Driving innovation in Engineering & Construction – The opportunity in Drones
Across the Middle East, clients are increasingly looking for innovative solutions that can help them to deliver their construction projects in a safer, quicker, and more cost-effective way than ever before. Embracing technology and new ways of working is the only way to meet this challenge. One area where we see huge potential to disrupt some of the more traditional construction processes, is through the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles( UAV), or drones as they’ re more commonly known.
In Qatar, the regulatory environment has recently changed and this has opened up opportunities to use drones for commercial purposes, including within the construction industry. At Arcadis, we’ re already using UAV solutions on several client commissions including transport infrastructure schemes, real estate developments and water and utility projects.
What benefits can drones bring to construction projects?
We find that drones can help to address a wide range of challenges that clients typically face on large-scale construction projects. Some of the key benefits that we’ ve seen delivered on real-life projects include the following:
1. IMPROVING THE ACCURACY AND QUALITY OF DESIGN WORK
The quality of the scans and aerial imagery that drones can provide is absolutely firstclass. By exporting these into software packages like CAD or Autodesk Cloud, we can develop 3D models that are within 2cm accuracy of real-life conditions. This complements the results that can be achieved through more traditional methods( in a much shorter timeframe), and helps to reduce the risk of incorrect decisions being made on a project.
2. DELIVERING SIGNIFICANT COST SAVINGS
Using a drone to carry out standard survey and inspection activities is a much more cost efficient approach as it removes the need to erect scaffolding or mobile platform equipment. As an example, for a typical topographic survey, the use of a drone can help to reduce costs by approximately 50 %. Furthermore, the quality of the information provided also means that less rework is required. By overlaying imagery collected from the drone with the original design, errors and mistakes can be spotted before they’ re submitted to a client and long before they become costly to fix.
3. COMPLETING WORK FASTER THAN BEFORE
The use of drones can reduce the length of time needed to carry out basic surveying and scan work, as there’ s no need to build
14 Construction Leaders • May 2017