How Using Drones Instead of Workers can Lower Inspection Costs
When it comes to land inspections and surveying, accuracy and usability are key factors. For a job to be successful, your client must know that they can use your land survey as a reliable piece of information. It never hurts if you can wrap up the process quickly and efficiently, either.
With the help of drones inspection, costs have decreased, tower surveying is simpler than ever before, and the entire process is safer and faster for workers.
Here’s what you need to know about how drone inspection is improving tower surveying for the better.
5 Benefits of Drone Inspection
While manual surveying involves skilled teams, drone inspection provides the following five benefits:
1. Increased Safety
Even when teams are experienced and professional, tower inspection injuries happen. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 887 workers died as a result of falls, trips, and slips (Across all sectors) in 2017. In the world of traditional, manual inspections, there aren’t many ways to decrease fall rates. When you introduce drones, though, everything changes.
Drones are, by definition, crewless aircraft. As such, they keep teams safely on the ground and reduce the risk of falls and accidents. Additionally, drones require less equipment than manual teams, which makes the worksite a safer and less complicated place.
2. Time Savings
Even the most skilled human teams are vulnerable to human error. From sight mistakes to reporting glitches, many things can go wrong during a manual inspection.
Teams who use drones, however, stand to reduce their error rates and improve accuracy and efficiency. Because drones deliver high-quality visual information, they ensure accurate reporting for each inspection.
3. Cost Factors for Manual Surveying
When you deploy a human team for an inspection, you need equipment, personnel training, liability protection, and sweeping insurance. With drones, though, the need for each of these things decreases exponentially.
While you’ll need a drone license (a part 107 license, specifically), these waivers are affordable and easy to maintain. Beyond that, drones save teams money on all other cost factors.
4. Better Data Collection
Drones are equipped with several advanced features that human teams can’t replicate. Most enterprise systems provide the following:
- Mapping
- Thermal
- High-Res imaging
- 4K Video
These combined technologies allow for improved data collection and more accurate information transmission during inspections. Because drone surveys begin with set ground control points, these aircraft can verify data on the ground, providing accurate and reliable results every time. This improved data provides more options and simplifies modeling.
5. Improved Graphics and Videos
When it comes to inspections, visuals matter. Fortunately, drones provide the visual information and videos your team needs to integrate survey plans and create realistic data. Later on, these same visual assets can become valuable resources for public outreach and education.
The Manual Limitations of Drones
While drones are more advanced and capable than ever, they are subject to some manual limitations. These include the following:
- Weather
- Time
- Knowledge/Training Needed
Although there is no way to route around these limitations entirely, teams can limit them by ensuring ample preparation and ongoing training for teams.
Drone Inspection Use Cases
While drones are applicable for a wide variety of inspection and survey duties, they’re particularly applicable during structural analysis. Learn more here.
Structural Analysis, Hazards or Obstacles
Cell tower inspections are expensive, but recent research shows that drones have the potential to reduce the cost by up to 50% – slashing between $5,000 and $200 from the average price of each inspection.
Drones also reduce the risk inherent with manned inspections. Today, manual cell tower inspection is one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, but increased use of drone inspections is making the process safer each day.
By reducing human intervention, drones step in to reduce outages, improve safety, and provide better outcomes for clients.
Drone Nerds Recommendations: The Best Drones for Tower Inspections
Wondering which drones are best for tower inspections [INSERT LINK TO BLOG #3]? Our team recommends the following:
Each of these drone systems is equipped with top-quality software and imaging tools, which allow you to get the job done and provide accurate, fast, professional outcomes for your clients.Ready to learn more about drone inspection or find the ideal enterprise drones for your applications? Visit Drone Nerds today.
My uncle is thinking about adding a fence and a shed onto his property but he isn’t sure where his property line is. Getting a professional to help his survey his land and mark it out for him could be really useful and allow him to start construction sooner. It was interesting to learn about how drone surveying can really help keep people safe while making the workplace safe and less complicated.
I loved how you mentioned that drones can reduce error rates! My husband and I are wanting to add more rooms to our home, and we want to make sure that we know where our property line ends so that we don’t pass it. We’ll have to look into finding a company that uses drones for surveying.
This is some really good information about how a drone can be used for a survey. It is nice to know that it can help with thermal mapping. That is great to know if you need to do some land surveying.
That is a good point that visuals matter in inspections. Maybe it would be good to get a drone cell town inspection. That is something I would want if I had a cell tower.
I think it’s cool how you said that drones are can collect improved data and is more accurate. I feel like that all surveyors should be using drones for their job. It would make everything go by much faster so that they can get more work done and make more money.