Overview
Drone technology has come a long way over the last few years, with better sensors, longer flight times, and the addition of advanced technology like RTK to increase accuracy it was only a matter of time before the construction industry embraced the use of drones.
In this bullet-pointed article, which compliments our video podcast, we will look at drones in the construction industry, their use cases, and how to digitally transform construction.
Why Consider Drones in Construction?
Digital Transformation: The industry benefits from digital transformation.
Data Driven Decisions: More businesses are focusing on data-driven decisions.
Drones can be a great way to bridge the gap between the physical and digital.
Digital Twins
3D models or digital twins can be very advantageous to the development of a site and gives the client or stakeholder the ability to visualize the past, present and future of their development. Advantages include:
Digital Twins enable you to create a living breathing replica of physical world assets.
Drones can enable digital twins for both buildings and sites.
Lowered cost of operation means a higher frequency of surveys.
Maintaining 4D twins, this is where the 3D twin can replicate the past and look into the future of what the asset may look like.
To find out more about how to create drone 3D models please see our video below:
Use-Cases
So what use cases are there for drones in development?
There are three major use cases as detailed below:
Pre-build survey: To understand a site's present state prior to build.
Site Progress Monitoring: To understand changes on site, track progress, budgets and timelines.
Post-build survey: To visualize the completed work and communicate with the client in a graphical way.
Data-Driven Decisions
Having the data to hand after a mission gives your stakeholder or client the ability to make decisions regarding the site and the power to execute decisions quicker than they may have been able to without that data.
Those decisions may include:
"What does the site look like at the moment?"
"What is the progress from one day to another?"
"What do the hoarding lines look like?"
img credit: arup.com
Measurements
With the use of 3D mapping by drone, assets within the construction industry can now be measured from a digital image saving time and resources and giving your client or stakeholder near-accurate measurements without even visiting the site.
Measurements calculated by 3D modeling can include:
Stockpile measurements.
Volumetric Analysis from. drone data.
Cut and Fill exercises.
Slope measurements.
Inspection and Annotation reports.
Integrations
With the right software, you can easily export the drone data collected from your construction site and integrate that with third-party software.
Example third-party integrations commonly seen in AEC:
exporting models in CAD software.
integrations with BIM environments.
Consolidated systems bringing in data from many different tools and workflows.
Stakeholder Alignment
The advantage of having all this data in one place is the ability to align your stakeholders or clients so they can collaborate on the data together in one place.
Some of the advantages of this alignment can be seen below:
Bringing architects, engineers, surveyors, and constructors all onboard.
Providing a consistent single window into the current state of a site or build.
Tracking and documenting the workflows and processes of all stakeholders with respect to the asset.
Summary
To summarise, as you can see there is a lot of value in drone data and therefore a lot of benefits to the construction industry, it's not always about the drone but about the quality of the data that that drone provides.
High-quality data is the key to producing high-quality results and underpins everything when it comes to collecting data for the construction industry!
We hope this guide has helped you understand how to make the most out of drones in the construction industry.
If you'd like to learn more about how to produce high-quality data and get the most out of your drone missions, please feel free to visit our learning resources
If you haven't got a Hammer account as of yet and would like to try Hammer Missions you can get started on our free trial.
To learn more about our enterprise solutions, including mission collaboration, data processing, and AI solutions, please contact us at team@hammermissions.com
We look forward to hearing from you.
- Team at Hammer Missions
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