Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/917937
December 2017 | EquipmentWorld.com 44 It's easy to get the size, layout, pic- tures and videos to show his crew before heading out. "They know what to expect when they get there," he says. "When you're an owner and can't be on every job, it's nice to know that everybody's on the same page before they get to the job." Before drones, the manual process of sending someone on site to mea- sure an entire parking lot could take all day. With drones, a contractor can document the entire lot in about 15 to 30 minutes, Anderson says. "Now, if we go to a big condo facility where there's 70-some buildings, and they either need paving or sealcoating done, you have to find the general area of paving within that facility. Where before, one other guy and I would have to walk around with wheels all day, measuring, now I drive to the mid- dle of the facility. I take my drone and put it on the roof of my truck," he says. He sits in his truck while the drone does the work. "I fly it up a couple hundred feet, take a picture, go home and sit at my computer and do the rest." Once Premier Sealcoating workers began using drones, they document- ed big projects with aerial photos on Facebook. Almost overnight, the company changed. "Now I have all these property managers calling, saying, 'We've seen the pictures, and we know you're capable of handling work like this," Anderson says. Drone use can also help prevent mistakes. In one case, Anderson used his drone to take pictures before, during and after line striping. Chalk lines followed the plan, yet in the drone pictures he could see they were off. He called the engineer, who real- ized he'd made an error and had Anderson correct it. That prevented the need to black out the mistake on new pavement. Customers want to know their facilities' condition, and they want data and to run analytics so they can understand where they should be spending their money, Anderson says. "There's really no better way to get this information so quickly with this quality we're able to get. We've never been able to do it before." Because drones are used for mea- suring stockpiles and job progress, he can see usefulness in road work. He's meeting with municipal officials about the prospect of drones flying over townships to assess the condi- tion of pavement. Using drones to create pavement assessments Another early adapter is Austin Rabine, general manager of Rabine road technology | continued It's easy to plan layouts and traffic patterns by looking at aerial photos like this one taken by a drone, says Ryan Anderson of Premier Sealcoating and Line Striping in Oxford, Massachusetts. Shown is the project his company recently completed for Crossroads School in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Anderson