Property managers, real estate developers, investors, renters, and commercial tenants frequently overextend themselves in terms of time allocation. Because of this, it becomes increasingly challenging to perform in-depth inspections, and the cost of hiring a professional inspector to do so becomes all the more expensive. Luckily, drone technology enables those in the real estate industry to fully utilize various property management software to help eliminate the burden of manual inspections and offset unnecessary costs, therefore increasing data accessibility and efficiency while mitigating potential hazards. In addition, applications for building inspectors abound in drones’ capacity to safely, efficiently, and quickly access clear photographic data regarding the condition of a building, adding indispensable value to the industry.
DroneDeploy: Making Inspections Easy, Efficient, & Accessible
Inspections usually require a crew to be dispatched to a location where they must work with various measures and outside inhibiting forces. The speed of inspections using drones has the potential to be tripled without the use of exertion, ladders, and most importantly, without having to deal with a large number of problems that are increasingly difficult to manage. As “virtual eyes in the sky,” drones possess the wherewithal to inspect every corner of a property, including hard-to-reach areas, providing inspectors with a quick review of the entire structure.
Unfortunately, accessibility within inspections is a long-standing issue that has causes many problems with facility managers. With some properties being utterly inaccessible due to various factors, drone mapping solutions are the only way to solve this obtainability issue. Specifically, DroneDeploy’s mapping tools aid in creating high-level overviews of your properties and enable project managers to prioritize inspections across their entire portfolio. In the time that it takes for a single property to be manually inspected, a drone could work with several properties and get the same, if not more accurate, inspections completed.
Increasing Cost Efficiency with Automated Surveys
Because drones can scan the surface of a building in a fraction of the time required to inspect a building manually, they substantially reduce costs. As we look into the cost breakdown of utilizing drones versus manual labor, the price point is much less than manual inspection solutions. Using drones compared to traditional inspection methods can save more than 80% in cost; in one example, the price of a drone inspection was $1,000 compared with $10,000 for a manual inspection that requires scaffolding and laborers. With the rising urbanization around the world, the building inspections market will skyrocket. As infrastructure grows, DroneDeploy’s software becomes a significant asset to the market, which real estate investors should be taking advantage of.
Eliminating Safety Concerns
As mentioned previously, drones give us the ability to inspect building exteriors that would be otherwise inaccessible. Because of this, drones eliminate any safety hazards that accompany manual inspections, whether that be unseen danger of falling debris or a roof that is too high, too steep, or too wet to access safely by foot. Because drone technology can mitigate risks entirely, many people are advocating that drones be used for all upcoming building projects, especially those in more urban areas like that of New York, as Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams stated during his proposal to legalize the use of drones for facade inspections. After an architect was killed just last year by falling debris in Manhattan, Eric said, “These tools will save millions of dollars, save time, but most importantly, it could actually save lives.” As we’ve seen, drones reduce the risk of loss of human life related to manual inspections of the exterior walls of high-rise buildings - a method that requires an inspector to repel down the side of the building with ropes - and, as a result, reduces the exposure for building owners.
The use of drones within the commercial real estate industry is on the rise and unequivocally here to stay; drones can entirely transform the real estate industry for the better by eliminating the burdens that accompany manual inspections, including unnecessary costs, inaccessibility, inefficiency, and risks. Furthermore, with DroneDeploy’s ease-of-use, anyone from property managers to commercial tenants can quickly access clear photographic data regarding the condition of a building, adding indispensable value to the industry. If you’re interested in learning more about drone use in facilities inspections, watch our on-demand webinar, or contact us.