Drones in Construction with Scott Major

Andrea Ciaffi

Hi, Scott. Welcome to the Digital Construction podcast. How are you today?

Scott Major

Yeah, super mate.

Andrea Ciaffi

So in this episode we speak with Scott Major digital engineering practise lead and chief remote pilot at Seymour White. Scott previously also worked for Arup, WSP AEcom, but he has also worked as a combat engineer for the Australian Army. How exciting.

Scott Major

Play song.

Andrea Ciaffi

Today we explore our unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones, digital surveys and reality capture are revolutionising the way construction projects are designed and delivered. But before we start, Scott, I have a nice Breakers for you. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received in your career?

Scott Major

I'd. I'd probably say something. I got sort of told early on. I had a mentor when I was at starting out at Monsel, which is now AE com and he said to me, never stop learning. So he in in his way of saying it, he was saying move about the different business sort of.

Scott Major

Areas. So move into enviros civil structures and that sort of thing, but I took it in a more sort of literal sense and it's for me a way of sort of working and living, you know, every project, every challenge, every conversation, is an opportunity to learn something new.

Scott Major

So. Not just collecting qualifications, even though that's something that often happens as a result, it's about, you know, being adaptive, integrating new tools, staying aware of regulatory changes, new methodology methodologies. Yeah. So deepening your expertise and applying processes, but understanding the why that's behind them.

Scott Major

So for me it's, you know, cross pollinating skills bringing insights from UAV operations into asset governance, applying DE practises to streamline compliance. It's sort of, yeah, something that. I in my life, not just in my professional career, but it's something that I tend to live by basically.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, I'm sure that this advisor has up in your career, but speaking about career, can you can you start telling us a bit about your career journey and what led you to work in the construction space. You also have this career in the army.

Andrea Ciaffi

So it's very interesting. So what's your story?

Scott Major

Yeah. So I actually when I was in high school, I was actually really good in the. We had a subject called graphics, which was basically technical drawing and using CAD and things like that. And so I started using AutoCAD back in. Well, I don't know, it would have been like early 1999 or something like installing AutoCAD off floppy drives onto the computer.

Scott Major

Sort of thing. And so by the time I finished high school, we actually had some people from monsall contact the school and said, oh, have you got anyone that'd be interested in being a drafter? I said, yeah, I'd. I'd be pretty keen on that.

Scott Major

Had an interview with them. And I was actually planning to go to UD to do environmental science and deferred that and went and started out at monsall in 2004.

Scott Major

And liked it so much that I kept going with them, studied at TAFE at nights at the time as well, so I'd be at work all day and that at TAFE at night some of the good project I had there were like in the city bypass W Link M7 Sunshine Motorway, Maroochy Blvd, Calandra, MTC but.

Scott Major

Probably the biggest one was the Clem 7 down in Brisbane and then that led because that was a JVI met a lot of people from Parsons Sprinklehoff or WSP at the time as well. So when they won that JV for airport link with Arab, I went over and joined.

Scott Major

Parsons, Brink off and worked on airport link until that one finished up, and then I actually moved over to Arab at the end of that as well, so JV's during that time was something that I'd sort of meet the new partner and move on to the next company at the time.

Scott Major

But it's like that continual journey of learning and changing and whilst I was at Arab, we worked on the transport. Network reconstruction programme I was doing more study in surveying and spatial science at the time as well, and then I was the joint delivery manager for CR2 SM, which is the Calantra Rd to Sunshine Motorway project.

Scott Major

After that was sort of finishing up in the design phase. I was looking for a new change and Seymour White. Was the construction company with in Ajv with Fulton Hogan for CR2 SM. So I actually reached out to some of the guys there that I'd worked with on the tender and the design and said hey look, I'm looking at finishing up here at Arup.

Scott Major

You got anything that you can sort of use my skill for? And they said, yeah, fantastic. Come out to site and we'll get you going as Ade personality. Here and I was like, brilliant. So it's probably the best thing I ever did was moving to construction.

Scott Major

I think construction sort of suits me and my more outdoorsy personality a little bit better, like being on construction sites rather than being in the city is more my sort of realm, I think. And that survey sort of side is something that I should have got into.

Scott Major

Bit sooner, but you know life pushes you in certain directions and you go the way with it. So but that seem a lot. I've worked on the CR2 SM project which was awesome like other projects like the Maruti de Mons, the smart motorways, parmeser, chugen, majibao to Varsity Lakes.

Scott Major

And also after my so I forgot to mention when I was at Arup, I went and did my remote pilot licence which was in 2015 and then when I was at Seymour, what the survey manager found out actually had that and he was like Oh well, we should be flying this side ourselves because we were actually getting a subbie to do it.

Scott Major

And it LED to us getting our. Certification and he was the chief pilot at the time and I was one of the pilots and we trained up a few other guys as well. And so we started flying all the sites ourselves and then now let's see more what every every site has at least one pilot on it basically.

Scott Major

And my old manager Tom retired. Two years ago, and so I took over that chief remote pilot role, and now I'm. Yeah, out at beer Brompton Amber as a de manager. And there's another sort of learning thing I did a cert 3IN it recently, just in cybersecurity because.

Scott Major

TAFE was offering free study so I thought why not take advantage of that? So I did that one and then it sort of reinvigorated my study again. So I've gone back and I'm now studying a Bachelor of Science in geospatial science as well.

Scott Major

So it's just, I don't know, it's just I get really interested in learning new things and it's sort of, yeah, like that lifelong journey, I guess.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, you're actually always learning and that's very interesting. And I always find it interesting to see how different people land into this digital engineering space from different and complete different angles. You are you are loaded on this on your

Scott Major

Yeah, yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

role of chief remote pilot, but. Can you tell? Can you tell us what it means? Because I'm not sure that everybody is familiar with this role.

Scott Major

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Scott Major

Like it's a funny one as well because often out on site we'll go around and we're flying different things and you'll have the guys and the grade or the side he's looking at you going, oh, you must have the have the life just flying drones all day, but they don't realise how much sort of regulatory compliance and you know JSA and all the planning that goes on in the back end actually.

Scott Major

Get out there and fly the drone. The flying of the drone's the small part to it. So the chief remote pilot isn't just about the flying the drones. It's especially in construction centre. It's as chief remote pilot under our rioc, which is the remote operator certificate.

Scott Major

I'm essentially responsible for every aspect of our UAV operations. So regulatory compliance to ensuring we've got the data that the client essentially needs or that we need that delivers real value for the project. So that means you have to in order to get the rioc you have to have the remote pilot licence.

Scott Major

Stay across all your regulatory changes, maintain operational documentation, ensure every pilot in the team is current, competent, authorised so day-to-day. It's sort of a mix of leadership, risk management, technical integration.

Scott Major

Planning and approving missions assessing, assessing hazards, putting mitigations in place, whether it's a standard site survey or complex operation in UAV denied areas, we sort of we'll train and mentor the pilots to conduct the proficiency cheques and select the right platforms for the job.

Scott Major

I think one of the biggest challenges and rewards is balancing that sort of flight safety with the project goals. Safety always comes first. That's one of our main things. It's the key is getting UAV operations into the project. Planning cycles of flights essentially on and after afterthought they're integrated into the delivery strategy.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, good point. What type of like, I know many people see drones as toys because you can find them in shopping centres. You can go to jbi fire. We not want to buy the drone and but when you do this commercially on real projects,

Scott Major

Hmm.

Andrea Ciaffi

it's a bit different. So what kind of training and. Certification certification is required to operate drones commercially in Australia.

Scott Major

Yeah. So if you want to operate commercially Casa, so the Civil Aviation Safety Authority sets all the rules and it depends on the size of the drone you've got and the type of your work you're doing. So for smaller drones, lower risk jobs, you can get an RPA operator accreditation, which is an online thing through Casa.

Scott Major

It's free and quick and easy to do, and it's valid. For three years. But once you're flying anything over the 2K mark and you're you want a little bit more operational flexibility, you need to get that remote pilot licence and then that's when you're doing the theory and practical assessment with a Casa certified training provider.

Scott Major

We use a company called Abby Assist. And and and funnily enough, that's the same company that I did my training through back in 2015. So a guy that we had recently trained is still using them. They're probably one of the better ones in the industry.

Scott Major

If you're running the UAV programme for business like we do, you also need to have a remote operator certificate or so-called, you know, rioc because everyone loves a good acronym. That's the approval that sort of lets you employ other pilots, operate in more complex environments and apply for special permissions.

Scott Major

So overall, near people or flying in areas like on our palmister chugen project, where within proximity of the. Airport down there, so we have to get a error exemption to fly there. So it means every time we fly we have to log in.

Scott Major

No terms. We have to check with the tower that we're allowed to fly. We get given certain hours. We're allowed to fly. We are only allowed a certain ceiling that we're allowed to fly to. We have to notify the tower when we start.

Scott Major

We have to notify the tower when we finish. So it's. Yeah. Once you've got that reoc, you can apply for all those extra accreditations. Basically, and area of approval. So we got our overall new people recently and the next one we're looking at is the EV loss as well.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, it's a lot more complex than people will probably think.

Scott Major

Yeah, yeah, there's definitely a lot more in the back end.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, definitely very interesting. And I wanted to talk about the the role of drones in construction, and we've probably seen in the last few years evolving from like novelty to burial, necessity on sites. But from your point of view, ours, the role of drones in construction changed over the last few years.

Scott Major

Yeah, I I agree. They've definitely changed from being novelty to you know, novelty tool for aerial photos to becoming basically an integral part of the construction life cycle. Early on, it was large, largely capturing visual records, but today they're embedded in our workflows, so feeding live.

Scott Major

Data to models, dashboards, review platforms, and support you know real time decision makings like we were testing and we've used before actually literally this morning I approved a flight for them down on a project in our Canberra region to fly the drones with someone supervising on another machine to check bird nests before clearing trees.

Scott Major

Like, it's just everything that you wouldn't think of that use typically. And we've used thermal joints as well on other projects for clearing operations as well, just to check. It's just an evolving base. But you know we've seen that expansion from volumetric stockpile analysis and project sort of progress verification to thermal inspections remain hazardous.

Scott Major

Assessments. It's driven by advances in the sensor technology, improved flight endurance and better integration with those GSP platforms. But also I think the regulatory sort of maturities helped a lot as well. So the Casa frameworks and faster approvals for things like overall need people and.

Scott Major

Extended visual on a side or EV loss you know, allow us to operate more efficiently while still maintaining that compliance with their needs. But yeah, they've become well moved from being a supplementary service to a strategic capability and that that's one that then improves safety, efficiency, data quality while enabling.

Scott Major

Innovation.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, good point. And you, you you listed a few applications, but what is the probably the most common you see at the moment?

Scott Major

There's probably about five key areas, one of our biggest ones is basically aerial surveying and mapping. You know, high resolution cameras or wider to capture site data, way faster and with a lot more density than traditional survey methods. The second one is progress monitoring.

Scott Major

You know just feeding imagery and measurements into GIS and DE platforms inspections is another one we use as well. So high risk, hard to reach areas. So whether that's a high embankment or a rock face or even undersides of bridges and things like that.

Scott Major

Volumetric analysis, stockpile measurements and quality assurance is a big one as well. Overlaying as built data versus design models. They all they all you know basically get embedded into our workflows. And probably the last one, which is quite a big one as well.

Scott Major

We found is insurance. So drones are very helpful like in the

Andrea Ciaffi

Mm-hmm.

Scott Major

terms of like a flood event or you know intense rainfall event if you know it's coming in you can quickly get the drone and take some photos around the site and then that happens and then you can send it back. Go out again and capture those images, and when you're looking at insurance claims, having those images like pictured tells 1000 words.

Scott Major

It's yeah. Extremely valuable. Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

It's it's great. And if you can think about one project where the application of drone really made a major difference, what would that be?

Scott Major

Umm. Probably there was one we had where we had a newly constructed sort of embankment area and there was a suspected sort of instability in in that embankment. So normally we'd send survey teams out, you know, so you have to. Organised traffic control or organised things to get out there and you're exposing personnel to hazards.

Scott Major

Instead, we'd sent the UAV out with photogrammetry. We captured the model in a minimal amount of time, processed it into a 3D train model, compared it to the baseline surveys, and it revealed it was pretty localised and not.

Scott Major

As bad as we initially thought, but because we had that data, you know, like the same day the engineering team was able to design the remediation plan and have it underway rather than having a two week wait to basically organise the team to get out and have that assessed and then compare it.

Scott Major

And so it just underscores how. You're keeping people out of harm's way, getting the data faster and just, yeah, enhancing safety and commercial value in high pressure situations.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, that's a very valid point. And I think when people think about drones, think about drones and safety, there are probably like 2 aspects that are quite different. So one is the safety related to the fact that the the actual drone can fall on your head or fall onto things and create the damage.

Andrea Ciaffi

So that's an hospital safety, but it is. So the other aspects of safety, which is the one related to improving safety because you're not actually sending a human being in a location where it could be dangerous to send people to. But from your point of view, how do you see drones enhance site safety on construction site and reduce potentially the risk of?

Andrea Ciaffi

Adds are those conditions.

Scott Major

I think the biggest thing is basically they allow us to see more, see sooner and see it without putting people in harm's way. So there's always a a phrase that people use with UAVs, which is dull, dirty or dangerous. So it's, you know, boring repetitive tasks.

Scott Major

If it's an environment that's dirty and. You know shouldn't be in there, or it's a dangerous area to be in. That's when it's a good time to look at employing a robot or a UAV. So, you know, sending personnel into high risk areas like unstable structures, deep excavations or near active plant.

Scott Major

It's a good opportunity to look at using a UAV. With the remote Hazard risk assessment, we can identify the issues a lot quicker and sort of work out what we need to remediate that or remove the risk at all.

Andrea Ciaffi

That's good. Then do you find that more and more clients or project managers are now starting drone data as a part of the delivery of a project?

Scott Major

Yeah, definitely. That's what I was saying before is basically every we pretty much price into the tenders and projects. Now that there will be a drone on every site and almost every single one of our sites, unless it's an area where we can't physically fly like we're next door to the airport, we'll have a drone on every site.

Scott Major

And all of the clients like transport for New South wireless, TMR. MRPB, like any anyone, they all expect to get that imagery as well. So industry wide uptake is just rapidly accelerating, it's yeah, massive.

Andrea Ciaffi

And think about this reality capture. I sometimes think of people talk about reality capture. It could be one could be seen as one of these buzzwords. But what's your approach to capturing and processing reality data from drones? Because you have a drone, it's flying, it's capturing data.

Andrea Ciaffi

But then you always need to do the. The after work when you have to press process the data. So how do you think about that?

Scott Major

I'd normally start from the back and work out what the end use is first and then try to define the process to get to that point. So we'll follow a structured workflow with the preflight assessments, the airspace and site hazard cheques and mission planning in line with Casa.

Scott Major

Or and if we need to use over and ear people, but then we select the right UAV and sensor, whether there's a high definition RGB photo sensor or a LIDAR sensor for dense vegetation. Or yeah, a thermal. If we're doing inspections and then we're typically like.

Scott Major

Yeah. The majority of our flights are all semi automated, so we we'll take off the drone and check flight systems and everything first as part of our quality process and safety assessment, but then all of the flight plans are actually automated, so it flies a set route backwards and forwards each time, and then we that's repeatable as well and the clients like to see that as well.

Scott Major

Like we all have. Often have to show TMR and TFNSW where the drone is actually flying so that we can prove our compliance with. Caches of requirements and their requirements. But you know it's then once we've got the data, we process it through our photogrammetry Lidar software.

Scott Major

Sorry, that one's throwing me with it would generate the ortho mosaics, 3D meshes, point clouds, whatever. We sort of need and then we can integrate it into our. You know, BIM platforms, modelling platforms, review platforms, whatever, we're using it for.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, very interesting. I've been working in the past on photogrammetry. It's very interesting how this software can stitch photos together and create a mesh of a 3D element. That's not really a 3D. It's just like photos stitched together. It's very interesting. And also the ladder produces this 3D model, which is.

Andrea Ciaffi

It's dots everywhere. It's very cool.

Scott Major

Yeah, a lot of our stuff's amazing, but the the issue we've got a lot of the time is data storage or like cloud storage or yeah, because the just the volume and the size of the data is just immense.

Andrea Ciaffi

Mm-hmm.

Scott Major

And then often you have to dumb the data down to use it again anyway. So it's it's a bit of a balancing act really.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, this is. This is also interesting. Very interesting talk about the data and there is always a problem related to different software vendors and data compatibility between different platforms and also the ability of keeping the data available long term. So how do you do you think that the industry is doing enough to make this data accessible and usable long term?

Scott Major

They're they're making progress, but I don't think it's there yet. I think it's like, like I said, it's massively rich, big data sets, you know, all them as AX point clouds, 3D meshes, they're often treated as short term project artefacts rather than long term digital assets, so.

Scott Major

And the challenge just isn't storage, it's accessibility, interoperability and and governance of those as well, like so many data sets are just locked in little proprietary formats or silos or, you know, different digital platforms. And it just limits their value to the actual end user.

Scott Major

So I think. You know, moving forwards, if we had some sort of open standard metadata tagging integration with asset information models, I don't know it it it makes it a lot more usable like stronger alignment between workflows and information management frameworks like ISO 19650.

Scott Major

In controlling that data structure and you know linking it to a common data environment, the the technology's there, but the control, cultural and contractual frameworks essentially need to catch up.

Andrea Ciaffi

Mm-hmm.

Scott Major

Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

And speaking about beam and broader beam workflows, do you find that it's easy or difficult to integrate the data that come from drones into the broader beam workflows?

Scott Major

No, no, we we use a couple of different tools to sort of get it in. Once we've got the data processed, we use different APIs to sort of link between a lot of the the data platforms. So rather than previously we used to have to get the SD card out of the drone, copy the data on the computer.

Scott Major

Upload it to our processing platform and then once it's processed we download that and use it in the different things. Now essentially the drone is connected to the Internet as well, so you don't have to take this SD card out, it uploads it and it processes it.

Scott Major

In some platforms it'll process it directly without you even needing to move data around at all. And then once it's there, we've got that linked through to. Our other review platforms, so it'll actually automatically upload straight away as soon as the flight's done within 24 hours or typically less.

Scott Major

The data can be reviewed, like if we fly in the morning. Normally you can see the data on your platform ready to go in the afternoon. Depending on the job size.

Andrea Ciaffi

That was great. Yeah, that's great. And you know, with every new technology or rather the new technology there is, there are often like there is a bit resistance and a little bit of barriers to digital adoption. Do you find that you find, you find yourself struggling?

Andrea Ciaffi

Encouraging construction teams to adopt these digital technologies.

Scott Major

Yeah, definitely. I think it's getting a lot better. I found like in the last couple of years, it's definitely started to progress a lot faster. I think from a construction point of view, if you're looking at DE specifically. Umm.

Scott Major

There's this requirement for this model at the end of the project and the construction company was trying to understand why we needed to hand that over to the client and if they were actually using it, there's always a big question mark, so. But anyway, I think we've gotten past that now and it, but it comes down to cost.

Scott Major

Skills gaps and I don't know. Yeah, just the end user really. So cost is still a big one like having to pay for this model at the end of the day that you're not sure if it's actually getting used or not is often a hard pill to swallow.

Scott Major

But you know, if you could see a little bit of transparency into the way that the end client's using it. Not only would you understand how they're using it and be able to tailor the way you build that model, but you'd get a little bit more.

Scott Major

I don't know, openness into the fact that it is actually getting used rather than just sitting on a shelf somewhere and never getting touched again. Just give you a bit a little bit more. Interest in actually developing it I guess, but yeah, the skills gap is a big one, but I think is getting a lot better these days as well.

Scott Major

A lot more people are aware of what DE or BIM is and the tools that go with it and a lot more people have sort of adapted to that as well, but anytime. You move from one platform to another. There's always that change management process too.

Scott Major

So if someone's been using Revista and then you take that off them and you give them, I don't know, a navisworks or you give them a Bentley eye twin or something like that, there's because there are so many different platforms around as well.

Scott Major

It can be sometimes hard with changing teams and joint venture partners. Isn't that so? It's a bit of a juggling act, really.

Andrea Ciaffi

And one of the topics we often touch in this podcast is training for people that actually working in teams and they need to upskill to be able to operate drones. And from your point of view, how do you how do you train staff in drone and data workflows?

Scott Major

So with the drones, essentially we start with the Casa operator training essentially first 'cause. They need to go and get their Casa operator's licence and remote pilot licence so that they understand, you know, airspace rules, safe protocols. Then we look into our flight planning processes.

Scott Major

So we use a programme called flight freely for our operational compliance. So that's where we generate all of our flight programmes, jsas everything like that and that's where it comes to me to then review it before the pilot can fly on site. And we also have regular competency assessments with the pilots that we.

Scott Major

We have as well, so we'll do a theory assessment and a practical assessment where I'll go out and actually assess each of them as well. And then if we have a change in our rioc or our approvals like overall near people, we retrain all the pilots in that as well.

Scott Major

And then if there's anything, if we have an incident and we can have some lessons learned from that, we'll all go through that training. Together and redo anything we need with that one as well.

Andrea Ciaffi

That's good. And when we started this episode, I've asked you, what's the best piece of advice you have ever received. But now I want to flip this question and

Scott Major

Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

ask you what advice, what advice would you give to somebody starting out in the drone related workspace?

Scott Major

I'd say build a foundation in sort of a few different areas, so technical skills, regulatory knowledge and industry context. So technical side, get comfortable with both hardware and data workflows, understand the sensors, photogrammetry, lighter beam integration, and then regular. The tourist side, if you're looking at your obligations from Casa, so airspace safety.

Scott Major

If it's DEA, you're looking at all your 19650 sort of standards, but it's also industry awareness. So digital tools are only as good as the problems they solve.

Scott Major

So get out on site, kick the dirt, talk to the guys out there, because I often in the DE space as well, there was something I did on CR2 SM where we got the actual field surveyors and the site supervisors to actually come in for our new work area meetings.

Scott Major

So before we'd actually. Move into a work area. We get everyone that was gonna be working in that area to come in. We'd get the model open on the screen. We'd go through it all and we'd work out how it was gonna be built.

Scott Major

So it's understanding how things get built sometimes, as if you're a designer. That makes you a better designer. Cuz often we find. Designers might put electrical and comms in a certain way, but we're not going to put it in that way on site, so just little things and how curbs are put together.

Scott Major

So getting out there and actually kicking the dirt is often a good way to understand how things get built.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, it's good. Then now I understand why you you like this, this role. Where you say I spend lots of time out

Scott Major

Yeah, yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

outside the door and yeah, I would like to. Yeah, yeah.

Scott Major

but it's funny because before i'd sort of got into construction i'd spent so long in design and there was still things that i would put on a drawing or i would model but then i wouldn't understand how they were actually building it so it was really eye opening to go out and saw it and i'd i even spoke to my construction manager at the time and said look i just want to go out and Move around between some of these sites and see how stuff gets built just so it makes you a better rounded individual because you understand that the way you're modelling it and you're looking at things from a completely different way as well.

Scott Major

Like, often I go into these meetings and we'd have an issue and people giving their solutions, and I'd be like, well, what about we just do this and they'd be like we didn't consider it that way, but it's. Because everyone comes from a different background, you know it's they're going to cut it differently, so yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

Very good, very good point. And thinking about the futures of drones and digital engineering, I know it's hard to predict the future, but where do you see the the drone technology going in the next, I don't know, 5-3 to five years in the construction industry or even longer if you know?

Scott Major

Yeah. So, I mean, even in the last few years, drones, drone technology is just rapidly expanding. Like when we first started buying Phantom 4 RTKS. So that would have been 2018. I think we bought some of our first ones, the price for them now.

Scott Major

We're paying almost half that for a drone. That's way better. Like it's just rapidly expanding. So you're gonna have better autonomy. Like, we've got a dock system on one of our projects. So I don't know if you've seen some of those where the drone's inside the box.

Scott Major

The box opens up, the drone takes off, does it's thing come back, land in the box, sort of thing. At the moment, that's still to comply with. With Cassidy, you've still got a depending on which workflow you're going through, you've still got to have visual line on that site.

Scott Major

But yeah, I think there's gonna be wider adoption of that sort of extended visual line of site or beyond visual line of site, so you'll have less need for the remote pilot to necessarily be on site. And you can have a remote pilot operating multiple sites.

Scott Major

Sites and that comes down to that. So another acronym is UTM, which is unmanned Traffic management. So they're working in that space as well to integrate that a little bit more. So you'll have drones covering larger, more complex sites. So the ones we've got issues with at the moment are the linear sites where you're doing 12 kilometres of highway.

Scott Major

Issue for you can't have a drone in the box there because obviously you don't have visual on the side along 12 kilometres. You can roughly see a drone depending on the size of it, comfortably to 800 metres each way, so you're only doing 1. 6 kilometres at a time and then having to move to another spot, send it up, go again, send it up, go again.

Scott Major

So if you could have. Longer visual line of site or extended visual line of site on those linear ones you're gonna have a lot better coverage and then even things like total stations and GNSS Rovers are rapidly developing as well where you used to buy a GNSS supervisor kit for like 30 grand.

Scott Major

You can get an awesome RTK GNSS receiver. Now for like 5 Grand so it's, you know, just the price and technology is so rapidly expanding. It's yeah, gonna change a lot of things I think.

Andrea Ciaffi

So in time and we we talked about data and the role of data for for drones, but we would like to think about asset management. And do you think that do you see the drones data is playing a big role in long term asset management?

Scott Major

Yeah, I definitely. It's those sort of month to month flights and more regulatory, more, more, I don't know, frequent flights depending on the asset, but it's giving you that verifiable high resolution digital record of an asset's condition over time. It's over in this entire life cycle really instead of relying on periodic.

Scott Major

Manual inspections you've, you know, got a time stamped here reference data set from UAVs so you can use that it's you know giving you predictive maintenance by analysing trends in the Ware settlement, corrosion, vegetation encroachment. You know they can intervene before the issues escalate, you know, and it's gonna make that asset last a lot longer, reducing whole of life costs.

Scott Major

Yeah, it's definitely. And, well, I don't want to say the word because everyone seems to bash it about lately, but, you know, AOI. Is, you know, the AI analytics as soon as you start feeding drone data in from a flight that you're doing over and over and again, once it learns what it's looking for, it's going to tell you the maintenance you need as well.

Scott Major

So it's going to move from being reactive to proactive, you know with. Continuous improvement over time as that AI learns what it's looking for.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah. And you mentioned AI. So we're close to the end of the episode, but I have one more question for you, which is if there are any tools or trends that you are keeping a close eye on?

Scott Major

One that I've been watching for a while and that it's still not at a point where I've picked a solution that's in a good price point is actually ground based capture, so there's a lot of tools out there for light and also for ground based photogrammetry, but still not giving me.

Scott Major

The data that I want essentially good enough at this time. So when we do have sites that are UAV denied environments, we need to capture the data and there's a few out there, but you're still looking at like mobile LIDAR units that are pretty exy to get into.

Scott Major

But sensor technology is constantly evolving and LIDAR units and that are going to. Get cheaper over time and like I said, combined with that AI analytics, it's. Yeah, something that I'm definitely watching is the AI and linking those data sets around and having it actually identify issues which we're it's already doing at the moment.

Scott Major

We've got guys who'll Dr along, our traffic managers will drive along the section of. Freeway and have the just a GoPro going or something like that. Feed it in through the AI and it. I won't mention what he's actually using, but it actually picks up any potential hazards or incidents along with that traffic alignment.

Scott Major

So it'll tell him if he needs to fix anything or if signs are out of place or if a barrier looks like it's not in the right spot or anything like that. So that stuff.

Scott Major

It's constantly sort of evolving as well, but the the one for me as well is also Cass's extended visual on a site and beyond visual on a site and how that evolves over time as well as they become more comfortable with how people are operating drones in those environments.

Scott Major

And if we can. It's essentially proving that the technology works and it is safe and so that they can release the reins a little bit to allow people to use those. So yeah, that's that's something that I'm keeping an eye on, definitely.

Andrea Ciaffi

Thank you. This was, this is really excellent stuff. Excellent stuff. We are at the end of the episode if people want to reach out to do to you, where can they find you?

Scott Major

Linkedin's probably the easiest one to give us a yell, happy to share insights. Discuss UA VS DE collaboration opportunities. Anything. Yeah.

Andrea Ciaffi

Scott, thank you for sharing your insight with us today. It's clear that drones are in just a nice swimming construction and they're becoming critical tools for the delivery of modern projects. We have covered a lot of grounds and probably even air today. It was a great episode.

Andrea Ciaffi

Thank you, Scott. Have a great day.

Scott Major

Awesome. Thanks, man. See ya.