Drones are making it easier than ever to automate progress tracking and remotely monitor construction sites. Drone progress reports help ensure construction is finished on time and within budget. This post provides a deep dive into construction progress monitoring and how drones are making it easier to stay informed about what’s happening on site even if you’re hundreds of miles away.
Table of Contents
What is Construction Progress Monitoring?
Construction progress monitoring is the recurrent collection of information throughout a project’s lifecycle to ensure construction is progressing as planned. Progress monitoring not only helps detect when a project has fallen behind but also prevents delays before they happen. Project managers who collect progress reports consistently are alerted to issues as they arise and can implement solutions early before the issue slows down construction.
Construction progress monitoring may include:
- Observation of the construction work and its level of completion
- Observation of any potential work hindrances or stoppage
- Assessment of conformance to the construction schedule
- Assessment of the quality of workmanship
- Assessment of supply of stored materials for adequate quantities
- Identification of construction changes and potential or pending changes
Progress can be assessed on a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis depending on how often updates are desired and the pace of the construction. With each assessment, the observations are compiled into a progress report. These reports are valuable tools for project documentation, decision-making, and communication with stakeholders.
Traditional Methods of Construction Progress Monitoring
Traditional construction progress monitoring is an effort to get boots on the ground to see first-hand how the progress of a project stacks up against the schedule. An assessment typically involves sending an inspector to physically walk the site on foot and record their observations. These on-foot inspections present some challenges.
Traditional on-foot assessments for progress monitoring are:
- Time-consuming – Large sites can take hours or multiple workdays to assess thoroughly.
- Incomplete – Some construction site areas may not be accessible from the ground and end up getting left out of the assessment. This could be because they are physically out of reach or because they are too dangerous to access. The remaining visuals that are captured only communicate a piece of the full picture. Viewing a site in its entirety would require aerial footage and access to those hard-to-reach places.
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- Unreliable – Even if an inspector takes their time to thoroughly assess the site, important updates can still be overlooked by the human eye. A log of low-quality photos, usually taken with a phone or tablet, are limited in scope and detail. In these cases, it can be difficult to refer back to if questions arise about what was seen on site that particular day.
- Yield Unclear Results – Inspectors can also find it difficult to clearly convey what they saw with their own eyes to the managers and stakeholders located off-site. Written notes don’t provide the visual detail you get when physically present on site. Even when paired with photographs, it can be hard to communicate the full picture.
Construction companies try to remedy these issues through the use of a mashup of online tools and apps like Connecteam and Excel. Communication from all the teams involved in the project, from contractors to subcontractors, to general teams, gets siphoned into these platforms. While digitization facilitates easier sharing of information, it may still lack context. And, the admin responsibility of keeping multiple formats and sources of information organized can become overwhelming.
Thankfully, there is an even better solution for construction companies who want to collect accurate, reliable, and clear information about how their project is progressing一drones!
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.
Benefits of Drone Progression Monitoring
Rather than a limited “boots-on-the-ground” perspective or trying to piece together bits of information relayed from multiple departments/teams, a drone flight offers a singular, trustworthy, and consistent perspective. Flying a drone over a construction site provides a fully inclusive aerial view of the site and the progress being made. The result is an obvious improvement over traditional methods of progress monitoring.
Drone flights for progress monitoring are:
- Time-saving – Using a drone speeds up the process of surveying a construction site, and also cuts down on labor costs. Additionally, drone software saves time afterward when compiling the progress report. All of the drone data can be processed and organized into an easy-to-read report using drone software. This eliminates the hours it would normally take to consolidate and organize all the information gathered manually. Managers can get updates in real-time, reducing the lag time between when a change happens on site and when they actually find out about it.
- Thorough – Areas that are dangerous to difficult to traverse on foot pose little problem to a drone. Eliminate safety risks to workers by sending a drone to inspect those important assets and construction zones instead.
- Reliable –New drone images can be taken monthly, weekly, or daily depending on the speed of the project. Drones can provide uniformity of perspective, location, and altitude with each inspection, making it easier to compare progress over time. Providing consistent viewpoints in each progress report improves productivity and cuts down on costs.
- Yield detailed, accurate, and easy-to-read reports – Keep members of various teams informed. Drone imagery can be shared with project managers, stakeholders, and investors who’re interested in keeping tabs on the project.
How to Track Construction Progress with Drones
Drones are the best system for construction progress monitoring. They can collect multiple types of data and that data can be used in many ways. In this section, we will go over the types of data you can collect with a drone and the use cases for drone data as it relates to progress monitoring.
Types of Drone Data and Use Cases for Progress Monitoring
Drones have sophisticated cameras and sensors that capture high-quality data in multiple formats. As technology advances, new types of drone data continue to emerge. Common types of drone data used for progress monitoring are photos, videos, and maps.
Drone photos are typically high quality, with many popular drones for construction coming equipped with 20-megapixel cameras or better. One use for aerial drone photos is progress comparisons. Thanks to features like waypoints and geotagging, a drone can replicate the exact photo each time it flies, providing consistent views to compare how the project has progressed over time as well as before and after shots.
DroneDeploy, a popular software platform for commercial drones, offers a tool called Progress Photos, allowing drone pilots to create a visual timeline of a job site and generate a replicable weekly progress report.
"Regular site progress reports offer context and add new dimensions to construction projects. However, it’s difficult to create consistent site imagery over the course of a project. Progress Photos solves this by creating a visual timeline of a project from start to finish. In doing so, it saves costs, keeps stakeholders informed, and addresses safety risks."
-Mike Winn, CEO of DroneDeploy
Drone videos provide data in motion. Video offers a 360° view of structures and assets on the construction site from multiple vantage points and angles. A view this comprehensive would have been unobtainable in the past without a manned aircraft to fly over the site (which is incredibly expensive). Drones are extremely maneuverable and compact, so they can access those hard-to-reach places with ease.
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Drone maps are an advanced form of drone data that can be customized to each project. Some types of drone maps are orthomosaic, thermal, and LiDAR maps. Each of these types of maps adds a layer of data that reveals details about a construction site that would be otherwise invisible to the human eye.
For example, drone orthomosaic maps can provide accurate measurements for the entire site or a targeted area of the site such as site storage where materials and supplies are kept. Also, in another example, thermal maps can reveal work done incorrectly by detecting heat escaping through cracks or leaks.
All of these types of drone data (photos, video, maps, etc.) are used to improve planning and communication on site. Regular progress updates provided through aerial drone imagery will help the project stay on schedule and in turn keep the project from going over budget. Drone imagery can be shared across teams, with project managers, and with off-site stakeholders and investors who’re interested in keeping tabs on the project.
Flying the Construction Site
When a construction company decides to improve its progress monitoring methods by using drones, the next step is to figure out what type of drone data they want to collect and what information will be the most beneficial to include in a progress report.
Some companies may need fully detailed 3D maps while others only require photographs to get the information they need. Another consideration construction companies should make is how often the site should be flown. This could be every day, week, month, etc. A plan should be developed based on the construction building schedule.
It’s wise for construction companies to consult with a licensed drone services provider while making a plan to use drones. A professional drone pilot, like those at The Drone Life, can inform you of all your options when it comes to the types of drone data available for your site.
They can also inform you of any hindrances to flying your location such as legal requirements or airspace restrictions in your area that may require a federal waiver to bypass.
Many construction companies choose to hire a drone professional to conduct the drone flights and share the data with their teams digitally using cloud-based drone software. This enables managers and executives to spend more time moving their projects forward and less time making expensive and time-consuming trips to the physical work site to assess progress themselves.
Next Steps: Getting Started with Drones in Construction
Implementing drones in your construction workflow can completely change your companies’ operations throughout the entire bidding, planning, and building process. The Drone Life specializes in partnering with construction and engineering companies to minimize pain points, increase profit margins, and ensure that projects are completed within deadline. Learn more about our solutions, completed projects, and pricing here.
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.
