What are drones really used for in the construction industry?
We had a poor guy who we were showing some stuff on a project that was
doing some kind of inspection, you know, a building that was getting
finished up and he was using binoculars to do it, and, and poor guy.
We showed him some of the kind of functions within the platform and,
you know, you could, you could tell his ears and eyes were perking
up, like, this is amazing and.
All right.
I wanna welcome Grant Hagan to the, your drum questions Answered podcast.
Thanks for coming on, grant.
You bet.
Hey, team, nice to be joining in with us and, uh, yeah, excited
to answer some questions.
Uh, today's question we're gonna be addressing is what are drones really
used for in the construction industry?
Um, we hear from people all the time.
They know that drones are used in construction.
They have some loose ideas.
Grant, do you wanna give just like a quick, like 20 seconds
on your background now?
You've worked for construction companies, you've worked for drones,
now you've worked for Jones, and now you work for DroneDeploy.
We met at a drone conference.
Let everybody know 20 seconds of why they should, uh, listen to
you, . Probably because I have more construction spirits
than, uh, than tech experience.
But yeah, I worked, uh, went to school for construction engineering, uh,
that led me to a construction and architecture firm for about 10 years.
Kind of worked my way through project management, virtual
design and construction.
That was kind of where I, uh, transitioned my time from at that firm.
Uh, and then was a longtime drone deploy user and just, uh, had an
opportunity to come on the team and really help them with this idea of,
uh, construction within their platform and how to make it even better, uh,
from a product side and enablement side for customers that were using it.
And so have been on the drone deploy team for, uh, a little, uh, over
a year, um, and have been in the construction space for over 10 years.
So, yeah, it's been really fun to kind of see these two, uh, come.
Sounds
like you are the perfect person for this question then.
Uh, so I'm excited to, to dive into it.
So why don't we just start on a high level, you know, for those who are
maybe less familiar with drones and construction, what are just some
quick hits, uh, kind of like right now, today, the biggest ways you are
seeing construction companies or drone service providers using drones in
cons.
It's, it's a great question to, to tackle cuz really there's
a lot of facets to it, right?
Like you can start 50,000 feet, move down to 30,000 and kind of eventually
get it and land on the ground.
But, you know, a big challenge in construction, uh, unlike manufacturing,
uh, where you, you know, have a controlled environment, you're doing a lot of, uh,
small things to eventually, you know, make a re repetitive, uh, amount of a product.
Construction's very much linear, meaning like you're building one
product, uh, out in the field.
And, uh, to track that and to really.
As it gets built is very challenging.
Um, and, and not only that, uh, take yourself outside
of a manufacturing facility.
You know, we're working on, uh, tens and even hundreds of acres of a site.
And so to track information across a large, uh, or to track changes
across a large area is just also really challenging as well.
And, and, you know, drones really hit this sweet spot, um, for value in
construction is it's a very simple tool.
Uh, it's a really effective tool, uh, and it's a really safe tool,
which is also just a huge, uh, added value in construction.
To really perform and do things a lot safer, uh, which is just really cool.
So that's probably the 50,000 foot view is really just tracking the changes
that happen on a job, uh, and having the ability to do that very efficiently,
uh, over a large project site, which is typically what construction is in.
You know, we were out on a project trying to do some quality control and inspecting,
uh, just some really challenging scopes of work, uh, on some roofing conditions.
And, you know, the, the legacy way of doing that typically in
construction is putting someone in that position to inspect it, visual.
Either using some binoculars from the ground, which is just
challenging to see as well.
Uh, and so at the time we were saying, Hey, you know, maybe, maybe
this drone could, could get us eyes in the sky and maybe a perspective
that we weren't able to see.
So the kind of 30,000 foot, you know, value add is quality control.
Uh, there's, there's a lot of things you need to inspect, uh, in
a construction progress, uh, that are just really challenging to.
C uh, and the really, the, the legacy way of doing that is putting
someone in that position, which can just be really dangerous.
Um, you know, the, a lot of times you'll either drive by buildings and
see people hanging off what we call swing stages, which are just, you know,
kind of window or maintenance or, uh, exterior, uh, kind of elements that
they use to maintenance buildings.
And, and that's really what the kind of legacy method is, is going and putting
someone in that unsafe condition.
So that's really how I got into drones and, and really the first place was like,
Hey, Uh, what could we use to put an eye in a position that maybe we wouldn't have
to, uh, or we didn't have the ability to, in just a much safer and efficient way.
Uh, we didn't have to put someone on a roof, uh, didn't have to do
a tie off or any kind of training for them to be in that place.
Really just to put their eyes and see what needed to be corrected.
I think that's a challenge with drones too, is they won't go correct the
issue and it's not really ever going to completely eliminate the human
in the loop element, but it is going to remove a part of the element, and
that's really the inspection part of it.
to know what you have to go into then?
Correct.
When you hear drones in construction, I feel like the two things that pop
up frequently in that conversation are progress updates, just mm-hmm.
generally wide shots, and then people doing a photogrammetry, like actually
creating some type of map or, mm-hmm.
topography or like a record or 3D model of the building.
Of all of those, which is kind of the most common, the most
difficult, the most useful.
Just thinking through, you know, what you know.
Drones can be used for, you know,
talk a little bit about.
Having progress documentation from, you know, the legacy way of doing that
is just having a helicopter service.
You know, that those were pretty prevalent for a long time, which, you know, they go
fly 30 sites in a, in a day or afternoon and go take four corners of the site.
Um, just to kind of give that overall aerial perspective,
and, and that was really common.
You know, thing for a really long time.
And, you know, progress reports and billing reports are a really big
part of construction, uh, as you're submitting, you know, for application
and payments and things like that.
And so those progress reports are huge.
They give access to people that aren't on the site or maybe stakeholders
that aren't in that region that can't go physically walk the site.
And, you know, I think, uh, kind of the, if you go down even another
level, the 10,000 foot value add, that's even really been more.
Hear these last few years from Covid is just the idea of virtual collaboration.
You know, we're able to have eyes on a project, um, in more
perspectives, more ways, more media types than just your standard photo.
You know, we're a lot of user in DroneDeploy.
Don't just use it for mapping and modeling, which is a
huge value add in itself.
But, you know, they're doing things like progress videos and progress panoramas.
Uh, You know, those are consistently, uh, spotted places throughout the
project that, you know, at the end of the job they can create a nice
little time lapse and see the changes from really any perspective that
they wanted through, you know, the flight controller within DroneDeploy.
So, you know, the mapping and modeling side of it, you know,
that's a huge value add in itself.
There's some kind of things that happen to make that, uh, a good deliverable,
but the benefit is, and for many of who've either used drone ploy or have
looked into it as it's a really easy thing to do, you're dragging photos
into a photo processing engine.
Gonna stitch together a high resolution map, and then it's gonna create what
we call a, a photogrammetry model, which just enables you to kind of, uh,
move around a building as if you're, uh, in a, you know, a Google Earth
or Apple Maps kind of view, uh, in
3d.
In your experience, you know, on construction sites, how often are.
They're actually like using drones for these types of documentation or other
like modeling, are they like, oh, we've gotta have this on every project, or
is it just like, we're gonna only use it on projects of a certain size or
like, I guess where do you see the parameters of when someone is making
DEC as a decision to use a drone,
uh, or not?
Yeah, that's a great question.
Uh, one that we get asked a ton.
Uh, and, and I would say across the board, the most frequent answer is, is
usually weekly, uh, for a couple reasons.
One in which there's, you know, weekly meetings that happen, uh, with your
subcontractors and key stakeholders with your owners or clients that you're working
with, and they just wanna be updated.
You know, construction sites can change so quickly, even from week to week, whether
it's a, you know, a smaller job or a job.
You know, hundreds of people on it and all this stuff that's, that's changing.
And so, you know, that weekly kind of ebbs and flows throughout, um,
uh, the life cycle of construction.
You know, specifically in the pre-construction phase and earthwork
moving phase, you're for sure wanting to be documenting it weekly just from
all the changes that are happening.
And, you know, as you're going up the building and doing a lot of the
exterior work and facade work, you know, you, you basically need to
have really key milestone capture.
As those different elements are being installed, so you don't have
to go back and take off any of those elements or see what was underneath it.
So yeah, just in a general sense, weekly is, is pretty prevalent.
Um, and then I would say adding on to that, it's really at key milestones.
So you could be documenting it weekly, but know, hey, you're gonna be, um,
you know, closing up an exterior wall or you're gonna have a, a, you know,
a key, um, report to produce, uh, that you're gonna wanna, you know, have.
Stone, uh, to document an app, but, which is really surprising.
You know, we used to do these aerial helicopter photos once a
month and we'd see so much change that would happen in that month.
And, you know, I think as soon as the floodgates opened and, and we're enabling
people to capture these more frequently and automated in that matter, you
know, they're not, Really doing much.
They're just going out and watching it, uh, go on performance mission, you
know, we've seen people even document it twice a week, you know, once at the
beginning and, and once at the end.
So, weekly is probably the most common, but I would say it definitely
ebbs and flows from the size of a project, the scale of it, and kind
of where it's at in the life cycle.
So, speaking to the.
People are seeking to do kind of a drone service business and work with
construction companies and they're like kind of clueless about how to approach
them or what their needs are, like what's one piece of advice you would
give them on like how to maybe have an initial conversation with a construction
company or kind of feel that out, see if that's something that they could do
for them.
Great question.
Uh, I have kind of a funny response and then more of maybe a practical response.
. Uh, first one fu funny maybe is just like, Hey, go get yourself
a bear of construction boots and a, a construction vest.
Yeah.
You know, I, I think oftentimes people, you know, see a construction fence and
they kind of wonder what's on the other side of it and, you know, may have a
chance to go engage in a conversation, but, hey, you wanna, uh, engage
with that community of individuals?
You should, you should look like them and, and, you know, put on a vest and get some.
To and a hard hat to, you know, basically show them, hey, uh,
the, the most important thing on any construction side is to get
people home at the end of the day.
And, and being in looking like that and having the safety , you
know, attire to do that.
That's why I just say it's funny.
We, we interacted with a lot of service providers that would just kind of
come with shorts and a t-shirt and things that you're like, Hey, uh,
there's some things here that maybe, uh, you could go get a little bit
more, uh, safe, uh, safer attire on.
But,
and
it's like, do they just instantly stand out as like, that person has no
idea what they're doing.
Yeah.
And, and, and I say that jokingly, but also serious.
You know, you, you wanna show them that obviously you, you care a lot
about what is important to them.
And that kind of leads into the second point is just, you know, construction
has such a, a vast community of people, whether that's, uh, from big, big
projects to small, small projects.
And more than likely, I, I could guess that.
Someone on or listening to, you know, a podcast like this knows someone in
construction at some point or some level, or a friend of a friend or a family
member, and, and honestly going and asking them, Hey, what, like what are some of
the pain points you see on, you know, projects that you've gotten to work on?
I mean, construction people love to tell stories.
They love to talk about their projects.
You know, it's, I heard it said once that, you know, they
become a part of their family.
Those projects that they work on are really, you know, they get to go show
their family members and drive by those projects and relive that part of life.
And that's really true.
And, um, I, I would say becoming and educating yourself, whether it's through
listening to things like this or resources or, you know, reaching out to individuals
that you got to meet at a conference or you got to hear through a podcast like
this, like, uh, go, go really do the, to.
Due to the due diligence of educating yourself of, of what those pain points
are to go and engage with, uh, those potential customers that they may be.
What's kind of your
spiel that you give, like a person in construction who maybe e either
doesn't know as much about drones or they're a little bit resistant
to adopting something new.
Like what's your your best pitch to get them to like take the
pl.
Start simply, simply start, you know that drones aren't going away.
Uh, they're, they're clearly have been transforming the way that, you know,
project teams have been, uh, ensuring a safer project, uh, have been, you
know, completing projects on schedule and ahead of time and on budget.
Like, you know, there, there's a period, you know, five to seven years ago that
drones were just kind of continuing to be.
Uh, played out and seeing kind of how it was gonna all come
together and, and we're past that.
You know, we, we've seen a lot of just very large sized companies and
projects really embrace this idea.
And the idea of, you know, simply start and start simply can kind of come
down to really however you want to.
You know, some of our biggest customers don't own a single
drone, and, you know, they.
They see themselves in truly, they are construction companies.
They're not drone companies.
And so they've chosen to go down the path of engaging with a drone service
provider or, um, you know, we have a data on demand function within our, you
know, platform that you can go and order flights just as if, you know, you're
ordering something off of Uber Eats.
And so that's cool.
. That's really the encouragement I would give folks is that, um,
hey, we, we've, we've seen this technology isn't going away.
That's what we've gotten so excited about and seeing, uh, how much
customers have really embraced it.
Uh, but it, it's not as complicated as you would think and, and you
can get as involved, uh, and build out your own team and pilots and
programs as much as you want.
Uh, or you can leverage really the expertise of a lot of people and, you
know, folks like you and your community that you're, you know, building
through, uh, channels like this too.
So just simply start and start.
I
feel like that's a, a motto that you could use for basically
any area of like work or life.
The biggest
, it's used
quite frequently.
Other parts too.
. I've
never heard it, but I love it cuz one of the hardest parts, I mean this isn't
about drones, but just work in general.
If you feel like a project is, is like too large, at least in my mind, I'm like
always procrastinating or like try to find something else to do that's easier.
Um, lemme just break it down.
Hey, simply start.
I love it.
What's your favorite recent?
Uh, in the construction world, um, either something funny that happened or
bad that happened on construction site.
I don't know.
What do you, any good story that you think people might, uh, enjoy hearing,
uh, in the world of construction?
You know, anytime you show some folks, uh, just how this can help them, um, you
know, Really at the end of the day due to their job more effectively or do it
safely or, or save them some time to go home to their, you know, family sooner.
Those are always fun jobs.
You know, we, we run into all the time with just different features
and functions within the tool of like, man, I had no idea that that
was something that, um, that you guys could offer or that was done.
You know, we, we had a poor guy who we were showing some stuff,
uh, to on a project that was doing some kind of inspections.
Uh, you know, a building that was getting finished up and he was using binoculars to
do it, and, and honestly can't blame him.
I mean, he had a parking deck that he could sit on and kind of look
and scan up and down the building.
It was great.
It, it was obviously the, the tool that he felt was best to go and do it.
And, and poor guy, we showed him some of the kind of functions within the platform
and, you know, you could, you could tell his ears and eyes were perking up.
Like, this is amazing.
And, and we asked him, we said, Hey, is, you know, do you think this is,
could be a helpful tool for you?
And he's like, man, No idea what I've been doing the last week or two of, you
know, sitting out on this parking deck and it happened to be here in Texas
and it was, you know, super hot out.
And so, yeah, you know, those are always the, the fun stories because,
you know, you, you hope that that's the thing that's gonna kind of, uh,
give people an opportunity to, to get home sooner and again, do their job
safer and with the higher quality too.
So I just love those stories, you know, poor guy.
He was excited to see some of the, the functions that, you know,
could, could help him in his job.
But, um, yeah, I just tho those are really fun to kind of hear and,
and, and find ways to help them.
I wasn't
sure
if that story was gonna go, he was really bummed that he didn't, he, you took away
his like job where he can chill and look up and down the, uh, side of the building.
But I guess you're sitting in a parking lot in Texas.
Maybe that's not as, uh, luxurious as it sounds.
He probably is dying out
there.
Yeah, he probably had a good umbrella, uh, next to him too.
But yeah, I was just, you know, those are, those are hard cuz you're like, man, I, I
really do want to help and, and find ways to, to kind of maybe make that a little
bit better than it was the day before
Just bring him
a, a ice cold bottle of water and a DroneDeploy subscription.
Be like, listen here.
That's right.
Awesome.
Well, grant, uh, thanks for coming on and talking about construction.
I appreciate all your thoughts and, uh, your experience sharing with us.
Uh, so hope you, hope to have you on again, uh, sometime when we get some
more construction related questions.
But,
uh, appreciate you being here.
Yeah, of course, David.
Appreciate the time and yeah, if anyone is interested about who we are
as a company or other construction related questions, uh, feel free to
find us on LinkedIn and excited to connect with y'all and appreciate.
Sounds good.
Thanks, grant.
See you.
Thanks, David.