Skycatch and DPR Agreement Sees UAVs Deployed on Construction Sites

DPR Construction has signed an enterprise-wide agreement with Skycatch creating a new model of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) standardization and productivity available for all of their project sites. In construction, the products and applications for using UAVs have come a long way – from experimenting with fragmented consumer solutions to now depending on this data from a single commercial-grade kit. This enables customers to manage day to day operations, auditing and measuring performance - down to the centimetre level. Providing this visibility and transparency into a project has been a game changer for the industry.

A frequent early adopter of technology, DPR realized the potential of precision aerial data when they started experimenting with UAV solutions in 2013. After years of individual sites across the USA recognizing the ROI and job site efficiency benefits, DPR decided it was important to offer a standardized solution enterprise-wide, creating a more streamlined implementation, centralized costs, and support. Most importantly, this gives more DPR projects the opportunity to take full advantage of this technology to increase the efficiency of project delivery.

Evaluation process

Given the demand for this technology, DPR instituted the UAS CORE Group leadership team and began to conduct a formal evaluation process. Setting a high bar, the team performed a competitive analysis on virtually every solution on the market. The evaluation was based on defined criteria and weighed by their importance – but was also balanced with feedback from DPR project teams and their customers. DPR chose Skycatch, citing the enterprise partnership focus, quality of data, and robust software package.

"What we love about what we do is that we truly believe in not just the solution, but the relationship that we have with our partners and customers. From the beginning, we believe that creating trust and truly understanding the pain that our customers are experiencing, set the model for how we built our product and deal with any and all customers from DPR and beyond," said Christian Sanz, Skycatch Founder & CEO.

The ability to share the data with a wide range of users from the design team to the subcontractor allowed DPR to enhance communication and efficiency immediately. Project teams stated they appreciated the clean and modern UI and the simplicity of the web platform for processing, viewing and analysing data. From a management point of view, it was the enterprise-level project collaboration, and the high touch support and partnership.

Ground-control points

The ability to use Skycatch without needing to take the time to maintain GCPs (ground-control points) on the ground nor tag them in the upload process, allows DPR to process gathered data in a fraction of the time. The insights gained by leveraging the Skycatch platform allows the DPR project teams to take the data and turn it into useable information.

Other areas DPR has experienced benefits leveraging the Skycatch Solution are in logistics planning, BIM coordination, quality control, as-built verification, and billing verifications. DPR's VDC leads believe that the technology will help scale their efforts and deliver the best in class data from their projects.