Longevity, durability, resale value and energy efficiency are just a few of the benefits metal roofs have over other types of roof surfaces. With a useful life of 30 to 50 years or greater it is important to verify the correct installation of these roofs, especially prior to issuing extended warranties. For this reason, comprehensive roof inspections have become a critical component to many complex metal roofing projects.
Using drones to inspect new roofs
For years, metal roof inspections have been conducted on site by technicians trained to identify installation issues and anomalies. These inspections required a technician or roof inspector to physically walk the roof, thoroughly inspect the various roof conditions to ensure proper installation and meet the manufacturers installation requirements for warranty coverage. This is a time consuming and dangerous process, not to mention the costs involved in sending an inspector to the job site.
But times are changing. Today, there is a safer and more cost-effective method to perform these inspections that can generate a detailed analysis of the roof conditions for both manufacturers and roofing contractors.
Today’s unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) (aka drone) missions virtually eliminate both the danger and excessive costs associated with roof inspections.
Drones can make this process less expensive by allowing technicians and engineers to inspect roofs with the click of a button. They bring safety and efficiency to inspections of elevated surfaces, so personnel no longer have to directly access the various elements of the roof in order to visually assess their condition.
In a conventional inspection scenario, a subject matter expert, either an engineer or specialist, would have to go out into the field to conduct these inspections and condition assessments. This of course costs time and money for travel and lodging, in addition to the inspector’s lost time on other projects. While in the field, the inspector takes numerous pictures of various critical roof conditions and indexes them in a photo/video log providing detailed notes on what issues or defects they had found. This is time consuming and daunting, particularly if hundreds of images are needed for review. Back at the office, the field findings would then be collated into a report of findings and recommended fixes.
By using drones, the expert does not have to be on site at all. This greatly reduces travel costs and increases the efficiency of high-cost engineers and consultants. This is done by transmitting the drone data straight to an expert’s desktop, eliminating travel expenses and maximizing the utilization rate of the expert by allowing them to direct and inspect multiple remote projects, thus increasing productive and billable time.
This type of inspection involves photogrammetry and the production of a 3-D model. In this case, a pre-programmed UAV mission is launched, and the drone completes a detailed inspection of the entire roof structure. While doing so, high-resolution overlapping images are automatically taken. Using photogrammetry techniques, specialized software creates a 3-D model that can be observed in a cloud-based browser and/or computer-based program. The inspection is not done directly in the 3-D model—the model is instead used to locate the most relevant high-resolution image by pointing and clicking within the model.
The relevant image and the adjacent images are then presented to the inspector. The inspector can zoom in and out of the image and make direct annotations. This software can then generate a report of all the annotations made for the asset presented with the relevant image for each. With this method, hundreds of images can easily be indexed by a 3D model with areas of interest annotated and inspected. Areas of completed inspections can be color-coded to prevent duplicate inspections or missed inspections of critical elements of the asset.
Drone inspections, by their very nature, are safer and more efficient than conventional on-site expert inspections. To put it simply, they save both time and money. As drone inspection technology allows for more robust inspections, the result will be a reduction in risk and costs while increasing the utilization and billable hours of the expert inspector.
As CEO of the Suntuity Group, Dan Javan oversees eight companies, including Suntuity Solar and Suntuity Airworks. He is an entrepreneur, a mentor, and a recognized leader in the renewable energy and UAV industries. Javan has a passion for creating people-centric enterprises that leave a positive impact on the world.
