How to Build a Business Case to Use Drones in Your Construction, Engineering, or Architecture Operations

So, you've heard and read that drones are being increasingly used in the construction industry to realize multiple benefits: they are utilized to complete some tasks in commercial real estate development and construction workflows faster, cheaper, safer, and in many cases, more accurate than using traditional methods. The latest construction industry reports show that drone use cases in construction are expanding, and the number of flights is increasing.

At this point, you may be already convinced that bringing drones, or at least testing the inclusion of drones in your operations is the right thing to do. The main problem you are facing is that you know that trying this technology will take additional resource allocation from your organization (it may be time, budget, manpower, or all the above). And if you don't control any of these resources but see the opportunity and are eager to bring this to your managers, you will need to build a business case and present it to your superiors.

At the end of the day, you also want to keep yourself relevant and further your career in your organization or even create a new position job for yourself, so proposing using cutting-edge technology to make your company's operations more efficient will promote your reputation as forward-thinking and innovative. If you do control the decision-making and resources in your organization, you can contact V1DroneMedia today, and we can help you find the right drone solution and help incorporate drones into your operations.

Building a business case

steps on how to build a business case to incorporate drones into your operations:

1.   Understand the gaps that your organization must fill to build up this capability. They are:

·   Knowledge of national airspace regulations to gauge your ability to fly at any given site (resource allocation and cost – can be a drone pilot or drone operations manager)

·   Part 107 licensed staff or contractors that can legally and skillfully operate drones to accomplish required tasks (staff allocation and training cost, or cost to hire pilots)

·   Purchase drones that are suitable for your use cases (know-how and the cost)

·   Drone equipment maintenance (know-how and the cost)

·   Purchase Drone Insurance (unless your pilot contractors have it and can add your organization as an additional insured)

·   Establish Drone Operating procedures on work sites

·   Photogrammetry software (cost to purchase, human resources, and the know-how to process the data)

2.  Establish use cases in current workflows that can bring value to your organization and translate them into cost savings, a competitive advantage, new added value, or other benefits.

See our blog posts Photogrammetry, Top 4 Drone Uses in Construction, Drone Use in Construction Marketing, Drone Mapping: Unleashing the Full Potential of Aerial Data, What is Drone Mapping, and Drone Mapping Advantages vs. Conventional Mapping Methods for information on a variety of ways to incorporate drones into your operations. Benefits of these use cases include, but are not limited to:

·   Saving time in accomplishing tasks faster (translate that into saving $ as well)

·   Providing more accurate data for some use cases (translate into $ savings)

·   Potential for safety increase (can be one of the organizational goals, or translate it into insurance savings, or other $)

·   Add new value to your operations (translate that into a new product/service offering as a new stream of revenue, new customer benefit to differentiate you from the competition, etc.)

3.   Establish a budget range and other resources (like labor) necessary to acquire this capability.

You will also have to decide if you want to grow this capability from within, or outsource the data gathering and processing – i.e. Make or Buy decision)

4.   Run financial analysis with multi-year scenarios to show the Return on the Investment (ROI) of implementing drone technology into your workflows

5.   Develop a business case presentation that includes:

·   Industry trends with drone adoption data

·   Case studies of organizations that have adopted this technology (for example, see the article Ohio Department of Transportation Makes a Good Case for Their Drone ROI)

·   Pros/cons of not adopting drones

·   Outline your plan to build this capability for your organization

1.   How your organization will use the drones

2.   How drones will incorporate into workflows

3.   What resource investment is required (budget and timeline for labor, hardware, software, insurance, etc.)

4.   Financials with ROI. If you didn't have a financial professional from your workplace develop this model, make sure you can explain your assumptions. I recommend bringing a trusted finance team member on board to help you make the business case with concrete numbers

5.   Present risks of adopting drones into your organization and plans to mitigate them

6.   Finally, present your business case to your decision-makers.

Present your drone use business case

We hope you found this step-by-step guide on building a business case to include drones in your operations valuable.

V1DroneMedia is a Cleveland-based drone services company that was founded by an airline pilot with a background in remote control aviation and electrical engineering, and a marketing professional who has a couple of decades of experience in developing and pitching business cases to leadership (read more about V1DroneMedia here).

If you are looking for a consultant to help you include drones into your operation, help you train your employees to fly drones, build a business case, or are looking to outsource drone flying to a reputable company, contact us today, and learn more about our AEC Drone Services.

Drone Use in Construction Marketing

The use of drones in construction is growing rapidly, with companies in this industry using drones for various tasks throughout the construction process. We count several construction companies as our clients, and here we are breaking down the uses of drones and other tools for construction services marketing.

The most common use of drones in construction is for marketing, because aerial photography and video showcase project site progress, action on the site, and the finished project better from the bird's eye view than from the ground. You can see more from the aerial view and show off the scale of the project, and the best way to get this type of content is to have ongoing construction progress documentation using drones.

How do construction companies use drone photography and video for construction marketing?

1. Social Media Content

Construction aerial photography and video generate great content to showcase the progress on the construction site to stakeholders and the public. They can also be used as early-stage marketing for the brokers if the building needs to be leased by tenants. Below are some examples: before/during photo and video clip that was posted on social media by our clients.

Before/During drone photo of a construction site on West 25th Street in Cleveland

2. Project Portfolio Showcase on Construction Company Website or YouTube Channel

Every construction company should have a section on their website to showcase the projects that they have been involved in. What better way to showcase them than with photos or videos of finished projects, maybe even an impressive hyper-lapse or timelapse video of the building going up during the construction?

3. Customer Proposals, Presentations, Business Development

While not all scopes of work require to have visual updates of the construction site, having this type of deliverable throughout the construction process may enhance your proposal, and even take it over the top all things being equal among the other bidders. Especially if the construction client is not local, which is often the case.

We have a construction client whose building owner is overseas, and having consistent visual updates is very valuable to them. It gives transparency and increases their confidence and trust in the builder.

4. Video Web Banners on Construction Company's Homepage

Have you heard that the website homepage, which is most often the landing page, is the most important page to optimize the content on because it gets the most traffic, and that's where the visitors decide if they want to browse further? A video banner of prominent projects that the construction company has built will impress many viewers and increase their confidence and motivation to take the next step: browse more or contact the builder. Here is an example.

Video is becoming a very important part of marketing strategy for many industries, including construction marketing strategy. If you'd like to know more about the reasons why read our blog post Why Is Video Important For Your Marketing?

What is the Return on Investment (ROI) of construction site progress monitoring and documentation?

Many construction companies leverage drones and other visual technology tools for more than just marketing, such as for enhancing customer communications, internal project updates, construction site security, and re-creating the built environments in BIM (Building Information Modeling) and creating digital twins.

In addition to drones, these tools are time-lapse cameras and 360 virtual tours. The visual output of these tools over the lifecycle of the project can be used and reused for various purposes, which can make the acquisition cost of construction site imagery very efficient, and its Return on Investment (ROI) increases with every use.

These tools are within the digitization trend in construction, facilities management, and other industries. This imagery can be used to re-create the built environment in 3D in BIM (used for construction and design) or as digital twins (usually used for facility maintenance and operations) to give companies a complete 3D visual model of the build. It is a digital documentation record that can be accessed at any time to send information about the building, reflect changes with its physical counterpart, and allow for materials ordering and scheduling (in the design/construction stage or for maintenance and expansions if the building is operational). These types of digital models can replace final building drawings and operations manuals.

We outline more drone uses on construction site on our blog post Top 4 Drone Uses in Construction Site Management.

If you'd like a quote for construction progress monitoring job or consultation on what equipment is best to use on your construction site for a specific purpose or a variety of uses, contact us!

Drone Photogrammetry And Its Uses

What is Photogrammetry

Photogrammetry is the science of making precise measurements of three-dimensional objects and terrain features from two-dimensional photographs. The input to photogrammetry is multiple photographs of some real-life object or a scene, taken from different angles and locations, and the output is typically a map, a drawing, a measurement, or a 3D model of the subject matter.

How does photogrammetry work?

This process works by using the method of triangulation. It involves taking pictures from a minimum of two different locations. These pictures create lines of sight that lead from each camera to specific points on the object being photographed. The intersection of these lines plays into mathematical calculations that help produce geometric 3D coordinates of the specified points, which sometimes is referred to as “point cloud”.

Photogrammetry triangulation creates 3D object

Photogrammetry history and evolution

Photogrammetry is nearly as old as photography itself. Since its development approximately 150 years ago, photogrammetry has moved from a purely analog, optical-mechanical technique to analytical methods based on computer-aided solutions of mathematical algorithms, and now to digital photogrammetry based on digital imagery and computer vision, without any mechanical hardware. 

Topographic map creation was the first application of photogrammetry, which gave way to the development of simple map-making techniques geared towards the mapping needs of the military during World Wars I and II.

Types of Photogrammetry

Two general types of photogrammetry exist aerial (with the camera in the air) and terrestrial (with the camera handheld or on a tripod).

Terrestrial Photogrammetry

The photos used in photogrammetry can also be taken directly on the ground or from a fixed terrestrial position, such as by a person walking around or a camera mounted to a building.

Aerial (Drone) Photogrammetry

Aerial photogrammetry was introduced with the invention of flight, and drone technology advancements in the last 6 years have made it more accessible and affordable.

Now a drone captures several high-resolution photos over an area at different angles from multiple vantage points. These images are then processed with photogrammetry software (such as Pix4D, AgiSoft, Drone Deploy, etc.) that “stitches” the images together to create point clouds.

Photogrammetry accuracy

Several variables affect the overall accuracy of an aerial map, including camera specifications, the number of photos collected, the photo overlap percentage, the flight altitude, atmospheric conditions (wind speed, air pressure, air density, cloud cover, position of the sun), the GPS signal strength, and the ground sampling distance (GSD). A lower flight altitude yields a smaller GSD, and a smaller GSD yields a more accurate and higher resolution aerial map.

Many of these factors are already accounted for by main drone manufacturers that produce drones for collecting visual data used for photogrammetry processing. These drones are equipped with proper cameras, and the differences between those drones are oftentimes the quality of the camera itself, and the experience of the drone operator in using the drone for photogrammetry data collection (programming the flight path, calibrating, camera settings, etc.)

Relative and absolute photogrammetry accuracy

In aerial photogrammetry, there are such terms as relative (local) accuracy and absolute (global or spatial) accuracy.

Relative accuracy is the measurement of how objects are positioned relative to each other in a reconstructed model (Orthophoto map, Digital Surface Model, or 3D point cloud). Most aerial maps provide a high degree of relative accuracy. So, for simple use cases (measuring distances, volume, and height differences, etc.) relative accuracy should work just fine.

Absolute accuracy refers to the difference between the location of the objects on the reconstructed model and their true position on the Earth (or a geodetic coordinate system). Aerial maps do not provide a high degree of absolute accuracy unless Ground Control Points (GCPs) are used during the drone aerial data collection.

Relative vs. absolute accuracy

What are Ground Control Points (GCPs) in photogrammetry?

Ground control points are points on the ground with known ground coordinates, which can be easily recognizable in aerial photos. The ground coordinates can be measured with traditional surveying methods or an existing map (even Google Earth map), or smart control points that automatically upload position data, such as Aero Points.  To calculate the coordinates for each point on the aerial photography several ground control points’ coordinates should be in place in the survey area and they should be clearly visible in the taken aerial photographs.

Ground Control Point Positioning

Drone Photogrammetry Outputs

The photogrammetry software generates object or area point clouds that enable data visualization, turning these clouds into various outputs for different applications, with many allowing for measurements such as distances, heights, areas, and volumes:

• Orthomosaic maps are stitched from multiple drone photos that have been corrected for lens distortion, with each pixel containing 2D geo-information (X, Y) which enable the generation of measurements such as horizontal distances and surfaces.

Orthomosaic Map

• Topographic maps show details of the relief features using contour lines (connecting points of equal elevation), giving a better understanding of the surface of the area.

Topographic Map

• 3D Point Cloud is generated from drone images with each point containing geospatial (X, Y, Z) and color information. It provides a model for distance, area, and volume measurements.

3D Point Cloud

3D Model is often generated from the 3D Point Cloud, and is a reproduction of the edges, faces, vertices, and texture of the object or area shot by the drone, and is most useful for visual inspection. This type of model can be used in CAD (Computer-Aided Design) or BIM (Building Information Modeling) software.

3D Model Screenshot

• Digital Surface Model represents the elevation associated with the surface of the earth including topography and all human-made features, containing 2D information (X, Y) and the altitude (Z) of the highest point for the area.

Digital Surface Model

• Digital Terrain Model (also Digital Elevation Model) is a topographic model representing the bare ground surface without any objects like plants or buildings and can be uploaded into and manipulated by computer programs. The model contains 2D information of the area.

Digital Terrain Model. Credit: Jason Stoker

These outputs can be used in many applications in various industries, where the workflows for the collection of this type of data were largely manual and time-consuming. With drone photogrammetry productivity and efficiency of such operations can be improved significantly, and allow for more opportunities to innovate with such easy access to digitized data.

If you are interested in learning more about drone photogrammetry and its applications for your business, Contact us for a free consultation!

Top Drone Applications in Construction Project Management

Many people don't think of drone uses beyond military applications or taking aerial pictures and video for professional photographers, videographers, and filmmakers. The truth is many industries are adopting this multi-use tool at very fast rates, and using drones for construction project management and site visualization is a top trend in the construction industry, according to Project Manager News.

Here are the top 4 drone uses for construction projects

1.   Construction Project Management via Construction Site Visualization

Drone photos and videos taken and shared at regular intervals for construction monitoring to verify progress, changes, and comparison vs. design documentation can improve communication and decision-making between the construction project management team members. When they are looking at the same pictures or video vs. written or verbal reports from several people walking the construction site at different times, there is a lot more clarity and agreement on the state of the site's progress, leading to faster problem identification and decision-making.

360 video and photo technology, when combined with drones can help produce virtual construction site tours (with interior and exterior of the building, see our example here) that can be used for touring the site virtually by team members, customers, or owner's reps, which gives transparency on the project progress, can help resolve conflicts, and speed up decision making.

Site mapping using drone photogrammetry software can be performed in all stages of construction, overlaying processed drone site maps with site plans for utility, wastewater, equipment location, etc.), helping with planning and managing the site.

2.     Drone Inspection (Building, Façade, roof, Equipment)

Remote drone inspections performed by qualified drone pilots can replace hours of human time spent inspecting and tracking the state or location of equipment, structures, and critical assets, decreasing the likelihood of employee accidents and human error when gathering this data visually by walking the site or climbing structures, leading to a more efficient, safer, and cost-effective operation.

Proven drone photogrammetry scanning software such as Drone Deploy, Pix4D, AgiSoft (and others) offer tools to upload and process point cloud data gathered by a drone pilot in a matter of hours, giving real-time actionable information in form of hi-res images and digital twins of structures (3D aerial photogrammetry models) for someone to conduct an inspection in the safety of their office, and provide collaborative tools for the construction team to document photographic evidence and make notes on "problem" areas.

3.     Construction Site Documentation

You can document as-built conditions upon the completion of the project via panoramic photo and video virtual tours, site maps, and 3D model creation that can be integrated into BIM (Building Information Management) and MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing) documentation.

Many photogrammetry drone software tools also offer integration of processed data (aerial maps, 3D models, etc.) with leading construction management software platforms, making the incorporation of this technology into existing workflows easier.

4.     Construction Services Marketing

It is well-documented that aerial photos and videos of construction sites are some of the best ways to market construction services. Construction site drone photos and videos can be used in customer presentations, websites, and social media to showcase progress and finished projects that give the firm credibility and get prospective customers excited about a potential partnership. What can be more gratifying and exciting than seeing a building which took months, if not years to build, go up in a Hyperlapse video in less than a minute?

Finally, the ability to provide construction site visualization and progress reports via photos, video, and virtual tours can be an additional way to make your construction company stand out among competitors when bidding for a construction project, as that's an additional value you are providing with multiple customer benefits.

We at V1DroneMedia specialize in providing safe, legal, and high-quality aerial drone services in and around Cleveland, Ohio, to various industries, including construction. Check out V1DroneMedia Drone Construction Services and Contact Us for a consultation or a project quote.