A recent report by the World Economic Forum reveals the construction industry recorded a 56 percent increase for remote job-site monitoring using drones last year. That should come as no surprise to many—from 2017-18, adaption of drone tech by construction companies soared 239 percent.
With a vast array of benefits, drones are a natural fit for the construction industry, giving site managers, architects and risk managers a literal bird’s eye view of the entire project, from worker productivity and safety to available materials to stability issues.
“Contractors are using the autonomous flying machines to record images and videos that help optimize everything from grading plans and operations to identifying differences between as-designed and as-built site plans,” Construction Dive senior editor Jenn Goodman writes. “Their usefulness can be enhanced with thermal cameras and other add-ons like mapping tools and GPS units.”
In addition to site inspections and thermal imagery, drones can help managers mitigate risk across the entire construction project. Here’s how:
Table of Contents
Mitigating Safety Risks
Among all vocations, the construction sector is one of the most dangerous. According to OSHA, around 1,061 workers died in 2019, representing one in five workers.
A vast number of such accidents included slips, falls, ditch or scaffolding collapses. In many cases, workers may be required to climb hundreds of feet to inspect a specific area of concern. With construction drone photography, workers can keep their feet planted on solid ground while the drone provides real-time data, video or imagery from multiple angles, often flying over areas of concern nearly impossible for a human worker to reach.
And, since drones are unmanned aircraft, there’s no risk of pilot injury or death from a crashed helicopter or airplane. By using a qualified, FAA-licensed, insured commercial drone company, construction companies are saving money and optimizing worker safety without hiring expensive manned aerial surveyors.
Construction giant Hamm Companies has been using drone solutions to mitigate site safety risks since 2013. To inspect and count quarry stockpiles for construction projects, workers had to climb across piles of materials often in unstable areas with sharp edges.
“I knew that the only way to get a good [stockpile count] was to do it from the air with the sheer size of the piles we got. It’s a much safer alternative to walking up and down steep, tall, or jagged piles. Not having to physically scale them was a huge win.”
- Hamm technology manager Paul Johnson
Scouting Risky Trouble Spots
By deploying construction drone solutions, your team can locate potential jobsite hazards before they can arise as a safety risk. Drone photography provides a superior, 360-degree view of powerlines, roads, pedestrian areas and structures that may be affected by the project. This allows risk managers and site managers to better map out a plan for dealing with each risk factor.
What's included in YOUR GUIDE...
A Proven Roadmap of Success for Implementing Drones in Construction.
A List of Red Flags to Avoid When Hiring Drone Service Providers.
How to Persuade Your Leadership Team to Leverage Drones on Every Jobsite.
HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT droneS? START HERE.
Mitigating Financial Risks
Second only to site safety, avoiding overages, cost overruns and unexpected roadblocks is key to any risk management plan. Drone photography provides a comprehensive view of the entire site, allowing managers to easily identify potential financial risks before they flare up. In addition, regular monitoring of the site through periodic drone inspections can help mitigate further financial risks that may arise as the building project progresses.
“Drone images used in daily progress reports are great for change detection. They help identify issues which in turn allow jobsite managers to quickly resolve problems such improper sequencing that can lead to performance delays.”
- SkyLogic CEO Colin Snow
Mitigating Legal Risks
Even the most well organized, well planned construction projects can easily be derailed by legal problems – new zoning issues, lawsuits and regulation changes. Using construction drone solutions can help keep a running record of the projects progress over time. With that depth of data and evidence, managers have a powerful tool to use when appearing before a zoning board, municipal council or court to demonstrate due diligence and correct procedures from start to finish.
Mitigating Miscommunication
While drones are without a doubt the up-and-coming MVPs of the construction safety game, a truly successful site inspection plan requires both an advanced drone model piloted by a qualified user and the software suite necessary to bring all the data together in a way that can be easily collected, analyzed and (perhaps most importantly) communicated to the entire team. Married with the right drone, a software platform can mitigate risks by ensuring everyone is on the same page, using maps, 3D models and real-time imagery.
Improving Future Risk Analysis
Because drones provide such a vast array of data streams—still images, video, LiDAR and thermal—risk managers can use telemetry from past projects to identify previously unknown risk factors that may not be easily seen from the ground. Future projects then benefit from improved plans that incorporate drone data from a financial and risk management perspective.
“For a construction company, there are three dimensions that matter — time, cost and quality,” 3DR CEO Chris Anderson said in a 2017 interview. “You can only manage what you can measure, so if you could measure a project better, then you could manage it better and therefore it would be faster, cheaper and better. Drone scanning is just one of the tools that allows you to measure that site better.”
With the massive growth of construction drone use cases, unmanned aircraft will someday seem as normal on a construction site as a bulldozer, orange vest or lunchbox. Industry leaders understand the value in partnering with experienced, licensed drone providers to develop the right risk-management solutions for any construction projects. Now that’s “Unrisky Business.”
For even more information about using drones in the construction industry download our completely free and value-packed PDF – Drones in Construction: The Ultimate Guide.
What's included in YOUR GUIDE...
A Proven Roadmap of Success for Implementing Drones in Construction.
A List of Red Flags to Avoid When Hiring Drone Service Providers.
How to Persuade Your Leadership Team to Leverage Drones on Every Jobsite.
