Improve Earthwork Estimates with Drone

Data
As an estimator, you have to take many things into consideration when placing a bid:
materials, labor and equipment required, different quotes from different subcontractors and
suppliers, and the quality of all of these goods and services.

Your estimates must be competitive while maximizing profitability—an extremely difficult

balance to strike. Your decisions can make or break a tender if the price is wrong or the
quality isn’t high enough.

There are some great tools available to you (Trimble Business Centre, AGTEK, Civil 3D, etc.),
but their outputs are only as good as the information you feed them, and topo data from
clients (if any) can often be wildly inaccurate.

Getting your own surveys is the best way to trust the data. However, surveyors are expensive
and busy. It can be hard to justify their cost and, if you can, it can be difficult to get them on
site when you need to. This all leads to adding a “fluff factor” to measurements of 5–10%.
This approach may have been sufficient in the past, but it’s increasingly challenging to
remain competitive using this methodology.

Today, you need accurate data to win bids, and you need to be able to collect it yourself.
With a drone data analytics platform like Propeller, you can collect your own accurate data to
produce high-quality, competitive submissions—and win more bids.

Ensure Your Data Is Accurate

Use Ground Control

To ensure you data is reliable and accurate when surveying with a drone means using
appropriate ground control. There are two options:

Traditional ground control—Features or marked points recorded with a rover by a

qualified surveyor.
Smart ground control (AeroPoints)—Solar-powered GPS units that use PPK to achieve
survey-grade accuracy.

Since you work on multiple sites, it’s likely you’ll want to use smart ground control, so you
don’t need to rely on anyone else to get your data.
Capture Your Data

Check out our series of blogs covering this in detail in various circumstances. But no matter
the situation, the underlying concepts remain the same:

Ensure that your ground sampling distance (GSD) remains smaller than your desired
survey accuracy.
Ensure you have 75–80% image overlap.
Avoid imagery of things you don’t need mapped (sky, distant objects, etc.).

Conduct Quick, Accurate Pre-Bid Surveys

It’s hard to overstate the importance of having data you can rely to produce accurate bids.
Because drone surveying is simple and nontechnical, you can do all your pre-bid surveys
yourself and avoid the fluff factor. Cut out the cost and time of a third-party surveyor; there
are no traditional “boots on the ground” needed.

Once you’ve captured your survey, you can process that data in an estimating platform to
get all the info you need for the best bid. And with browser-based platforms like Propeller,
clunky desktop software is a thing of the past. Propeller’s intuitive visualizations allow you to
have a visual conversation with your prospective clients as well as your own team.

In addition to the measurement and collaboration tools we’ll talk about further down,
platforms like Propeller also clean up your data for better useability. For example, removing
vegetation, vehicles, buildings, and other obstructions above bare earth take just one click on
the corresponding filter. (If you’re processing it yourself, this is where a lengthy process of
trial and error begins.)
Propeller’s filters at work removing a conveyor belt. The right panel shows an original image
used to build the model on the left. Contour/Heatmap has been been switched on to show the
change (or lack thereof) in elevation.

Use Design Surfaces and Linework Overlays To Avoid Unnecessary

Import/Export

Propeller allows for easy uploads of design surfaces and linework. If a site’s design surface is
accurately georeferenced, you can load it into the Platform and do a comparison against your
initial topo to see how much you’d need to bring in or take out to hit the final design. For
linework, you can easily measure a specific section of the site by turning linework into
annotation boundary (see below).

Reliable and instant earthwork volumes allow you to see how much you need to import or
export to get the job done. Knowing these exact values up front means you can better
balance your site.

In the picture below, you can see 37,460 cubes are needed. With that number, you can work
on balancing your site by getting some or all of that material from another part of the site.
Estimating Platforms Enable Easy Reporting

At the end of the day, you also need to be able to present your survey data in an
understandable way. No one is going to trust bids they can’t make sense of. When you use
drone technology for estimates, not only are you providing you clients with real-world
imagery they can understand, you’re also simplifying reporting and analysis.

In a processing platform like Propeller, you can export PDF and CSV reports on all your survey
data. These provide a paper trail for who did what work when and a useful reference when
meeting with your own team or your clients.

Further, you can also grant platform permission to a client in so they can see the 3D survey
in action themselves.

Drone Technology Improves Your Estimates and Your Workflow

Job estimates are always going to be a part of the industry, but the technology that produces
them will, and has, improved. Drones and data processing platforms are simply raising the
quality of the baseline for estimating. They put the power to measure a site is in your hands.
Relying on a client’s suspect data or paying a third party to survey is no longer mandatory.

As we’ve seen, not only do estimates take less time with drone technology, they’re just as
accurate as traditional methods. Incorporating a drone and a processing platform like
Propeller into your regular workflow can save you money and help win more bids. It also
provides detailed, easy-to-understand documentation, site visualization, and rock-solid
numbers.

Read more:

How Drone Data Can Make Your Next Earthwork Project a Success

Improve Construction Site Management, Collaboration with Drone Mapping and Analytics

How 3D Drone Survey Data is Helping Cheshire Contractors Scale Their Business