Drones will soon be a regular occurrence on construction sites all over the world, as ubiquitous as cranes or cement trucks. How will your company benefit? Here's a dive into how Skycatch provides daily value on your construction site.
Skycatch began when our Founder & CEO walked onto a construction site with his own drone and started snapping pictures. From day one, the workers’ interest in the drone was quickly overshadowed by their interest in the data that the drone could provide. After two years of relentless technological development and collaboration with early partners, the world’s largest construction firms are already realizing the benefits of the Skycatch platform.
It's better decision making. One of our long time customers, DPR has learned the value of Skycatch’s platform through deployments of our products on its most critical projects. For them, Skycatch isn’t just a provider of aerial data, it’s a platform for running projects more intelligently and collaborating more effectively.
Logistics
DPR has successfully replaced the physical counting of the round trips of trucks and drivers’ rough approximations of volumes moved with daily stockpile measurements accessed through the Skycatch Dashboard. Now, project managers verify stockpiles with survey-grade accuracy from their tablet or desktop using same-day aerial imagery and volumetric information. In projects where the value of a stockpile can exceed a half million dollars, accurate volumetric data can have a significant impact on a project’s budget.
Planning and sequencing
DPR and McCarthy use Skycatch’s Dashboard plan overlay and annotation features to sequence and plan their work on a daily basis. When a delay of just a few hours can mean tens of thousands of dollars in wasted manpower, proper sequencing is more than a nice-to-have; it is a must. DPR and McCarthy are now able to conduct this planning without the need for time-consuming physical status checks. And discussions are centered around near-real-time aerial maps and models; not hypothetical or out-of-date plans. Workers on the job site can quickly reference them via any web-enabled mobile device.
Skycatch is making a direct impact on the bottom lines of critical DPR and McCarthy projects and has quickly progressed from an experimental technology to a must-have tool.
“The data helps detail progress: when the deep underground project team had some excavations open, McCarthy needed to start inserting footings (blocks of concrete foundation). Without the data, McCarthy and our team would have to be physically out there on site looking around. Now, with Skycatch imagery, we can look at near real time imagery and plan our next moves based on today’s aerial data capture. Without Skycatch there would be no visual and our discussion would be theoretical, based on an out of date plan. I think every site should use Skycatch’s service -- everyday.” - Rob Wallace, Central Plant Superintendent, DPR Construction
Skycatch continues to push the boundaries of our burgeoning industry and is working on even more ways to capture and leverage aerial data.
Read Fortune’s most recent article about us to learn how we’re using our aerial data to automate other machines on construction and mining sites.
In addition, we’ve just launched WORKMODE ™ - the newest way to use the Skycatch platform. WORKMODE™ gives customers the ability to request and receive maps provided by 3rd party pilots. It also provides independent drone pilots a marketplace for their mapping services. Most importantly, it means that anyone can now purchase and leverage near-real-time aerial data anywhere in the world.
Hear about Skycatch’s work with the mining and construction industries from this recent presentation at Autodesk University in Las Vegas.
To learn more about how Skycatch can accelerate your work, contact partners@skycatch.com.
