From Hobby to High Stakes: What Gets Surveyors Using Drones in Trouble

Adam Bailey was there when drones first entered the built environment, and he's watched the entire industry evolve around him.

As Head of Specialist Surveys at Earl Kendrick, Adam joins Nina Young to talk about how drone technology has transformed the way surveyors work, why regulation and professional standards are being outpaced by poor practice, and what AI actually means for the future of the profession.

From photogrammetry and thermal imaging to the very real risks of cutting corners with technology, this is a conversation about where surveying is headed and what it takes to do it properly.

What We Cover

• How Adam Bailey became one of the first drone surveyors in the UK
• The evolution of drone surveying technology since 2013
• Drone regulations and CAA requirements
• Insurance, compliance and operational risk
• Why professional surveying knowledge matters in drone inspections
• AI in surveying and the future of automated inspections
• Drone photogrammetry and measured surveys
• Common mistakes surveyors make with drones
• Thermal imaging, building performance and retrofit surveys
• The importance of education and professional standards in surveying tech
  
  

Guest Links

Adam Bailey: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/adambaileydronesurveyor

Earl Kendrick: https://earlkendrick.com/

Useful Links

Air Safety Map: https://airsafetymap.com/

CAA Drone Guidance: https://www.caa.co.uk/drones/

Atoll Done Management System: https://atollds.com/

Moonrock Drone Insurance: https://www.moonrockinsurance.com/

Global Drone Training: https://globaldronetraining.com/

Geo Business: https://www.geobusinessshow.com/

Digital Construction Week: https://www.digitalconstructionweek.com/


Guest Bio

Adam Bailey is Head of Specialist Surveys at Earl Kendrick and has been working in the drone surveying sector since the early days of commercial drone use within the UK built environment industry. Originally coming from a background in block management and surveying, Adam founded one of the first specialist drone surveying businesses focused on property inspections and building surveys. He has also been involved in shaping standards and industry discussions around drone operations, safety, and regulation. Adam specialises in drone inspections, photogrammetry, thermal imaging, and surveying technology, with a strong focus on professionalism, compliance, and education within the sector.

If you want to connect with surveyors across the UK and keep up with the profession, join The Surveying Room. It is free to join and open to all types of surveyors, students, and professionals who work with them. Surveyors UK & The Surveying Room  

Connect with me - Nina Young on LinkedIn

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Adam Bailey

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Hello and welcome. You're listening to This Is Surveying, the podcast shining a light on the people, ideas, and stories shaping this incredible profession. I'm Nina Young, founder of Surveyors UK and the Surveying Room, the community bringing surveyors together, breaking down silos, and making surveying visible. So for now, let's dive into our latest episode. Hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of This Is Surveying. I'm pleased to welcome our guest this week, which is Adam Bailey. Welcome, Adam. Great to have you on here. So Adam is the head of specialist surveys at Earl Kendrick, which is a national firm and consultancy in surveying. And what I'm really keen to explore with Adam today is he has a lot of expertise and experience, especially in the areas of tech and drone surveying. And drone surveying is an area that I particularly like and find really interesting. So I'm looking forward to this uh episode. So, Adam, as we always like to do on here, tell us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Yeah, sure. I'll give you the background and why I'm here and how I ended up here. I started out in life, wanted to be a sports photographer. I did that, didn't quite work out for me. And I ended up in block management. I had a background in working on construction sites and the like. And while I was in block management, I retransbuilding surveyor and ended up as a bit of a section 20 specialist within the block management side of things, managing large portfolios. And then I was advising a client on a redex project of their site, came to the end of the meeting, and they were like, that's great. Okay, we'll go ahead with the consultation. We've got this block in the middle of our estate, it's got a flat roof, we can't get to it, we can't see it, but there's some issues with it. What do we do? This was early 2013. So my advice was you've got to put up scaffolding. And we worked out cost of scaffolding, gonna have to consult on that under section 20. So I I suggested maybe to avoid multiple consultations, they just wanted to consult on replacement of the roof with full scaffolding. I came away thinking, actually, there's got to be a better way of doing this.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

I was watching a programme on channel 5 at the time called The Gadget Show, and this little drone, these new things called drones, look what they can do. And I thought, oh, actually, I could look at that roof using that. There must be someone out there that does this. So I searched for it, couldn't find anyone. And so I could do it. And then from there, researched it, found that there wasn't anyone specifically doing drone surveys of the built environment, and uh turned to my then heavily pregnant wife and said, I'm gonna start a drone survey company. A few expletives, I think, at the time, and uh but jumped into it with two feet. She fully supported me through that, and uh yeah, first to market by no design at all, simple simply by chance. Yeah, there were other drone operators, but they're more into TV and film, and some were looking at oil and gas off and offshore oil and gas.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

So I was first to uh to this industry with drones looking predominantly at roofs and upper elevations, flying big rigs that looked like they'd been built in someone's shed, which wasn't far from the truth, round Fulham, Chelsea and the like. And Elkendrick were actually one of our first, one of my first clients outside my known circle. So early 2014,

From Block Management To Drones

SPEAKER_00 3:50

I get a phone call from Julian, Julian Davies, the CEO of Elkendrick, said you do drone surveys, yeah. Okay, one of my surveyors is going to be in touch. And early 2014, it was Albert Bridge Road. I still remember it. Albert Bridge Road, first drone survey with El Kendrick. Then in 2020, me and Julian had a conversation and decided that to join the group as it was then, and we became EK Digital. And then a couple of years ago, we moved to being EK Specialist Surveys and we've merged completely into the group now. So we support what the surveyors are doing across the board within Al Kendrick, whether that be for our PPMs or structural surveys and the like or beyond. We have services that support our surveyors. We're there to support what they're delivering for the clients to give better insights. And it's all based on professional knowledge. So we're building surveyors, but we're also understand how to operate drones correctly, been doing it for this long. And yeah, I've I've tried to do more than just be someone flying a drone. Yeah, I've been involved in helping establish RPASS back in 2014 as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

So R Pass, what's what's that just for the listeners?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

R Pass is a body that purports to represent the drone industry to the likes of CA and DFT. And I was vice chair, I was one of the founding members and vice chairman for a couple of years. I'm not involved anymore in that side of things, but I felt like I did my my bit for the industry, helping safety partnerships and sitting on some oversight boards for the DFT and the like. So in the early days, really heavily involved in the wider industry, not just what I was doing, but now we focus very much on making sure that what we're delivering is you know, it's that step above and it's driving professionalism on our side of things, especially within the building survey side of sort of in all that time and all the experience.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

How has things evolved, would you say, in what things have changed sort of when for when you started, would you say?

SPEAKER_00 5:55

I mean, the major thing is the technology in itself. It moves at such a rapid pace.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Everyone thinks back to what their mobile phone was in 2013 and to where it is now. Yeah. Drones moved at a quicker pace than that. And obviously, it's been driven by one company predominantly, which is DJ. You know, they're the biggest manufacturer of drones, Chinese firm. They've got great reach. Um, obviously, they've got issues like in the in the States where you're not allowed to use Chinese drones generally in uh a lot of uh use cases. But the technology, camera technology, the drone technology, things have become very much more accessible. Most drones now are ready to fly off the shelf. Whereas back when I started, it was a mix of self-build kits with flight controllers. My very first drone that we used commercially was a Tarot T810 with a DJO Wukom flight controller and a Lexmoff skimbal that you had to balance yourself with the camera you put on. Now, when we first started, so flight times are about six minutes, and you had a fuzzy SD downlink from a radio controller. You had no on-screen display about your battery time and health and depletion and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Oh, right. Okay, so it just used to run out.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

No, no, no. You had to plug in a little alarm, and it was like high-pitched, almost like uh, you know, the personal alarms, almost like that, really high pitched, and you had to listen out for that. Because if it got got to that point before you landed, you had to get it down really quickly because you're down to like 15-20%, whatever you set it to. So usually it was on a timer. It's like, right, I know I've got this much of the time generally, because obviously battery power and charge is affected by how fast you're flying the drone, how hard, how high, what the winds are like, you know, how good the fix is on the GPS. So there's all these changing environmental impacts. So you have to have an estimation, but obviously that technology has moved very quickly, even the battery technology.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Just to it on that point with weather, is the tech has it got better? Because I know obviously things like wind are have a huge impact on flying. Have they got better? I mean, more resistant to wind, better to fly in, you know, the difficult conditions.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Well, it comes down to the platform you're you're flying and like there's very few IP-rated drones out there. There's one that I'm looking at at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

What's that? What's IP?

SPEAKER_00 8:26

You know, the weatherproofing. So there's an IP.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Oh, okay, got it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Your mobile phone's got an IP rating.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Right, yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

So the IP rating, the first number is about how big the particles it keeps out, so like dust and sand and stuff, and the second is rain. It could be the other way around. It's one way or the other. So one number's also the other one's about particles. If you want a drone that is going to be resistant to precipitation and that, you need a high IP rating if you're going to fly it in rain or in dusty conditions. And DJI are now have an IP rate drone, but it's really dedicated to their drone in the box. But wind, it comes down to the drone itself. So they get ratings.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Heavier is better. Is that a wrong assumption?

SPEAKER_00 9:11

In theory, yes, but the ratings seem to be all around the same place at the moment, the ready to fly ones, apart from the really light ones, because obviously you can imagine that they're just gonna, you know, you get your mini out and it's weighing 249 grams or the mini four or five, whatever it is now that is over 250 grams, and I think we'll touch on that later.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

But you know, if that gets a 20 mile an hour gust, that's gonna travel a lot more than a kilo drone or you know, an 18 kilo drone. So yeah, a heavier drone will sit there and probably be more wind resistance, but also the shape. If you've got a flat side like the old inspires, and even the current inspire, if you've got a flat side, the wind's gonna catch that a lot more.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

What do you see the issues within sort of this space, as in the use of drones, I guess, regulation, compliance, training, that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Yeah, education, education, education. Some politicians. Just to take an example from yesterday, I was um undertaking a survey of some buildings for a county cricket club on their on one of their second bit grounds. And the lady there who was who also worked for a couple of other sports clubs said that they'd had a safety briefing for a motor club that she worked for around drones and the threat of drones. But they're not having those conversations about other threats on the security side of things, and they're not talking about the benefits of the drones either. It's more like you know, she she mentioned Gatwick, and it's like, well, we don't know everything about Gatwick, and you know, no drone was actually ever discovered to actually exist within the Gatwick situation a few years ago, and there's a lot of conspiracy theories still flying around around that, and it's more educating people about what drones can do, the professionalism within them, within the sector, because I I was at a so we're part of an organization called Commit to Drones, of which there's a lot of NGOs, end users, public bodies, other professional organizations delivering drone surveys, the services, sorry, whether they be surveys or other

How Drone Tech Has Matured

SPEAKER_00 11:30

things. So, like Department for Environment were there, class organization meet, which was called Speed Dating for Drones, and it's like 36 presentations by members across the day. I was second up, so you know, we you weren't told when you were going to be, and I was second up, it was like, oh no, how's this gonna set? But then it's like at least it's out of the way with but the education piece within that is like these bodies are using drones, you know, they're using them for specific reasons, there's positives towards it. But there was a stat from PWC within their presentation, which was something like you're more likely to be struck by lightning, killed by lightning, than coming into contact with a drone in a negative way.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

So, you know, more people struck by lightning than they've ever been killed by because you do hear a lot about the safety of them, and you know, you I hear these stories of people like people of like members of the public can be very touchy about it.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

That's you know, it's educating that actually, this is a very safe activity, and what we're doing is we're creating a safer environment because ostensibly we're putting a robot in a position whereby we'd put a human you know at height in dangerous situations, we don't have to put them anymore just to collect data, you know. So it's that education, it's education actually on what the outputs can be. Just chuck a drone up there, it's not that simple. You know, it's a regulated activity. There's lots of considerations like airspace and safety, and you know, do you need an operational authorisation from the CAA if you're doing it commercially? Civil Civil Aviation Authority, CAA.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

I think I think on a previous discussion we had, you said that's the authority, isn't it, where you go for the regulation, this kind of thing. Do they have a lot of information that people can go to? I'm thinking of people that are listening and thinking of maybe you know going into the drone space. Is it is that a good source of information to start with?

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Yeah, I'm sure you'll put a link below, but I mean quite simple Google CAA drones. Glamit of information there, both on the categories of how you use drones and you know, around operational authorization PDRA01, which is predefined risk assessment. Use so many acronyms in this industry as well. Yeah, so it's education around what you can do, what's cap what, what actually the capabilities are, and you know, the understanding of the value of the output as well. So that you know, talked about making things safe, but it's high-value assets, data about people, you know, in this sector, about people's property and their assets, you know, that they otherwise wouldn't get. And if it's captured by someone who understands what they're doing to a very high quality and it's promulgated to all the stakeholders in an easily digestible way, then that's of high value. And you can you can review it, you can come back to it. A surveyor with binoculars is gonna see what they can see from the ground, and they're gonna give you their professional insights, but they're not gonna have a full picture because they're restricted by their position on the ground and the binoculars.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Yeah, something like the flashing around the chimney at the back, you know, like yeah, yeah, you can't see that.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

I think that's simple, yeah. Um and we're talking about RGB sensors, and obviously, you know, we might touch on infrared sensors and thermal, but you can create measured measured outputs from you know, drone technology, whether that's aerial LIDAR or photogrammetry. We look at three aspects of using drone data, and that is inspect, measure, and performance. Yeah, those are our three main core uses of drones, but we are professionals in the space and we we understand how to interpret the data and how to deliver it for that.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

I think that's the point though, isn't it, Adam? It's that what you just said earlier, which was around, you know, someone operating the drone that knows what they're looking for. And because uh, you know, things that I've heard in the past and come across a lot was where, you know, the drones, you know, really kicked off a few years back and everyone suddenly was like using drones and like drone surveying services, but they were just someone that's literally operating a drone, just capturing images of a of a roo, for example, but they have no surveying background, so they don't really know what they're actually looking at necessarily or looking for.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

But you can flip that as well. Um I'm sure plenty of surveyors now have a mini drone within their surveying kit almost, but and they're try they're operating under the open category, but they don't actually have a knowledge of, you know, the full knowledge of what how they should be operating the drones, where they should be, what they should be doing first, and actually, insurance. Do they have the right insurance? Okay. Because a lot of surveyors are probably relying on their general public liability insurance to go, yeah, it's a surveying activity, it's covered under that. If something goes wrong, they're gonna find out it's not. It's not, right? It's very I mean, and again, probably put a link below, but they're you know, it specifies that you have to have specific insurance at a specific level when you're operating a drone.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Is that through the CAA?

SPEAKER_00 16:41

That's uh that's in the ANO, the air navigation, it's yeah, under the CAs. So you need specific insurance for operating a drone, even if you're operating a mini drone and it's but if it's got a commercial aspect to it, you should have the right insurance on it. Because if something goes wrong, oh you're covered, no, you're not, and you're leaving yourself quite liable.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

So, one of the things I've I've come across a lot is within the sort of residential space, and I mean, I I had a D Germany years back and absolutely loved it, played about with it, checked my roof. It was more just sort of um a hobby thing, really, for me.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

But I I thought it was first. Did you check where you live?

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Yeah, I did, because I have actually a lot of like small airfields around here, and luckily where I am, but not far, literally a few miles down the road, we've got this burn burn, uh village called Burn, but there's an airfield there. And you know, I've looked on the on the map literally online, I can't remember the site, but it it shows you like the boundaries, and I was like, I was fine here, but literally a few miles down the road couldn't be.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

When we started out, you had to get the aviation maps out and every job you're plotting on the map, and you had to get a new map every year because obviously the airspace was updated and temporary airspace. You had to go on the NATS website to look at the AIS to get the data there. But there's a lot more platforms that you could use. Unfortunately, one of the big companies who was doing that and was involved uh providing platform for Nats has gone out of business now, but other ones are um coming online. I just can't remember the one I'm using at the moment because airsafety map.com.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Air Safety Map. Okay, that's that's going to be helpful. That's one that I've I've been using recently now that um so going back to the drone I had, I remember at the time I think it was it was two four-nine grams, so it was just it was literally just under you know the threshold. So things have changed.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Well no, so when I started,

Regulation, Insurance And Planning Basics

SPEAKER_00 18:40

there were two thresholds. There were seven kilograms, there's twenty kilograms, and everything above was you know pie in the sky. So the seven kilograms uh yeah, my drug in order to do what we were doing, it's like keep it below seven kilograms. You know, you needed at the moment, it was called uh permission for commercial operations. Uh it's changed names several times. The the regulations we we talked about technology moving for tech the regulations are constantly changing as well. So you've got to stand up. Yeah, you know, they it gave you uh predefined risk assessment zero one under specific, you need the operation authorization, but the open category was for and it's all about risk. It's about the risk of where you're working and the risk of what you're working with. So that 250 grams level is still there. You know, anything under 250 grams is considered low risk. So you're operating with something that is sub 250 grams. Now I was given uh a CPD a few months ago, and someone said, Well, I bought a uh Mini 5 and on the basis it's under 250 grams and it's over. What can I do? It's like, well, you can't use it in the open category. So oh, don't I have any recourses? Well, well, buy a beware, you've got to do your research before you jump in. Is it like when you add on like propeller guards and stuff, the weight, the weight no, uh I it's the weights of the drone, including all everything that's attached in the fuel. And that I think it's either the mini four or mini five is actually 252 or something like that. So it's not below that 250 grand. So this is the other thing with technology. When you're at cutting edge, it's bleeding edge, buyer, beware, do your research, don't just jump in and go, right, that's what I need. Start with actually, what do I want to deliver? Why, why am I doing this? And then work your way back to okay, this is the tool I need. That's not just for drones, that's for everything, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

But a lot of people start with the drone and then go, right, now what do I deliver with it? I've got myself a 249 gram drone, and actually the use case for a mini drone is you know, maybe small residential properties, maybe looking in a hopper, but then the sensors are small, they're less capable, etc. You can't get high-quality outputs that you know professional organizations looking to deliver. They're good for very specific things. But people go, well, I'll use that, and then I can, and then they find they're limited, or they find they're limited and kind of ignore that and go, No, we're doing drones or yes, we've got drone capability. Yeah, it's that education piece again, it's start, start with the end point and work your way back. You know, what do we want to deliver? Yeah, what's um and there's training organizations as well that uh out there to provide education on how to operate drones if you really want to go down the professional route rather than just putting a little add-on, because you can't, even with mini drones, you can't just turn up to a site and throw it up in yeah, much as everyone wants to, you know, you've got airspace requirements, you have still have to do the on lock, you have to register yourself as an operator, etc.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Yeah, I did that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Have your registration number on the side, yeah, and the sticker, put a sticker on it, yeah. And try and fit try and fit that on a mini drone somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Yeah, it wasn't easy.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Um, yeah, you need to understand what you're doing. So, yeah, the right insurance, understanding how to look at what you're doing, yeah, because you're doing it commercially. Risk and method statements for everything. We use a platform called Drone Desk for a lot of our risk assessments, but we're always reviewing that. So there are others out there like Atoll and the like that do these similar things. So you do your flight planning, your risk, risk and method statements, you're checking the airspace, you're checking your equipment, you're you know, you're setting up, you're reviewing the site, all before you get to the site.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

That's a lot. Yeah, there's a lot more to it, then isn't there, really?

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Yeah, you can't just turn up, and people are just turning up, throwing it up, and then finding out actually, you know, that someone turns up and goes, actually, there's some airspace issues here or whatever. I mean, at the moment, if you look at say one of the one of the airspace websites, you'll see across London there's huge amounts of restricted airspace at the moment. I mean, you've got the three restricted air spaces in London anyway. You've got R157, Hyde Park, R158, City London, and R159 McShilot Docks. And you have to have additional permissions to fly in those spaces anyway. Then you've got the airports, which you need special permission for if you're in their flight restriction zone, which is two and a half nautical miles from the centre of the airport runway and then extended on the approaches. And then you've got the prisons, which was introduced in October, I want to say 24, but I could be wrong.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Really? Was only then? You think that would have been done?

SPEAKER_00 23:25

So and Matt took that takes an inordinate amount of time to get permissions to fly near the prisons. You know, you think out and they're quite a big space. It may have even been last year, but I think it was 24. So you've got all those restricted air spaces anyway, and then you've got danger areas and you know, prohibited areas that if you want to fly in them, you need different different permissions, and then you have temporary restrictions, yeah. And across London at the moment, they basically it's a tapestry of you know temporary danger areas, which restricts air spaces because the Met police are testing their drone-in-the-box solutions, so you can't just turn up at a lot of sites and flop because you have to get in touch with the airspace operator or the airport operator, then you have to get in touch with the Met Police because they've got a temporary danger area there, or another testing site. Like there's a beyond visual iron site testing between St. Thomas's Hospital and one of the other hospitals, and they're flying these routes, which is beyond visual iron site, so they're using the sensors and cameras on drones under special conditions, but they've restricted the airspace to allow for this. Yeah. So if you just turn up and throw up a drone in the air, you could cause all sorts of problems. And you could cause yourself a lot of problems as well, you know. These are legal restrictions that you have to comply with. So just because you've got that 249 gram drone, yeah, again, it's educating people. The CA have got a great source where it tells you what you can and can't do with the drones. Yeah, it's I think there's a bit that says, Where can where can I fly my drone and things like that?

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Yeah, yeah. I remember looking at stuff like that years ago years back. There was there was a lot on the on the website and uh going through that whole process. And I actually did get specific insurance. It's particularly expensive, but I did actually go through that process.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

I mean, I've used a number of companies for our drone insurance over the years because there's some specific providers out there, but we use Moonrock, they're very specific in this side of things, and we use them year in, year out because they understand what we need and they tailor what we need, but they have a whole platform, etc., that gets your data, works out your risk profiles and and the like.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

So how is AI developing alongside sort of the drone technology?

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Would you you know at the moment I would say that there's a lot of people trying to do a lot of things in the AI. Okay. DJI have the some of their solutions, which you know, it's not AI. I think it's a module you put on and you train the AI to what you want it to do.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

I see.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

But is it capable? I'm I'm having I'm I'm not going to comment on it because I'm having a demo of it in a couple of weeks from one of my suppliers. But it's more on the processing side of things. So people are looking at shape recognition using AI in imagery, you know, model building, using AI on the processing rather than it being a more manual process. And it it's used within the paperwork, obviously. It's quicker to do an AI analysis of the site and then review what it's come up with than sit there typing it yourself.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

I I think it AI is more of an impact within the survey sector as a large, and it kind of feeds into that because we're using imagery.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Rather than AI at the moment has any real big impact on the

Restricted Airspace And London Reality

SPEAKER_00 26:50

planning of drone flights, although that will creep in, and I'm sure that there's a lot of very intelligent people working on that at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

Yeah. I get the feeling it it's going to become more difficult, would you say more restrictive?

SPEAKER_00 27:05

So with the regulations that are coming in, you know, if you want to do more, the CA have a process called SORA at the moment. So if you if PDRA01 under your operations authorization isn't good enough for what you need to achieve, you know, a specific operational risk assessment, that's what SORA stands for, is your way forward. Now it's in the early stages, and there's all there's another acronym called SAIL. I'm not even going to explain. There's a lot of people who are getting to grips with this to reduce either the restrictions or and the big thing that a lot of people are looking under Sora is BeavLOSS. So we work under VLOSS at the moment, and everybody really works under VLOSS, which is visual line of sight. But the big thing for that a lot of people see is beavlos beyond visual line of sight. So you're talking large corridor surveys, drone deliveries, and the like. So at the moment, for safety, so the drone doesn't collide into things so that you know where it is, so that you know you can see where it is in relation to other air users, for example, like you have to maintain visual line of sight, and to a degree that you can operate the drone unaided apart from the last. So not looking at your screen going, oh, which way is it heading? You can see it. So imagine that 250 grand drone, that mini, at 250 metres. Can you confidently say that you can tell just by looking at the sky which way it's heading and which way it's facing? Because if you can't, then you'll be on visual under sight with that mini. Because you need to be able to you know maneuver it unaided.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

It's that's another education bit there. There's stuff you can do, but it's so there's a lot of moving parts. Yeah, but AI is probably going to help within that bead loss sector more than anything. But you know, you're the regulation is the thing that's going to stop a lot of the technological developments because you need bead loss or because you need to change your restrictions. So you need to find testing grounds or you need to have lots of money and have your own space somewhere to test all these things and keep it in the open category and why you test because you could have a 50 kilo drone, but if you're in the middle of field 50 miles from anyone, and it's there's another, no other air users likely to be at the height like where you are, etc., then you're in the open category, yeah, even though it's a 50 kilo drone, because the risk profile is negligible. But that's a very specific situation that not many people are going to find themselves in.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

But what I'm what I'm really hearing here is it's all the nuances, all the little things. There's a lot to it rather than just can you fly this drone in this area? Is there any people around? And you know, an airspace. And especially when you consider London, like temper. I never really thought about temporary restrictions before.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Oh, they pop up all the time as well. You you have to, you know, you can't do your flight plan the week before, before, you know, you've done your you've done your rams the week before, you can't then just rock up on the day and it's like, yeah, it's fine, you've got to check the airspace again the day before, the morning. Same with the weather. When do you when can you fully rely on a weather forecast?

SPEAKER_01 30:17

You can't. You can't, not even the day before.

SPEAKER_00 30:21

So, but you have to take a chance at that point. Yeah, if you checked it the day before, and it's like, okay, I'm traveling 50 miles for this, yeah, probably check it just before you head out on the day. But if it changes when you're there, then you have to react to what's around you again. So you know, you've got that dynamic risk assessment within that. But and maybe AI is going to be the thing that makes all those the planning and the understanding, you know, it's going to feed in a bit more of that.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

Uh yeah, yeah. So it draws all the information, all the requirements, everything in, so you're much more prepared.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

And gathering all the date data around your platforms, around the pilot currency, because again, you know, you can't fly commercially if you don't have two hours flight currency in the in the previous three months. Flight currency. So that you Yeah, you have to keep flight, you have to keep your your flight locks and everything because when you're applying to the civil aviation authority, you've got to show that you have sufficient experience and currency to you know to be flying these things safely and understanding.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

It's like keeping on top of things, keeping up to date. Yeah. Demonstrate competence almost.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Demonstrate competence and experience.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

And you know, as a commercial organization operating under PDR A01, we've got an operations manual, which we we no longer have to submit, but we have to be have everything available and ready, should the CIA want to audit us for our operations. So, you know, they could send me an email on Monday and so they do audits.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Do they do that literally across the board or do they focus on bigger consumers?

SPEAKER_00 31:58

There's no anyone who's operating under an author operation authorization, whether it's PDRA01 or others, you know, you are liable for an audit. This is this is one of the changes from the from what it used to be. It used to be that you submitted your currency, or you have to submit your maintenance logs as well as part of all this and your ops manual on a yearly basis, and that would all be reviewed before you got your renewal. Now it's like it's assumed that you keep all this, but you might be audited, or you will be audited at some point in the future. Yeah, and the pilots have to, you know, remote pilots have to be um spit adequat qualified to do what they're doing. So, you know, have a general uh GVC, general official certificate, A2 and two. Yeah, there we go. So more more acronyms.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

I'm gonna need a dictionary of like abbreviations for their public show notes.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

This is why there's training organizations out there who do the training certification on behalf of the CA, and we're we're getting they're changing that as well from GVC to Moat Pilot Level 1, RPC level one, etc. And there's training organizations that get to grips with that at the moment, it's under the GVC generally. I mean, we use global drone training for all our training, we've had a long relationship with them, and you know, they help with the ops manual development and the training and the and the renewals, etc. guidance around there.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

With with regards to the training, is because it is something that does crop up a lot that I surveyors have asked me about in the drone space, you know, training providers. Is there

AI Hype And Real Workflow Gains

SPEAKER_01 33:40

any advice that you would give to surveyors who are considering training? What what what questions or anything they should ask or really consider with? Because I know there's the there's probably a lot out there, and it's like and some will be better than others.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

Some will be I I guess it's looking at reviews and asking really more than anything. You know, as I said, I I recommend GDT. There's Reyes who were resource group, and those are the ones that come off the top of my head. I used to do in in the early days, I used to do a lot of ground school training, so teaching people who wanted to become drone pilots, the theory around working in the drone space, and I did that for consortic, who were UAV air at the time. And I've also trained a lot of people to fly their drones and the like. So unfortunately, some of them were clients clients who were uh you know instructing me to undertake work, so actually we want to do this in the house. Will you train us, Adam? It's like, well, I'd rather you did it properly than you go and find someone who's giving you all the wrong information.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

That's if it's yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

At some point, people want to try and do things themselves, whether they can or not is different. And with a lot of organizations I come across who or who I've dealt with in the past who say, Oh, we do drones. It's like, well, what do you do with drones? And we have a conversation, they've got a mini. So it's not really doing drones. You've got mini that can do those things, and we have a conversation. Is actually the stuff that we do, you know, the high quality, high-value outputs, they don't have the capability. So we work alongside a number of consultants, you know, it's not just El Kendrick we're delivering with, we deliver with other consultants as well, and we fill in those gaps because with anything, you wouldn't get an electrician to plumb in your sinkle or something like that. I don't know, that's a really bad analogy. Um, not bad. Yeah, but yeah, people are specialists in their their areas. Yeah, you bring in the specialist.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

I'm thinking about like using drones in, say, a fire damage building. And there's that's that's a specialist area I would think.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

And I mean, there are specialists when we don't do enclosed-based drones. We're really interested in the envelope of the building when we're using drones, and for a lot of what we do, you know. Our surveyors obviously deal with the internals, etc. But there are guys out the guys and girls. Yeah, you had Zara on the other week, she's famous. Yeah, yeah, she's great. Um, but there are some companies who specialise in enclosed basically drones. So there's things like the Elios, which is a cage drone that people send down big gas pipes or lift shafts and the like. Unfortunately, they're very expensive, and you have to have the use cases for them. You're not gonna go out and spend 20, 30 grand on a drone if it's only gonna be used twice a year. So again, it's like with that, what's the output and where do we come from? But someone who's specialized in that area is gonna be able to deliver that.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

Yeah, I had a conversation with a marine cargo surveyor, and he he's exploring, it was asking about the use of drones to inspect, you know, ships' cargoes. I mean, we're we're talking about the big freight and really high value cargo to get the drones down there and have a look. Because, you know, it's quite a because he's literally got a sign-off with uh these huge, I don't know what they call them, the the freight, the massive is it MERSC um freight cargo boats. He literally has to authorize it. So he has to inspect the securing and everything.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

And he was he's exploring the the use of drones, and I think it has been used, but that's data coming out of that drone survey, though, and that's where AI is going to come into it, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:14

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

So AI probably that's gonna be a very controlled environment for the boats unless they're just moored up. But if they're saying a dry dock or something like that, very controlled environment, so maybe the drone AI can be used for the flight control of mapping that ship and creating a 3D model or capture these 2D data, but that's a huge amount of data. So down the line, you're gonna want at least a first pass by AI, but is it gonna recognise what you're putting in there? You know, how long is it gonna train it, be able to train data at what point? And this is the bit that people don't understand is there's gonna come a point whereby you have to trust the model, but we're nowhere near that at the moment. But there's so exploratory, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 38:01

It's all there's so much testing, new ideas coming into play, new software. There's so much happening.

SPEAKER_00 38:07

There's so many snake oil salesmen out there at the moment going, RAI can do this, and all you have to do is upload your images and you get your report, and then you can just deliver that to the client and you're complying. Yeah, all right.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

That's having a huge impact. So I was speaking to uh recently geospatial surveyors who yeah, that's that's something that's happening increasingly. You just need this bit of kit, you don't need to be a surveyor, you can use this bit of kit, off you go and measure. And it's it's like it's just not accurate, you know. When it when it when you're coming down to sites and construction, you know, it needs to be tiny millimeters of accuracy. And it's kind of coming in and saying, Oh, you know, you don't need a surveyor in the you know, in the process. It's like the same thing with the drones. Yeah, you can just do a drone survey, you don't need to be a surveyor.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

But you've just described a great crossover where again people don't understand stuff. So, you know, measured surveys by a drone is something we do quite regularly. We we work with geospatial partners, but you have to collect the data in a specific way, you have to process it in a different specific way, and then

Photogrammetry Accuracy And Survey Standards

SPEAKER_00 39:10

you have to deliver it to your client in the way that they want. It's understanding most general surveyors who aren't geospatial surveyors don't understand accuracies necessarily, they don't understand they're expanding, and they're being sold automatic solutions like, oh, you just plan around this building using our bit of software, press go, it'll collect it, it'll process it, and it's act and it's really accurate. It's like, what do you mean by accuracy? Is it plus minus 50 mil? Oh no, submil. You're not getting submil accuracy from photogrammetry, even with the amount of control that you might want and the scans around the around the base of the building that you then do you understand how to create a unified point cloud using the photogrammetry outputs and the scanners? Do you know how to and then how do you prove the accuracy? And what's the difference between relative accuracy and absolute accuracy? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

Yeah, I have heard some quite horror stories of uh uh geospatial surveyor's is basically, you know, I think one of the things he's trying to do is sort of tackle this area and educate, but the amount of, you know, in like housing develops and things where literally it comes to the day of building, like literally a drainage or something is literally in the way, you know, or things just someone's coming in and laying the roads and they haven't considered it because they've used like a cheap option. Yeah, it's not and it is costing tens of thousands of rework because they used a cheap option in the first place for the measurements.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

Drone photogrammetry is a fantastic development. So it goes back to World War II, you know, reconnaissance uh planes, capturing uh dual imagery, and then it's put together with special glasses that then created the 3D representation of the buildings, and then we could bomb bomb those areas accurately and stuff like that. Fast forward to the 2010s, and we're taking RGB imagery with GPS data in the XF, the background data, and we're using software to geolocate those against each other, then it's using shape recognition to create 3D models, and then you could create the point cloud out of that to accuracies of plus or minus 50 mil, bring it together a bit more with control, and you've got more accuracy, but you're not getting sub-mil with it. Yeah, and there's people selling, and you actually have to collect it in a specific way as well, and have an understanding of it. And even geospatial surveyors don't actually understand the whole process of how you collect photogrammetry data, especially by drone and terrestrially, and then how you process it correctly and deliver it. So you have splits in models, you have inaccuracies across models. You know, these models are tighter in the middle than they are outside, but they they're saying that it's accurate across the board, stuff like that. So again, it's educating to understand how you get to the deliverable. Start with the deliverable, it works your way back. Right. We need a building to act to band e-accuracies. How do we get that? What control measures do we put in place? Do we have threshold laser scans of it to use within the model? How do we then process that? How do we process it together? And how what are the out what are the deliverables? Is it a Revit model?

SPEAKER_01 42:11

And who should be educating? Because in an and this is a common thing across all areas of surveying. I come across these kind of things where there is so many issues down to a lack of education and awareness in the first place. And then that does allow, and that will always happen. The snake oil across the board does allow them to come in. And it's like you've got to educate like contractors, you've got to educate so many different sort of clients, you know, even members of the public. There's an element of that.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

Educate stakeholders across the board, end users, solution providers, yeah, even the you know, the regulators and the bodies, you know, have to be educated from all sides. And it's it's down to the individuals and those organizations to make sure they're educating themselves more than anything. Do the right research, don't just take what someone's saying on face value, take what they're saying, you know, and then use that information to go and check it. You know, there's the CIA is a great source of information in the drone sector, but in terms of outputs, I'm sure the IRACS has published some stuff. There was the tech partnership webinars. I'm sure there's plenty of people talked around things like that. This podcast. There's a huge amount of that I guess it's you know, how do you get to the right data, but that's down to the individual to make sure that it's quality sources of information.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

It's question what you're using, isn't it? It's questions what you're relying on what you are relying on, and not just what someone said that down at the pub.

SPEAKER_00 43:47

I mean, there's there's plenty of uh tech suppliers and drone solution providers out there who are trying to sell you the platforms and their training organizations.

SPEAKER_01 43:56

And I've seen that at like geobusiness, because I I'm going down to that. As well next next month. And I do see a lot of that at the Geobusiness Show.

SPEAKER_00 44:04

Yeah, could uh Digital Construction Week, I'll be there as well, actually.

SPEAKER_01 44:07

Yeah, I'm gonna be there as well. I'm gonna go in into both.

SPEAKER_00 44:11

And uh yeah, there'll be plenty of there's one I'm not gonna name them because I don't, yeah, but people can make judgments for themselves. If someone's clearly just telling you what you want to hear, and it's made it it's the old adage. If something sounds too good to be true, it generally is. So if they're saying, Oh, we can give you uh set you up as a drone solution, you'd be operating drones in four weeks, and you know, all you have to do is buy our training, buy the software we're selling you, buy the hardware we're selling you, and it all comes comes in a nice little bow and a nice little package, isn't it? And it costs peanuts. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Yeah, yeah, it's questioning. You see, yeah, there is a lot of that happening. I think we've covered quite a lot of we've covered a lot of ground. Is there anything else do you think that is worth mentioning mentioning? Anything else you'd like to share before we sign

Thermal Imaging Myths And Best Practice

SPEAKER_01 45:00

off today?

SPEAKER_00 45:01

Yeah, it's just understanding the limitations and also the restrictions around things. I mean, we were gonna touch on thermal at one point um today, but I think that's a different conversation altogether. There's a lot of people saying snake oil in regards to that. I mean, we got into thermal because we wanted to expand beyond drones, and because drones are very predicated on environmental conditions like the weather. It's like, oh, we need something else. Let's go with thermal. It's even more predicated on the conditions, you know, winds, rain, um, it has to be captured when the sun's not shining. If you're looking at building performance and the like, or even if you're looking at um leak tracing flat roots, it has to be done after sunset for building performance. You need 10 degrees of separation between the building and the environmental temperature, which needs to be lower, not higher. So you need to heat the building for a long time as well. And there's people out there selling thermal captured in daylight as a solution for condition reports. And you're like, that's just not true. I spoke, I'm not a thermographer, but the guys who work for me are, you know, ones uh experienced over 15, 20 years using thermal. Well, you know, he's been around for a long time with it, and it's relatively new. But when I said this to him, he said, I hope you uh tore them a new one. I was like, Yeah, I tried to, but they came out with a load of gump, really. And yeah, they're so into people are buying into it because there's pretty, pretty pictures with colours that show me where there's air escape from it. Have you checked what this is? Do you do you understand what it's showing you? Because and they're using AI to do it, and they say they're having engineers check what the AI say. It's like, well, and my question was, oh, so with thermal, obviously you have to capture it in this, it's not scalable. It's like, no, no, no, you capture it during the day. It's like, well, the conversation ends there then, because you're not getting valid data. In order to use thermal, you need to understand how to capture it correctly.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

So it's capturing it correctly in the first place. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:02

You well, setting your camera up in the in the right way, capturing it in the right way, yeah, handling the data, tuning the images in the right way. I wouldn't know how to do that because I'm not a trained thermographer. Interpreting that data in the right way, and what does it mean? And how do you then deliver it to the client in a way that is again, it's promulgating the right information in the right way.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

I've seen a lot of discussions about that because it was years back, and there was uh I can't remember what it was called, flixo. Flixo something, something it fits on top of your on top of your iPhone. Yeah, and there was a lot of discussions on LinkedIn about that. Like and then there was there was experts that were stepping in and going, yeah, but this and this, like kind of mirroring the same things you're talking about today.

SPEAKER_00 47:43

Well, a decent thermal camera is around 10 grand, fleur or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 47:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 47:49

Yeah, but then Fleur do produce those really cheap.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

It was like 400 pounds or something, I think.

SPEAKER_00 47:56

So why is that 400 pounds? A decent one's 10 grand. Oh, that's because it's not showing you anything, it's just giving you a nice colour contrast, and maybe it's useful in say trying to find a void in a solid wall or something like that, because you're gonna get a different colour. So you know, oh, actually, it's right there. But if you're looking at performance, if you're looking for auto-ingress across a flat roof, if you're looking to actually understand where there's cold bridging energy loss within the envelope of a building for a retrofit survey, you need to have the firm understanding and professional training to capture and deliver that information. Yeah, again, similar to the drones, you need to understand the scenarios that you're working in and you know provide the professional insight.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

The principles are all the same, aren't they? They all apply across the board and the risk management side of it as well.

SPEAKER_00 48:52

And if you're doing stuff you're not trained to do or you don't understand fully, why are you delivering that to your client? And if your client then questions it or down the line it causes them distress, whether that's financial or otherwise, are you protected against the advice you're giving them because you're giving them something you don't truly understand?

SPEAKER_01 49:10

That's the test, isn't it? Is if your client comes back and questions, how did you do this? What did you do? Can you explain it? If you can't, then you're not safe.

SPEAKER_00 49:23

You shouldn't be doing it. And again, with the drone operations, if you're audited by the CIA, if the CIA said, Oh, you're using drones, you know, how could you do this? What were the scenarios here? How did you make this safe? How did this come under your permissions, etc.? If you can't be black and white with the answers and understand how you're answering those, why are you doing it in the first place? If it's not safe, I used to have questions when I was delivering training, and actually, still to this day I always put these questions before taking a job. Is it safe? If it's not safe, why are we proceeding?

SPEAKER_02 49:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:58

Just repeats add infinites until you

Safe, Legal And Moral Decisions

SPEAKER_00 50:00

finish the job. Right? So it could look like it's safe when you do the desktop analysis and when you get to site, but soon you put the drone up and it feels unsafe. So you get the drone down and then how'd you mitigate? So you're always asking if this is safe. Is it legal? So are you working under your permissions? Are you working under the right airspace conditions? Are you working to your operations manual under the insurance, correct insurance, in the right scenarios, etc.? So and those two just keep that's you've got to keep asking those questions throughout uh a drone operation from when you're asked to look at it to the time you deliver it. And you know, one that's a bit more subjective is it moral?

SPEAKER_01 50:42

Yeah, it's moral, interesting, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:45

And that that's really subjective, so that comes down to different people. So I know people red lines who won't work in the oil and gas industry with drones because for them it crosses a red line because they had a belief on the environmental side. Okay, which doesn't necessarily align with mine. You know, if you're surveying someone's, you know, a piece of land for someone and actually doesn't belong to them, should you be surveying that and delivering them insights about that piece of land unless you've got permission from the landowner themselves or keep coming up with all these nuggets, Adam.

SPEAKER_01 51:20

We've we've had so many. It's great.

SPEAKER_00 51:22

I mean But the moral question of subjective, and I yeah, yeah, that's the ones and examples than I've just used. But you know, that but if you keep asking those three questions when you're operating drones went, but but then you could do that for any kind of work and deliverable.

SPEAKER_01 51:39

Any kind of work comes back to the principles and the risk management side.

SPEAKER_00 51:43

And safety is not just about one person, it's about yourself, it's about your colleagues, it's about the public, and it's about the drone when we're talking about drone operations, you know, other air users. Yeah. Safety, is it safe? Is a whole encompassing thing about the environment you're working in and who it impacts, etc. And the same with the legal thing is we're looking at the operational envelope and where you're working and how you're working.

SPEAKER_01 52:09

No, that's been great, Adam. I'm I'm very keen to get you on with this sort of the drone side, the technical side, the regulation, and obviously the pioneer of drone, drone surveying. I mean, you know, who else? Who more could I want on the show? Like the the first one to pioneer it.

SPEAKER_00 52:27

And I'm still here.

SPEAKER_01 52:29

And you're still here.

SPEAKER_00 52:30

Rebirth every uh couple of years, you know, trying to stay fresh and delivering it in different ways.

SPEAKER_01 52:36

No, it's been that you've got some really good advice, and I think, you know, the one thing that's really sticking out for me is the education side.

SPEAKER_00 52:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:42

You know, it's I do think there needs to be more awareness, more education, but more education resources out there, because it's something I get asked, asked, have been asked a lot over the years, you know, where do I go for this? Where do I go for that? And we've now got, I mean, obviously the CAA isn't is is the the the port of call is an obvious one, but then when it comes to actually operating the rules, the regulations and how things change. And then how to use these, you know, for firms, there's so much to consider that things that you've mentioned, like you say, isn't just going out and buying a drone and off you go. No, there are so many different things, even just like the planning, it's kind of there's a lot.

SPEAKER_00 53:22

And you've got you've you know, even the maintenance of the drones, you have to maintain drones, you have to keep the maintenance logs as well. Yeah, you have to the flight, not your flight logs aren't just for yourself, they're for your drones and the maintenance logs alongside that and the CA you want to see all this as well.

SPEAKER_01 53:37

And they will now audit you as well, which isn't something I was aware of.

SPEAKER_00 53:42

And if something happens with your drone, it falls out of the sky, who, you know, and you've not been maintaining that, is your insurance still valid?

SPEAKER_01 53:49

Yeah, that's another good point. The insurance. So everybody that's listening, check your insurance, make sure that you're actually properly covered.

SPEAKER_00 53:57

It's basic stuff. It's stuff that you would do for most areas of an organization of a business, or you know, if you're instructing a consultant or a contractor, you want to see they've got the right things. Yeah, so why wouldn't you for drone surveys and people are flying little robots around your buildings?

SPEAKER_01 54:16

Yeah, yeah, good point.

SPEAKER_00 54:19

I mean, we we were the first company to be Chaz accredited and safe contractor accredited. Yeah. Do why why wouldn't you, if you're a block manager?

SPEAKER_01 54:29

Chaz, is it? Did you say chas? I just said Chas and Dave.

SPEAKER_00 54:33

I was just like health and safety accreditation. Yeah, most like block managers, for instance, would insist that their contractors have uh health and safety accreditation. So why wouldn't they consultants who uh fly machines around them?

SPEAKER_01 54:46

But no, it's been great. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on, Adam, because there's a lot of things, you know. We're gonna when obviously we promote the the show out in a few weeks scheduling. I'll definitely be pushing this because there is so many resources and things that and the things that you've mentioned today that I know many are considering it, many are doing it, but not doing it properly. Um, but it is just like the same principles that apply across any element when you're a professional, operating technology. Um it's gonna be interesting to see how AI does sort of evolve over time. But like you say, I don't think it's kind of the main driving force behind it, it's just how it how you interpret the data um you know at the end of the day, but you've got to capture it properly in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 55:32

Exactly. And with the AI thing, it's like if something goes wrong, who's responsible? And you've got that argument against automation against autonomy as well. Yeah, if the I'm going off at a time, just again, yeah. If you've automated a drone to capture, then you've had the input to it and you're in control over what it's doing and you should be with it every step. If you're allowing the drone to be autonomous in making its decisions through AI, who's responsible for what it does? Are you still responsible? Is the manufacturer responsible? Is whoever programmed it responsible? Yeah. Ultimately, who's responsible if it goes wrong?

SPEAKER_01 56:08

If it's autonomous, yeah, it's gotta be, well, you know, surveyor sign off reports, it's down to the individual surveyors per the RICS AI standard. So you can't you cannot blame the AI. You have ultimate responsibility. It's your judgment, your opinion, based on however that data's been captured or interpreted, even if you're using AI. And this is the thing it comes down to, you know, with AI full stop, it it does still come down to the individual, you know. You can't you can't sue AI. Um, I think that's the thing.

SPEAKER_00 56:41

But so the operator has to understand what they're doing, has to understand limitations, has to understand what the regulatory framework is around what they're doing, and that's whether it's in AI or whether it's flown by the individual, etc.

SPEAKER_01 56:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:55

They're as we know, you know, evidence is no defence in the law.

SPEAKER_01 57:01

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 57:02

Whether that's whether you're giving advice or whether that's flying a drone and hurting someone, but as we know, it's very rare that that happens.

SPEAKER_01 57:10

It is.

SPEAKER_00 57:11

You're more likely to be killed with the lightning commercial drone, 22 million commercial drone flights in the US last year with zero recorded fatalities. But lightning killed 20 to 30 people a year in the US alone.

SPEAKER_01 57:23

So it's put it into perspective, doesn't it, really? People's expectations or assumptions that it's dangerous. I think it's because it doesn't help that it's used heavily, drone technology is used heavily in in war and military. So I think it's in association with the dangers of it, but even though it's not the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 57:42

That's like saying that a dog off a leash walking through central London has an analogy to a cat biting someone in Paris. They're two extremely different scenarios.

SPEAKER_01 57:55

Yeah, totally. It's amazing how people will link it though, sublimely, you know, when drones are seen very negatively or it's in warfare, and then suddenly sudden suddenly someone sees a drone above their house, they think, oh, negatively about it.

SPEAKER_00 58:10

You know, it can have that kind of but they also worried about the privacy, but they're happy to just tick the accept the thing on their iPhone to collect all their data and share it with Apple all the time, and it's got its microphone and camera, and it you've talked about something in uh WhatsApp or something like that, and suddenly you're getting adverts for it. It's not by chance, it's using the data you've given it access to, whereas the drone is so conspicuous, and you know, if if it's a valid operation, you know, you're you're capturing in accordance with like the information commissioners of this guidelines, which is don't continuously film, you're just collecting about your subject matter and the like, you're less likely to have any of your data being collected. And just because you're walking on the street doesn't mean that you're even in the image. But I can stand on the corner and just stand there with my phone and take your photo and you're in the public domain.

SPEAKER_01 58:58

Yes, that's so true. That's that that is that is a good point. And I've actually spoken to others that have mentioned that same kind of analogy. It's like you can film someone literally, but then you get a drone up and everyone's like shock horror. And it's also come down to what people are used to, I think. What you know, day to day.

SPEAKER_00 59:18

Well, yeah, the conversation has changed from when I first started. People were a lot more, oh, what's that? Whereas now, people, if I talk to you about drones, you know what I'm talking about. But back in 2013, oh drone, what's that? Yeah, so that's you know, and and actually explaining what is what it can do. Now I don't have to have those conversations. Now it's this is why you need to use us to use drones because of our expertise and our experience, etc. Rather than you need to use us for drones, it's you need to use us because we understand how to deliver the outputs. Forget about the drone. And 90% of the time I'm telling my clients, forget about the drone, what you want

Final Takeaways And Where To Join

SPEAKER_00 59:55

to achieve.

SPEAKER_01 59:55

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's not always just the answer, is it? The shiny toys. It's been a great conversation, Adam. Thank you very much for being on today. And uh, 3,000 links to show notes, I think, in the show notes. But thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:12

My pleasure. Thanks very much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:14

Thank you for listening to This Is Surveying. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast and supports the work we're doing to raise awareness of the profession. You can also join the Surveying Room, the free and independent community from Surveyors UK, bringing surveyors together, breaking down silos, and of course making surveying visible. Just head over to surveyors UK.com to learn more and join today. All the links discussed in today's episode are included in the show notes.