Drones

[dgaddis]

Anyone here used a drone? We just got one at work to take photos/video of completed projects, as well as use it for surveying, I'll be 'the drone guy' since I manage our website and take photos and whatnot. Anyhow, we picked the DJI Mavic Air 2, about ~$1,100 out the door w/the 'fly more' kit that comes with extra batteries and some other stuff. About half an hour of flight time per battery. 12MP still camera w/digital voodoo to bring it up to 48MP, shoots up to 8K video, over 200fps is available at lower resolutions, all sorts of 'auto pilot' features. SUPER easy to fly. If you've ever played a video game where you use two joysticks to move around it takes about 5 minutes to get the hang of it.

Since we're using it commercially I have to get a certificate from the FAA...so soon I'll (sorta kinda) be a pilot and I won't be a poser when wearing my pilots watch haha.

Anyhow, I've got a lot to learn as far as camera settings and whatnot. Looking forward to it though! K-12 schools are the bulk of our work, and it's hard to get good exterior photos from the ground since they tend to be large footprint buildings.

Studying for the exam to get the certificate.


Our office (nice new white roof) from 400ft (as high as we can legally fly it)


My hood.


The Ocmulgee River. The powerplant on the horizon is the largest coal fired plant in North America, and it's about ~18-19 miles away from the camera.

[rwsaunders]

In addition to site cameras that record activities and key environmental conditions, we now shoot all of our projects weekly with a drone. As we work nationally, we contract locally for the service as we like our site supers to stay focused on the project. Once you used them you never go back.

[dgaddis]

I work for an MEP consulting firm, so we aren't (exactly) in the construction business, we do design and have a CA guy who routinely visits work sites to ensure things are being built per our design and specs. Our firm is ~33yrs old and most of the employees have been here for 25yrs, but there is a 'new class' of us younger folks who have been hired the last few years (me being one of the first 4 years ago). We have traditionally not done a good job marketing ourselves, we did a lot of work for the same handful of architects. But we do want to keep growing, doing bigger jobs, with more clients, etc. So I volunteered to rebuilt our website, which was (no joke) at least 15 years old and looked terrible, and I'm going to keep our 'gallery' up to date with recent work (something we really didn't do at all previously). K-12 schools are the biggest chunk of our work, but we do stuff at various military bases as well, as well as local government buildings, things like that. We've done some prison work, hospitals, apartments, dorms, some industry (we have an alligator farm project right now that's pretty cool). I previously worked for a company that was the 3rd largest engineering firm in the world at the time (CH2M Hill, which merged with Jacobs a few years ago) and I vastly prefer working where I am now, in a much smaller firm (we have about 30 folks), where I get to do more and feel like my contribution actually matters. Plus we have office dogs and they're awesome.

Anyhow, the drone will be a big asset I think for marketing purposes. It'll also be helpful for surveying, we can take photos of rooftops and drop them into RevIt to sketch on top of for laying out existing equipment and whatnot without having to measure every little thing in the field.

Here's some of our recently completed projects. I started almost 4 years ago and some of the first bigger jobs I worked on are just now complete and have kids in the school. Always nice seeing a computer model turn into a steel and brick and glass.

$57 million high school on the south side of ATL.






Another $57 million HS, but on the north side of ATL.






Big ~$50 million renovation to this HS on the south side. The project was done in four phases while school was in session over the course of several years, and by the end of it most of the original building had been torn down and rebuilt. This was actually the first big project I worked on, they're just now wrapping it up and applying the final touches.

[vertical_doug]

[sk_tle]

I have a drone which has been collecting dusts for months because I have been to lazy to fill the paper to be correctly insured as per our local laws. Which means I probably don't really need it although I enjoyed flying the one I owned 4y ago.

It is just that between riding my bike, paddling, having social activities with friends or flying a drone, the drone always lose during my free time. I wish I had a need to do that professionnally though.

[gregl]

Dustin, my sincere thanks for your professionalism and adherence to UAV regulations! I have spent a big chunk of the past few years working in the UAV technical space, including my employer's UAV operations and management, UAV safety (including managing large UAVs flying in the US national airspace), and counter-UAV operations. One of our customers even deemed my team's work "historic." It warms my heart to see people using UAVs in safe, effective ways. All too often, I see them used inappropriately and illegally. Of course, we have ways to deal with those folks too...

Greg