Colorado construction sites abuzz with drones, as industry embraces unmanned aircraft
What's that buzzing? Why, unmanned aerial vehicles, of course. From Summit County to Denver's Central Business District, drones - frequently called unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs by industry professionals - are being put to work on construction sites across Colorado these days, part of a national trend as business owners get better acquainted with the devices' capabilities, the savings they can generate and the federal guidelines regulating them.
From article, (What’s that buzzing? Why, unmanned aerial vehicles, of course.
From Summit County to Denver’s Central Business District, drones — frequently called unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs by industry professionals — are being put to work on construction sites across Colorado these days, part of a national trend as business owners get better acquainted with the devices’ capabilities, the savings they can generate and the federal guidelines regulating them.
The propeller-powered machines are taking progress photos, creating topographical maps, performing inspections and knocking out other tasks that would otherwise require significant man hours or a helicopter to achieve. And the trajectory of their commercial use is trending upward.
“There has been an explosion in the use of drones” for commercial purposes, said Bill Emison, an unmanned aircraft systems industry consultant based in Denver. “For construction, especially big projects, it’s a no-brainer.”
Weekly drone flights have been a standard part of PCL Construction’s ongoing overhaul of a Colorado Department of Transportation snow plow facility in Silverthorne. Flying autonomously with human supervision, the resident drone regularly flies a grid pattern over the property to create a high-resolution map and 3-D model accurate to within a half inch, company officials say.
“We can use that (map) in a number of different ways,” said Chris Lierheimer, a PCL field coordinator and a licensed commercial drone pilot. “We have been overlaying our contract documents onto this map. We can compare the drawings to what has been done in the field and spot discrepancies. It allows us to be more efficient and prevent rework by spotting them early on.”
PCL, which has its U.S. headquarters in Denver, has 14 pilots and 13 drones licensed with the Federal Aviation Administration, Lierheimer said. It launched its unmanned aircraft program around four years ago, and uses a software platform from tech firm 3D Robotics to program flights and collect, process and view data.
The hardware isn’t cheap. The DJI brand Phantom 4 Pro with a 4K camera Lierheimer is using in Silverthorne cost PCL around $1,300. (Higher-end drones and camera/advanced sensor packages can cost tens of thousands of dollars.) But the aircraft, training and certification that go into the program pay their way, Leirheimer said. Drones improve safety by performing potentially dangerous inspections in hard-to-reach areas. They collect and process information faster than traditional surveying and with greater detail. A drone can fly over a 10-acre site in 15 minutes, and two or three hours later, produce measurements of all the materials piled there, Lierheimer said. Surveyors could take a day to collect data, and two or three more to process and return findings to the job site.)
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