Commercial Mapping of Roofs and Buildings

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Hello everyone,

I am experienced with drones but mostly for personal pleasure. I do have my Part 107 and would like to see how I can use my drones more in a commercial aspect.

So now my questions. One of my clients is an engineering firm. As part of their business they need to do roof surveys of large buildings like schools. I spoke to them and it seems they currently do all this work manually and it sometimes takes them up to 2 days of manual labor on the roof to get all the pictures and measurements they need. I would like to see how I can offer them drone services to do the same thing. It could save them the time and effort of doing it manually and perhaps make it safer for their personnel as well. I think the biggest selling point would be if the entire process can be made faster and/or cheaper overall.

Can you give me some insight into the process? A few questions I have to start. Sorry if it is a lot to ask.
  • Do you find that the overall net cost can be cheaper than doing it manually?
  • I assume that the process must be faster with a drone and the correct mapping software. Is that true?
  • How do the online mapping services work? Do they do a good job? I feel it is a better way to get my toes wet rather than investing in dedicated software up front. Which ones have you had experience with and which would you recommend?
  • What is the accuracy of a Phantom 4 Pro with these mapping services, without using RTK? Is it sufficient for engineering needs?
  • What is the end product after the drone footage is processed? My customer's end result needs to be an AutoCAD drawing of the roof. How close do we get with mapping software?
Thanks in advance. I would appreciate any guidance you can provide. They will be letting me go out with them on a project later this month and I want to be prepared to give them a sampling of what I can do for them with a drone. They are fully aware that I am new to it and I will be doing this job for them for free. I just want to make sure that they see the benefit of proceeding down this path.
 
Any suggestions from those of you in this field?
 
There's not many in our membership here that do this type of work. You might get better results joining and asking this same question over at:

Commercial Drone Pilots Forum
 
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