Heard a foreman say drone mapping saved him 12 hours on a site survey

I was grabbing coffee last week and this foreman from a big commercial crew was talking about how they used a drone to map a 15 acre lot before breaking ground. He said it cut their survey time from two days to just a few hours and caught some weird drainage issues they'd have missed. Got me thinking about how much manual work we still do on smaller jobs. I mostly do residential foundations and we still walk everything with a tape measure. Has anyone used a cheap drone for stuff like that or is it not worth the hassle for smaller sites?

2 comments

2 Comments

riley_coleman813d agoMost Upvoted

Bought a cheap drone myself and the first time I flew it I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out why the map looked weird (spoiler: I had the camera pointed at my own feet the whole time). The second attempt actually worked and I caught a nasty low spot on a 1 acre lot that would've been a headache later. For the price of a few hours of manual staking, it's hard to argue with.

schmidt.eva13d ago

Bought a DJI Mini 3 last spring for the exact same reason. I do small residential slabs and patios mostly. First job I used it on was a 2 acre lot for a custom house. Took me 20 minutes to fly it and I got topo data accurate enough to bid the foundation. Ended up tweaking my original layout because the drone map showed a 3 foot elevation change I missed walking it. Saved me from pouring extra concrete to level it out. Worth the 400 bucks honestly.