Developers, Contractors, and Lenders Aided by Drone Surveying

“Drone technology has revolutionized the land-development industry with time savings, reduced costs, and safety mitigation,” says Trevor Byrd, Survey Party Chief and UAV Pilot for Anderson Engineering. Byrd explains how the technology has proven useful for the developers contractors, and lenders. This is sponsored content.

Duration: 2:14

Video Transcript:

- Drone technology has revolutionized the land development industry with time savings, reduced cost, and safety mitigation.

I'm Trevor Byrd. I'm a Survey Party Chief and UAV Pilot for Anderson Engineering. How we used to survey was with GPS and total station instruments. Now with drone imagery, we can get a lot higher definition topography picture of the site so that where we used to have maybe a point every 25 or 50 feet, now we have a point every two centimeters over the whole site so that we're getting a more accurate existing surface so that whenever we calculate those hydrology models, that we know exactly how much water is coming off of the existing surface so that we can put in the right storm water structures that we know are going to hold enough water for all the drainage located on site.

We can extract that data from the 3D model to get really accurate surfaces. Our drone is used for progress updates for financial institutions so that they know exactly how much progress has taken place on the construction site, a more complete picture of the entire site and know what's going on. You might be getting maybe just pictures of the building going up, but they're also putting in the curb and gutter that's maybe 200 feet away from that that you can't see on site that you can see a lot better with a drone or a map.

We also use our drones for legal documentation of the existing conditions on site. We use that a lot of times whenever we have utilities on site, and a lot of times whenever you have an issue with a utility-- let's say somebody hits a utility while they're doing grading of the building, and the construction company could be liable for that issue, and with our drone image we can say with definite certainty whether or not the utility was marked by the utility locator or if maybe the construction company just missed the markings themselves. It's cheaper for everybody, definitely, hiring a drone company to come out and get preexisting conditions rather than having to go through litigation and all the issues involved with it.