Scheduled aerial capture turned into a comparable record of your project — orthomosaic imagery, 3D models, terrain surfaces and earthworks quantities that owners, lenders and project managers can actually rely on.
Everybody on a project has a different picture of where it actually is. Photos from the ground settle nothing, and a written progress report is only as good as the person writing it. A georeferenced aerial record captured on a fixed interval settles the argument, because it is measurable rather than descriptive.
We fly the same site on an agreed cadence, from the same flight plan and the same altitude, and turn each visit into a comparable record: orthomosaic imagery, a 3D model, updated terrain surfaces, earthworks quantities and a short progress summary. Because every capture sits in the same coordinate space, month three compares directly against month one instead of approximately.
Repeat flights run the identical mission — same altitude, same overlap, same control. What changes between captures is the site, not the method, which is the only way period-over-period comparison means anything.
Cut, fill and stockpile volumes computed from measured surfaces, with the surfaces and the method documented. Earthworks quantities get disputed eventually; these hold up when they do.
The same flight produces the engineer's surface, the owner's progress report and the image that goes in the board deck. You pay for the site visit once and everybody gets what they need from it.
A point cloud impresses engineers and confuses everyone else. These are the deliverables the rest of your project team can open and act on.
Hundreds of overlapping photographs corrected for distortion and stitched into one georeferenced image of the whole site. You can measure distances and areas directly off it, drop it under a CAD drawing as a background, and hand the same file to somebody who has never opened a drawing in their life.
A photogrammetric mesh of the site as it stands, viewable and rotatable in a browser. Used for stakeholder presentations, planning site access and crane positions, and showing a board or a lender genuine progress rather than a bar chart claiming it.
Digital terrain and surface models suitable for design, drainage analysis and earthworks planning, delivered in formats that drop straight into Civil 3D rather than needing a conversion step and a hopeful attitude.
Difference two surfaces from different dates and you get the material moved between them — cut, fill, stockpile change and progress against plan. The same technique flags anything that moved which was not supposed to.
A progress programme is only useful if visits are comparable, so the method is fixed at the start and held for the life of the project.
| Capture cadence | Agreed at programme setup — monthly is typical on active construction, fortnightly during heavy earthworks, quarterly on slower projects. Additional captures around milestones are scheduled as needed. |
|---|---|
| Imagery resolution | Typically 1–3 cm ground sample distance, set to the deliverable and then held constant so captures remain comparable across the programme. |
| Positional consistency | Every capture tied to the same project control and coordinate system, so a change between two dates reflects the site moving rather than the survey moving. |
| Volumes | Computed from measured surfaces against an agreed base or design surface, with the surfaces, boundaries and method documented in the report so the figure can be independently checked. |
| Model outputs | Orthomosaic, textured mesh, point cloud, and digital terrain and surface models from each capture, in the formats your design team already uses. |
| Reporting | A short written summary per visit — what changed, quantities moved, and anything visible that warrants attention — sized for people who will not open the model. |
Monthly suits most active construction. During heavy earthworks, fortnightly is usually better value because the quantities are moving fast enough to matter to a progress claim. Slower or long-duration projects often do fine quarterly. We would rather set a cadence that matches how fast your site actually changes than sell you flights you do not need.
Usually. If there is existing control, a previous flight plan or an earlier surface, send it at scoping and we will tie into it so your history stays continuous. Where the earlier capture has no usable control we will say so honestly rather than quietly producing comparisons that are not really comparable.
That is the point of documenting them. Each figure states the surfaces compared, the boundary used and the method applied, so the other side can check it rather than simply disagree with it. Where a base surface is disputed we will compute against both and show the difference.
Yes — that is usually the main reason clients want the model. Orthomosaics, browser-viewable 3D models, PDFs and flythrough video all come from the same capture, so the site team gets the surfaces and the board gets something they can open on a phone.
Halifax and the surrounding region has a good deal of it, so this comes up constantly. Our operations run under Transport Canada RPAS rules and we obtain the authorizations a controlled-airspace flight requires as part of the job. Lead time varies with the authorization, so tell us the location when the programme is being set up rather than the week before the first flight.
