Increase worksite safety with drone technology

#1: Survey worksites remotely

In the past, accurate site surveys required a surveyor to manually walk the site with a base and rover.

This traditional process is expensive and time-consuming, not to mention dangerous. The terrain is often unstable or hazardous, and on an active worksite, there’s lots of heavy equipment on the move.

(Remember, two of the “fatal four” are falls and getting struck by heavy objects like construction equipment.)

Today, contractors are leveraging drone technology like Propeller PPK to minimize risk and keep workers safe, which largely involves keeping them away from worksites as much as possible.

Drones enable surveyors to get accurate, survey-grade data on a worksite without having to walk the entire site.

Because they’re so easy to complete, drone surveys can be done at any stage of a project, from pre-bid surveys and takeoffs to project completion, with regular surveys along the way to track progress.

The ability to complete site surveys more often, with far less risk, has enabled contractors to demonstrate that their worksites are both safer and more efficient.

#3: Walk stakeholders through a 3D site map

The more people you have on a worksite, the more likely an injury will occur, which is why the approach to worksite safety is twofold:

1. Adopt any measures necessary to make job sites safer
2. Minimize the number of people on-site at any given time

In the days before modern construction software, it was often necessary to walk clients and other key stakeholders through an active worksite to demonstrate progress or explain delays, exposing them to risk in the process.

Thanks to high-accuracy 3D site maps created by drone photogrammetry and accessible through the Propeller Platform, contractors can share progress tracking data and real-time images with everyone who needs to see them.

Walk the team through a virtual landscape instead of a physical one, further reducing any risk of a safety breach and enhancing communication in the process.

For example, stakeholders can simply point and click to measure stockpile volumes or see how much cut/fill is left to go, paving the way for clearer, faster communication across the project team.

All told, drones are a cost-effective and efficient way to level up safety on construction sites. As the adoption of drone surveying programs continues to expand, we expect to see a dramatic reduction in worksite injuries and fatalities, too.