Tag: <span>Drones</span>

Tag: Drones

When to Use Personal Drones versus Ordering a Professional Roofing Measurement

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Personal drones are increasing in popularity among roofing contractors so it’s important to know when it makes sense to use one and when it doesn’t.

By AccuLynx.

The ultimate toy-turned-tool for any roofer, drones have become popular for contractors in the roofing industry, for several reasons. As an effective tool that allows sales or project managers to visualize a project before making an estimate or starting work on a home, drones provide a real-time safer alternative to climbing up on a roof to take measurements or pictures of damage.

Drones for commercial business use are becoming more and more popular – but when does a toy become a tool, and when does it make more sense to acknowledge other technology to get the job done?

Do Your Research: Whether you’re looking to purchase a drone, or already own one, you’ll need to do your research on what model will be the most effective investment for your company. You’ll need to consider drone maneuverability, connection features (to your phone or CRM platform), cost, warranties and repair options.

DronesGlobe is a great source when you’re considering all of these options.

Get Certified: Did you know that to legally operate a drone for your business, pilots must have a “remote pilot airman certificate” issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)? Flying under the radar can have consequences for your business if not properly and legally vetted first.

Luckily, it’s easy to get certified. You can read all the FAQs here, and learn what steps you need to take to ensure you are legally operating your drone.

When To Use Your Drone: Once you’ve done your due diligence, you can start using your drone to help grow your business. Using your drone for the purpose of measuring a roof for replacement or remodel is certainly an option; however, as a non-reporting company using a drone, FieldPulse says, “Granted, most of the [drone] technology is designed for preliminary work such as design, roof replacement, or repair.”

Drones are most effective and provide the best time-savings when they are applied to design or remodel work.

Examples:

  • Photos of Window Placement or Siding
  • Damage Reports – places on the roof that may have been impacted by a storm or are tagged as the source of a leak inside a home.

Having a drone in these cases allows you to see current issues, make notes, and even allow the homeowner to see real-time shots of their property.

“…drones can’t be depended on to perform thorough inspections into the roof, [but] they can give a roofing company a good idea of what they’re dealing with before getting on the roof. Drones also allow roofers to view an entire area hit by a storm. They will have enough information to provide the right type of transportation and equipment needed to perform a proper inspection. (FieldPulse)

Additionally, if there is damage found on a roof by a drone, these photos can be shared with your foreman and crews so they know what safety gear to bring, and where the damage is on a home without the guesswork.

When Ordering a Roofing Report Is More Effective: Even an experienced roofer/drone operator will need to study any photos or footage of a property carefully in order to make a detailed estimate or contract. Drones may be effective tools, but they are essentially just eyes in the sky – you might still run the risk of the operator miscalculating or misjudging critical data that can impact your orders, scheduling, and bottom line.

Ordering a Roofing Report from a trusted third party vendor, such as EagleView or SkyMeasure (both of which are fully integrated with the AccuLynx platform and mobile app) will validate your estimate numbers, come quickly, and will already have accurate measurements mapped out, which will save your sales rep time in the field.

Know Your Teams’ Skillsets and Tools: Using drones for your roofing or contracting business can be a huge asset when it comes to documentation and archives. However, it’s important that you don’t come to rely on the skillset and license of one or two people.

Make sure your drone operators are professional – you are trusting them with an expensive piece of company property. While accidents can always happen, you should make sure that the person operating the drone always has their certified FAA license on hand, and can report back immediately if something does happen to the drone.

Know when a drone is an asset, and when it’s more cost and time effective to order a report. This may be up to your rep’s discretion, or you may have a protocol in place. Either way, it’s important to remember that while the drone is a fantastic piece of technology, that doesn’t always mean it’s the ONLY technology at their disposal.

This blog first appeared on AccuLynx’s blog and can be viewed here.

AccuLynx is designed to help contractors see their business more clearly and communicate better — there’s nothing to download or install — you just log in and get to work. Learn more at www.acculynx.com 

Drones: Not Everyone Likes These Eyes in the Skies

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Drone preparing to fly over the city

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about “Unmanned Aerial Systems,” more popularly known as drones. From hobbyists to cinematographers to hunters to roofers such as National Roofing Partners, the technology, which allows small, unmanned and remotely controlled flying machines to get a bird’s eye view of everything below, is fascinating to users but vexing to privacy and air-safety advocates.

For every drone advocate, there is someone below it who resents the intrusion of these pesky machines. To make matters worse, federal, state and local authorities are confused about their respective roles in managing this new technology because there are no regulations in place at the present time. According to a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal, at least 17 states have “passed laws to restrict how law enforcement and private citizens use the devices – preemptive policies that many drone users say are heavy-handed.”

The federal authority – the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) – says it alone has the right to regulate U.S. skies. However, this has not stopped cities such as Austin, Texas from banning the devices during the annual South by Southwest technology and music event.  Since the 1930’s, planes have been prohibited from flying below 500 feet and this space was relatively free of traffic, save for a kite or model airplane. Now, there are thousands of drones in this airspace; some being used to spy on the neighbors next door and some being used for commercial purposes such as investigating the source of a leak on the roof of a building.

Drones: A New Tool for the Roofing Industry

“Even though the use of drones in the roofing industry is not yet legal and requires specific permission from the FAA, we have heard that there are contractors actively employing this tool,” noted Heidi Ellsworth of EagleView Technologies, a company which specializes in visual analysis of roofs for the insurance and roofing industries. “Once these legal issues are clarified, we see drones as being an excellent tool for gathering video and incorporating imagery into current workflows.

The roofing industry trade organization, The National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA), recently submitted comments to the FAA regarding its proposed regulation that would allow for the commercial use of drones. NRCA generally supports the proposed regulation, which is designed to incorporate the commercial use of small drones (those weighing 55 pounds or less) into the national airspace in a safe manner under a consistent set of rules for all commercial users.

Among other things, the proposed FAA rules would require operators of small drones to be certified, and their flight would be limited to a maximum height of 500 feet. NRCA’s comments contained several suggestions for changes in the proposed rule to maximize the use of small drones for roof inspections. It is expected the FAA will issue a final regulation sometime during the next two years.

Aerial Imagery Provides Much Needed Data on Roofs

Safety and privacy issues aside, the best commercial use of drones for the roofing industry will involve the efficient capture of the aerial imagery. This requires the cameras and processes that enable the high-resolution and geo-coded accuracy, according to Heidi Ellsworth.

“EagleView Technologies, utilizing our patented Pictometry® image technology, continues to focus on image capture and the subsequent data extraction from that imagery,” she noted. “The use of drones holds potential for capturing higher resolution imagery than ever before.”

The company uses its fleet of 85 planes to capture this roof-top imagery across the United States and works with National Roofing Partners. It has also created an industry group to help determine the best practices for the use of drones in the roofing industry.

EagleView has led the formation of the Property Drone Consortium (PDC). This group represents a collaboration among insurance carriers, construction industry leaders and supporting enterprises that have agreed to work together to promote research, development and the establishment of regulations for the use of drone technology across the insurance and construction industries.

As an independent, third-party technology provider and industry innovator in the capture of aerial imagery, EagleView has agreed to provide its research and development expertise to the consortium. “With over twenty years of developing aerial solutions that capture property information, EagleView believes it can utilize patented Pictometry image technologies to further the safe, efficient and scalable use of drone technology for property data collection,” stated Chris Barrow, president, and CEO of EagleView.

There is no doubt drones will eventually be used in the roofing industry. The only questions concern the rules and regulations associated with their use. When this happens, National Roofing Partners will add this technology to its arsenal and customers will reap the benefits of this eye in the sky.

This blog first appeared on National Roofing Partners’ blog and can be viewed here.