Suppose you are the manager of the Rijksmuseum and you want the roof and all the upper windows inspected to know their condition and whether any maintenance is needed. So what is the best way: build a scaffold and send an inspector up onto the roof? Or send a drone into the air from a distance with a camera, so that inspector can inspect the roof and those windows in detail from a computer screen? In this article, we give you 3 reasons to choose traditional inspection; and 15 reasons to choose drone inspection.

The collection

Using a drone is 1) a lot faster than traditional inspection. A drone takes off and so flies anywhere. No scaffolding needs to be built or moved and no aerial platform needs to be driven back and forth. This also makes drone inspection immediately -in most cases -2) cheaper than traditional inspection. Besides not having to rent a scaffold or aerial platform, you save all the hours -and thus costs- that an inspector would spend on traditional inspection.

Because a drone can easily get to high altitudes and hard-to-reach areas, only visible defects or further investigation require someone to physically inspect those areas. This makes working with drones many times 3) safer than traditional inspection. An inspector no longer has to go up on the roof or perform strange tricks; the drone does it all for him. You perform the inspection safely from behind a computer screen.

For low-rise buildings, drone inspection A) is less distinctive. This is because usually the front façade is perfectly visible from street level and you don't need a drone. However, the roof and the rear are often difficult or impossible to reach, so using a drone is still better than traditional inspection. See how we started inspecting the property of housing corporation WoonFriesland a few years ago. Watch the video or read more here: https://www.woonfriesland.nl/veelgestelde-vragen/woninginspecties-met-drones-van-aeroscan

But, with a drone, you can B) only inspect visually. You can't feel if something is peeling paint or dirt; you can't feel what kind of bulge is under the paintwork. Nor can you remove something, such as bushes in front of a piece of wall or an awning blocking the view.

If an inspector still has to go to the site after the data collection, then C) it feels like double work and extra costs. Yet we look at this differently. For large and difficult objects, the images from a drone allow for an excellent pre-inspection of about 90 to 95 percent. That last 5 to 10 percent that you as an inspector want to be able to feel or see for yourself on location can then be inspected very specifically yourself. And that, of course, is a lot faster than if you have to inspect everything immediately from an aerial platform, scaffold or tray along the facade. The higher and harder to reach a building is, the less duplication of effort it gives.

There is also 4) the aesthetic factor, which is especially important with monuments. Because you no longer have to set up scaffolding or aerial platforms at a building, you no longer have to walk by the property for days with a clipboard, and the inspection can be done quickly, the aesthetic appearance of a property is affected as little as possible and as briefly as possible.

The visual data

Drones allow us to acquire visual data for inspection in three ways: via photography, thermography and LiDAR. All our visual data is 5) objective and 6) complete. This means that everything is recorded, all defects and non-defects. Also, everything can be inspected from every point of view, not just how -with traditional inspection- it is recorded at that moment by the human eye. As a result, you have a 7) 98 percent visual reliability, providing an 8) much higher level of proof than a traditional inspection. This objective, complete data also makes your inspection 9) more credible, because the data can be viewed the same way over and over again.

The advantage of our visual data is that it is also 10)easily shareable with your colleagues and stakeholders. No one has to go back and check anything or redo the capture. This, in turn, increases security and saves time and money.

Our products

The level of detail of our photography is accurate within a few millimeters. Based on that data, we can therefore create a highly accurate 3D model of your object, fitting into the software package you are already working with. This 3D model enables 11) 98 percent objective measurement. If you start measuring on location and you do it wrong and you record that, you always have a wrong source. Whereas if you capture 3D and then you measure wrong, you can easily check and adjust. Also, with a digital model you can always check your measurement, because you can store that measurement. This makes measurement much 12) more reliable, but also 13) more credible to owners and other parties.

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By having made the link with the certified inspection standards (NEN2767, URL) we make it possible for you as an expert to really convert the data into information. This gives you watertight proof that the defects you observe actually have that intensity, severity and extent.

With our DaaS (Drone as a Service)we teach you as a manager or inspector to collect data yourself. We carry out the first data acquisition - creating the 3D model for the baseline measurement. Then we teach you to collect data for monitoring and re-inspections. The images you capture are then automatically linked to the existing 3D model. With this solution, you keep the data acquisition in-house. This gives you 14) all the benefits of drone inspection, without the cost and schedule of an outside party.

Finally, the advantage of our visual data is also 15) being able to monitor degradation.Each pixel in the photo ́s can be determined exactly where it is on the building. If you do the data collection a couple of times, say in 2022, 2024 and 2026, and compare those data with each other, you can track degradation very precisely. This allows you to match your maintenance planning much more accurately to the actual situation.

Curious about which more than 21,000 objects we have already digitally captured with drones? Or are you curious about what we can do for your object(s)? Contact us to view these results and judge for yourself.

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