Are Drones the Future of Building Inspections?

📌 Drones is the common name that we're all familiar with, but they can also be referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), or advanced air mobility (AAM).

Drones have been an extremely popular tech gadget for consumer use and business-to-consumer use in the application of aerial photography and videography for events and real estate, but broader industry adoption has remained slow partly due to costs, skills required, regulation, and concerns / logistics with airspace traffic.

Some examples of drone application could be:

• Shipping and delivery logistics, including cargo transport
• Emergency and disaster management, such as delivery of survival supplies and medicine in remote areas; first response to collect critical information that helps responders assess the scene, identify and reduce risks, and assign appropriate resources
• Public safety and surveillance
• Thermal sensors and geographic mapping for hard-to-reach locations
• Agricultural uses such as crop fertilization, maintenance, and monitoring
• Weather tracking and forecasting, including wind monitoring which is helpful for storm-watch and wildfire response
• Performing inspections in remote locations, confined spaces, high-risk spaces such as highways, equipment at heights (i.e., roofs, overhead electrical infrastructure, etc.), hazardous spaces such as in nuclear facilities, and the list goes on.

Drones have already started to be used for inspections of roofs and confined spaces but their application is limited to photo and video footage.

Using drones for routine and/or high-risk inspections is in the early stages but it is a very intriguing solution.

We've been testing out drones ourselves.

So far our experience is that they are hard to maneuver, have a short flying time, come with security concerns, and require extensive programming for routes.

Despite that, we think the industry application of drones could take off in the next decade as their issues are worked out.

Resources

• Drone as first responder technology gains ground in Canada - Canadian Occupational Safety
• Rise of the drones: Canada's economic boon - Canadian Occupational Safety
• Can drones improve worker safety? - Canadian Occupational Safety

About Tap Report

Tap Report is a Canadian software company that provides a digital solution for managing workplace inspections, safety compliance, and operational reporting. It replaces manual processes, such as paper checklists and spreadsheets, with a mobile and web-based system that allows teams to complete inspections, capture data, and generate compliant reports.

Through an easy-to-use interface and automated workflows, Tap Report helps ensure that inspections are completed, deficiencies are categorized and tracked, and issues are escalated efficiently to the right people. It also offers analytics, customizable reporting, and integrations that helps organizations improve safety, compliance, and operational performance.

For more information, visit www.tapreport.io or contact us at customerservice@tapreport.io.