusable for other projects.
With traditional methods, office-based project stakeholders regularly travel to site or must get their information from the site manager to monitor progress.
With drones, the site manager can capture images and then transfer the information electronically. Office-based staff can immediately and simultaneously see the project progress, evaluate it, and discuss it with the site manager as if they were on-site together.
Cloud-based platforms such as Procore allow all stakeholders to access construction progress from any location at their convenience without traveling to site.
Drones can inspect areas of a site that can be difficult to reach, or where dangerous machinery is located. So, you can significantly reduce the potential risks of accidents to workers.
Securing areas on a construction site can prevent unauthorized people from entering a work-restricted area. Only qualified employees will be allowed to work in this area. Drone imagery can help to locate a violation in the boundary of a confined site immediately, preventing illegal entry and potential accidents.
In maintenance work, inspecting sites with drones, rather than using mounting electric poles to view the site or walking alongside a busy road, workers can get images without putting themselves at risk.
Despite all these benefits, using drones is not without challenges.
Drone reliability is improving all the time thanks to sophisticated sensors and software, making the collection of data imagery logical and smooth, but there are a few drawbacks to evaluate when you want to implement a drone program.
When you decide to buy drones, it is important to include training costs in your investment budget. This will help ensure your staff know how to operate, manage, and maintain them. Some drones require piloting and geospatial skills to process data and obtain accurate information from images.
You will have to review and streamline your processes, introduce new workflows to use the drone efficiently and help your team get the right information at the right time.
Choosing an easy-to-use drone and software with well-integrated sensors and a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) may help your staff on-site to use them appropriately and produce accurate data as needed.
Flying drones is more and more regulated by governments. Some urban areas have airspace restrictions. Flying a drone in a desert is less risky than on a site in a densely populated area. Current and future commercial uses of drones have to meet the requirements of local laws and regulations.
Construction companies using drones need to ensure that the staff is trained to follow airspace regulations, regularly update regulation guidance, and operate the drones safely.
Unfortunately, drone battery power is limited, so it only allows drones to fly for approximately twenty-five minutes at a time. To overcome this issue, you will have to invest in multiple battery packs if you want your drone to fly for the entire day without recharging your battery.
The battery life of drone-mounted cameras is shorter than a traditional camera, limiting the usage of drones to take pictures and videos to a maximum of four consecutive hours.
Drones are not suitable for use in some special circumstances. For instance, it would be difficult to fly in freezing temperatures. The battery may not work properly and will not be able to provide accurate geographic data.
Drones are vulnerable to wild large flying animals such as eagles that will attack and capture them, preventing the drone from taking important photos or videos. Unless you are lucky and find your drone in a nest you will have to replace the device.
To control the flight of a drone and take good pictures or videos, you will need a pilot - most flights will be unmanned, but the drone needs to be monitored in case manual intervention is required. A camera operator who knows what to focus on to monitor progress may also be needed.
In utility infrastructure, for example, drones capture detailed data about power, creating a breach of confidentiality risk. You will need a security system to ensure effective protection against potential lawsuits.
Transmitting data collected by drones to the cloud increases the risk of cyber-attacks. To solve this problem, it is necessary to use encrypted connections so the safety of all your confidential information is not vulnerable to unauthorized individuals stealing confidential files.
Because drones can fly anywhere and capture images on private property, you will have to protect people's privacy to avoid liability, as drones can collect data without the knowledge of individuals, groups, or authorities.
Operational safety is a significant risk factor in the use of drone technology in the construction industry. It can create aviation accidents and ground crashes, and cause public safety threats such as drones falling at height and falling on people.
Implementing drone technology in your company requires more than the initial investment in the equipment. You also need to:
Driving Vision can help you to decide if you need to invest in technology. Our technology diagnostic looks at the best way to incorporate modern technology into your workflows and how to move your organization to cloud computing so you can open new possibilities for your daily planning tasks and make sure your data never leaves the optimally secured data center.
The technology appraisal report will help you explore the investment required to improve your projects.
Implementing BIM can be daunting, but Driving Vision is here to help you at the pace you are comfortable with. Get started by getting in touch now
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