Big Dollar Drone Contract

[Dale D]

I am reading my local Sunday newspaper (Miami Herald) and found this article in the local Sunday section.
"Coral Gables hires drone operator to find missing persons, identify crime suspects." The annual contract to a company named "Bond" is for $240,000.oo USD Stipulates that the city will lease four drones from Bond, operated by drone pilots. They will securely stream drone footage in real time to police department personnel. The drones are equipped with infrared and visible light cameras, a megaphone and spotlight as well as a parachute.So there is big money for some of us in drones!!!

Dale
Miami

 

[jaja6009]

Thank you for sharing.

There are a lot of great points from this contract.
Bond Aerial has a very unique and interesting porfolio and they seem to have fused security ops nicely into drone operations.

They are in Florida and they address this with non-Chinese drones (Assumption) with interesting payloads and capabilities.
It looks like they will be operating similar to DFR so I assume they will have a COA.
I would think that Coral Gables did a comparison of outside contracting versus in-house in terms of cost, capabilities, ROI, liability and a host of other issues.

 

[Phantomrain.org]

I* was reading the papper also and it look what I found, not sure you really need that drone.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain, Land on the Water, an Capture Deer.

 

[SethB]

I am reading my local Sunday newspaper (Miami Herald) and found this article in the local Sunday section.
"Coral Gables hires drone operator to find missing persons, identify crime suspects." The annual contract to a company named "Bond" is for $240,000.oo USD Stipulates that the city will lease four drones from Bond, operated by drone pilots…

I’m not sure that $240,000/annually is such big big money for the services provided.

Speculating:
* Bond will always have to have at least one, maybe two qualified pilots on call, 24/7/365.
* Bond will be into it for at least four non-chinese public service drones, maintenance, batteries, etc. That could be a direct expense of $50k at least, and perhaps more. More, I think; infrared sensing, multiple payloads, etc. quickly ups the cost for US-made public sector drones.
* Bond will have to supply management, communication, & coordination, and likely a guaranteed response time. A playbook would need to be developed in agreement with multiple agencies.
* Aren’t there a lot of military operations in the Miami/Dade area? Requiring coordination with multiple branches & facilities…
* Bond will have to invest in their pilots - chain of evidence, search & rescue, emergency operations in multi-agency response events, contracting to government, there is a *lot* of training beyond Pt. 107 here.
* I’d imagine a hefty insurance coverage is required.
* Such an operation has significant overhead expenses!

Again, I’m just speculating, but $240k/annually doesn’t seem like a lot of money at this scale in the public service sector. I think I could go broke on that contract if I wasn’t careful!

 

[jaja6009]

I* was reading the papper also and it look what I found, not sure you really need that drone.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain, Land on the Water, an Capture Deer.

View attachment 170717

This guy is killing it. His program is moving into other states and other companies are copycatting. I am in NJ and there is still an open question on if this is in line with NJ hunting regulations. The wording on drone use in hunting leaves interpretation questions. The M30T actually makes perfect sense. Thermal by itself can run into limitations and the zoom in daylight may be the correct tool in some instances.

I tested a Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced doing this and while it can work, the M30T is the better all around tool for this.
Isotherm, adjustable temp range makes the thermal on the M30T a much better tool with the ability to only view temp in the ranges of your choice.

 

[Phantomrain.org]

This guy is killing it. His program is moving into other states and other companies are copycatting. I am in NJ and there is still an open question on if this is in line with NJ hunting regulations. The wording on drone use in hunting leaves interpretation questions. The M30T actually makes perfect sense. Thermal by itself can run into limitations and the zoom in daylight may be the correct tool in some instances.

I tested a Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced doing this and while it can work, the M30T is the better all around tool for this.
Isotherm, adjustable temp range makes the thermal on the M30T a much better tool with the ability to only view temp in the ranges of your choice.

So your saying to folks who may be interested in this venture that they really would need all the Thermal drones to make this work, good to know.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain, Land on the Water

 

[Jug's Life]

I’m not sure that $240,000/annually is such big big money for the services provided.

Speculating:
* Bond will always have to have at least one, maybe two qualified pilots on call, 24/7/365.
* Bond will be into it for at least four non-chinese public service drones, maintenance, batteries, etc. That could be a direct expense of $50k at least, and perhaps more. More, I think; infrared sensing, multiple payloads, etc. quickly ups the cost for US-made public sector drones.
* Bond will have to supply management, communication, & coordination, and likely a guaranteed response time. A playbook would need to be developed in agreement with multiple agencies.
* Aren’t there a lot of military operations in the Miami/Dade area? Requiring coordination with multiple branches & facilities…
* Bond will have to invest in their pilots - chain of evidence, search & rescue, emergency operations in multi-agency response events, contracting to government, there is a *lot* of training beyond Pt. 107 here.
* I’d imagine a hefty insurance coverage is required.
* Such an operation has significant overhead expenses!

Again, I’m just speculating, but $240k/annually doesn’t seem like a lot of money at this scale in the public service sector. I think I could go broke on that contract if I wasn’t careful!

Where others see hurdles, others see opportunity. Once all of that work is in place, especially getting the permissions from other agencies, the rest is just typical business paperwork , sop, stuff that once setup has almost zero costs to run (excluding manpower).

 

[AMann]

So your saying to folks who may be interested in this venture that they really would need all the Thermal drones to make this work, good to know.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain, Land on the Water

One needs a lot more than that, like some big bucks for starters - did you go to the website and see their autonomous octocopter? It’s no toy drone.

 

[Dale D]

One needs a lot more than that, like some big bucks for starters - did you go to the website and see their autonomous octocopter? It’s no toy drone.

When I posted this it was an afterthought. I had not idea that commercial drone companies invested and made so much money. That is all I was pointing out. Like any business, you need a lot of capital to start and it looks this company has found its niche in drones, of all things!!!

 

[SethB]

Where others see hurdles, others see opportunity. Once all of that work is in place, especially getting the permissions from other agencies, the rest is just typical business paperwork , sop, stuff that once setup has almost zero costs to run (excluding manpower).

If one can secure multiple contracts in the Miami/Dade area there could be good opportunities! That's a really big market.

In my thoughts I approached this from the perspective of a business owner/operator who has overhead and develops staff. @JAMBCA are you thinking about this from a single pilot/operator perspective? That seems to be what you've implied by "excluding manpower" in the costs?

If a single owner/operator/pilot could fulfill this contract I'd definitely agree that $240k/annually is a good compensation.

 

[Jug's Life]

If one can secure multiple contracts in the Miami/Dade area there could be good opportunities! That's a really big market.

In my thoughts I approached this from the perspective of a business owner/operator who has overhead and develops staff. @JAMBCA are you thinking about this from a single pilot/operator perspective? That seems to be what you've implied by "excluding manpower" in the costs?

If a single owner/operator/pilot could fulfill this contract I'd definitely agree that $240k/annually is a good compensation.

Just thinking out loud. $240K is not much at first but once they work out all the clearances and procedures and take it to more than one city/area, then the money can be justified and then their offering price increases in other regions. This year maybe they have just this one city. A few times in the news, rescuing somebody/preventing/reporting info, and other cities might find it necessary and the time it saves police to get a warrant if they just throw this surveillance to a third party. Way less paperwork for police. That's the real value I see in this.

As for the Bond company itself, probably cost them at least 240K before the contract just to get the company going with research, drone building and hiring some standby pilots.

 

[Torque]

Bond is not a new start up. They are a well established nationwide security company. Adding drones to their services was a great idea IMO.

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