09.14.2017 | Kespry

How Drones are Creating a New Surveying Method

For many companies involved in surveying operations, creating accurate surveys for mining, site infrastructure planning or other construction purposes means labor-intensive work requiring days.

Using the Kespry Aerial Intelligence platform, tasks that once required significant time to complete can now be done in a fraction of the time they previously took. By providing the latest in automated drone technology, Kespry has created a new standardized method in surveying. This means surveys of all types can be done in just hours. Instead of moving around a site repeatedly taking measurements for a survey, now one employee can tap a few buttons on an iPad to quickly survey an area using Drone 2s.

The change resulting from Kespry adoption is transformative. Before using Kespry, Atlas Sand & Rock, a subsidiary of Eucon Corporation, measured stockpiles using a laser range finder on top of an angle encoder that fed data to a data collector, all of which was mounted on a tripod. An Atlas employee walked around the piles and set up in various locations to perform an accurate survey. It was a time-consuming method, but thanks to Eucon’s adoption of Kespry, that method is now in the past.

“Over three days, I drove 850 miles. I flew 23 missions over 718 acres. I captured data for 212 stockpiles. With my previous method, I could measure an average stockpile in about 45 minutes. With Kespry, I averaged 7.9 minutes per stockpile. That’s including the time it took me to drive 850 miles. We completed 173 hours of work in 28 hours. That’s an 84 percent reduction in labor costs for this single inventory measurement cycle. That’s over a month’s worth of work [completed] in three days.” said Kyle Huffman, Source Manager, Atlas Sand & Rock.

Similarly, for Whitaker Contracting Corporation, formerly big jobs have become a snap.

“Our old way of doing inventory at the quarries was using the very latest GPS software and walking around for three days straight carrying a fiberglass rod that weighed about 13 pounds. So, you are just climbing up and down, tripping, falling and sliding down these stockpiles. It had almost gotten to the point where it was too much for me.” said John Davenport, Construction Surveyor for Whitaker Contracting Corporation.

In addition to savings in time, customers using Kespry are saving significant money in operating expenses.