What do you charge for aerial surveys?

[brett8883]

I know there are other DronePilots forums geared more to professional pilots this question may be better in. I will ask there too but this forum seems to be much more active than the others.

I have been doing aerial surveys for my company using DroneDeploy for some time now so I have some experience but I am just now getting asked by other companies to do surveys and I am not sure what to charge since I have just been doing this for myself so far.

A professional survey company wants me to do a 20-30 acre site and all they want is contour lines they can import into AutoCAD. I know how to do that, just export the file from DroneDeploy so it doesn't take any more work on my part than just gather the images and upload to DroneDeploy. This cite is 45 minutes from where I live and I will probably use my Inspire 2 to do the work.

Can anybody give me a clue as to what to charge?

Thanks,

 

[vindibona1]

I think it depends on a lot of factors, the geographical area, the marketplace and general going rate for the services required.

I try to keep it simple and generally charge $150/hr whether I'm in the field shooting or behind the computer. Sometimes, if I can guesstimate how long something will take and don't expect any curve balls in the requirements after the fact I'll give a hard price based on how long I think it will take. The reason that I like to charge hourly is because often the way jobs are presented and what they really require aren't the same. I've found that when I charge by the hour the clients respect my time more and are less likely to ask for time consuming extras that weren't part of the original job description.

 

[brett8883]

I think it depends on a lot of factors, the geographical area, the marketplace and general going rate for the services required.

I try to keep it simple and generally charge $150/hr whether I'm in the field shooting or behind the computer. Sometimes, if I can guesstimate how long something will take and don't expect any curve balls in the requirements after the fact I'll give a hard price based on how long I think it will take. The reason that I like to charge hourly is because often the way jobs are presented and what they really require aren't the same. I've found that when I charge by the hour the clients respect my time more and are less likely to ask for time consuming extras that weren't part of the original job description.

Good advice thanks.

 

[Dogpilot]

As with any professional service, especially field related services a tiered charge is often necessary. As a geologist, I have to go to the field a lot. I have an on site hourly charge, a travel hourly charge, charge for vehicle travel at the IRS rate .56¢ a mile. If I use my aircraft I charge $245 per hour enroute. I have a different hourly charge for office work and if I use a drone in the course of the work, I charge an equipment fee. Itemize your bill clearly. I tend not to have issues. The work you describe is similar to what a survey outfit does, you may want to see what a professional survey company may charge and get an idea of what you should be below in your price point. Just remember a surveyor can sign his work, which is worth quite a bit for the user depending on what they plan to do with it.

 

[brett8883]

As with any professional service, especially field related services a tiered charge is often necessary. As a geologist, I have to go to the field a lot. I have an on site hourly charge, a travel hourly charge, charge for vehicle travel at the IRS rate .56¢ a mile. If I use my aircraft I charge $245 per hour enroute. I have a different hourly charge for office work and if I use a drone in the course of the work, I charge an equipment fee. Itemize your bill clearly. I tend not to have issues. The work you describe is similar to what a survey outfit does, you may want to see what a professional survey company may charge and get an idea of what you should be below in your price point. Just remember a surveyor can sign his work, which is worth quite a bit for the user depending on what they plan to do with it.

Cool! Thanks! Nice to have a real professional to talk to!

Yea this is for a professional survey company so I’m not completely sure what they need me for. I’m kinda starting to wonder if they just want to see how accurate a drone could do the work compared to conventional methods.

That’s something I wonder about. How accurate are conventional surveys? For topography I mean? The topography maps I have seen done from conventional surveys they really only put contour lines every 5-10 feet. I don’t think the drone would have much issue with that kind of resolution especially if you did it with RTK and ground control points and the whole nine yards. For one of our properties that was only a few acres it cost like $20,000 for a professional to do it. Crazy!

 

[Dogpilot]

The reason the charge is crazy for a conventional survey company to do it; is it is very labor intensive. We all had to learn to do it in school, since you may have to make your own maps to overlay the geology on. Large parts of the world have no maps on a detailed level. Needless to say, it is a PITA to do and takes a lot of time.

Lets put it on an economic basis. If your going to move around a lot of dirt, you need to accurately determine the cube of the material. So if your plan is off by 10% and you have to move 10% more dirt than you ascertained by the contours, think of all the extra diesel you need to burn and time on really expensive yellow gear you need to run. Kind of why the surveyor's signature is important. Then one of the more important considerations is where you may have planned to move it to. If you have too much you can't wave a wand and make the dirt go away. When you do a cut and fill, lets say for a road. Having too much or too little is rather embarrassing. Again, good data gives good results. Bad data gives you an opportunity to refresh your resumé.

 

[brett8883]

The reason the charge is crazy for a conventional survey company to do it; is it is very labor intensive. We all had to learn to do it in school, since you may have to make your own maps to overlay the geology on. Large parts of the world have no maps on a detailed level. Needless to say, it is a PITA to do and takes a lot of time.

Lets put it on an economic basis. If your going to move around a lot of dirt, you need to accurately determine the cube of the material. So if your plan is off by 10% and you have to move 10% more dirt than you ascertained by the contours, think of all the extra diesel you need to burn and time on really expensive yellow gear you need to run. Kind of why the surveyor's signature is important. Then one of the more important considerations is where you may have planned to move it to. If you have too much you can't wave a wand and make the dirt go away. When you do a cut and fill, lets say for a road. Having too much or too little is rather embarrassing. Again, good data gives good results. Bad data gives you an opportunity to refresh your resumé.

Sorry I didn’t mean to offend! I know it takes a lot of work and expertise.

The reason I was asking is because I recently did a massive job (2,200 acres) which was the first time I’ve done a survey job for a paying client. I really had no idea if I could even do a property that large and a couple other factors I just charged $1000 which I knew at the time was WAY low but I didn’t know how it would try out so I figured I’d learn some things and get paid at the same time.

I told the guy he could get a pretty good idea of the general topography but I didn’t have the tools to tell him how accurate it actually was and it wouldn’t be a replacement for a professional survey. He was thrilled with the results but I guess decided to hire a professional survey company to come in and do it the old fashioned way.

At that point I would have thought that what I did wasn’t up to snuff since he hired pros right after but he gave them my info and they asked to use what I did as part of their survey and now have asked me to do another job for them.

I get that these guys are putting their reputations on the line and their experience and expertise is required to say to “ok this is actually accurate” something I can’t do but I’m just wondering how accurate the drone surveys are compared to actual traditional surveys. I was really quite surprised they would want to use what I did since I kinda figured the drone surveys were good for getting the general idea but not anything as accurate as a real survey

 

[Dogpilot]

No offense taken. Folks generally don't really understand what can actually go wrong and how it shakes out, to the wallet. I usually make the client do the topo, since I would change way too much and it take too long. Drones are up and coming, but when you do survey with modern survey tools, your corrected GPS position is within a centimeter or so. The GPS in the drone is not up to that kind of accuracy. It could be, but not at the moment since GPS is degraded for consumer use. For survey work, you install a transmitter that simulates a satellite and give correction data to your "rover." It is placed over a very accurately surveyed in position. Some counties actually have permanently installed ones. The military had the gps position degraded on purpose for consumer use. Not hard to figure out why.

I have been working on applications for moving material from blasting in mines. Some is waste and some is what you want to process. So there may be only a few blocks you want to keep an accurate idea of where they moved to. Drones would be the ideal solution, since the ground is a bit on the broken up side after a blast. Unfortunately still put NFC tags in the blast hole to track them, much more accurate. If your blasting a wall 25 meters high x 100 meters by 50 meters, being off by a few meters is a lot of haul truck loads, not to mention a lot of waste shows up to be processed.

This is an example at Hail Creek mine in Australia, note the size of the wall and then the size of the excavating machinery, then think of all the diesel or electricity to move the material:

 

[brett8883]

No offense taken. Folks generally don't really understand what can actually go wrong and how it shakes out, to the wallet. I usually make the client do the topo, since I would change way too much and it take too long. Drones are up and coming, but when you do survey with modern survey tools, your corrected GPS position is within a centimeter or so. The GPS in the drone is not up to that kind of accuracy. It could be, but not at the moment since GPS is degraded for consumer use. For survey work, you install a transmitter that simulates a satellite and give correction data to your "rover." It is placed over a very accurately surveyed in position. Some counties actually have permanently installed ones. The military had the gps position degraded on purpose for consumer use. Not hard to figure out why.

I have been working on applications for moving material from blasting in mines. Some is waste and some is what you want to process. So there may be only a few blocks you want to keep an accurate idea of where they moved to. Drones would be the ideal solution, since the ground is a bit on the broken up side after a blast. Unfortunately still put NFC tags in the blast hole to track them, much more accurate. If your blasting a wall 25 meters high x 100 meters by 50 meters, being off by a few meters is a lot of haul truck loads, not to mention a lot of waste shows up to be processed.

This is an example at Hail Creek mine in Australia, note the size of the wall and then the size of the excavating machinery, then think of all the diesel or electricity to move the material:

View attachment 127247View attachment 127248

Oh ok so now I better understand what this thingy is
D-RTK 2 - DJI

This is like the transmitter you are talking about for your rover except for a RTK drone.

They say this thing coupled with an RTK drone can produce centimeter level accuracy. It would be really interesting how well it stacks up against a traditional survey. I imagine, based on what you are saying about how arduous a process it is that if this was just as accurate everybody would be using them.

 

[Dogpilot]

That is exactly the device. Yes things are getting better all the time. At the moment, when you start to add up all the equipment, it is most likely getting to the price point you can amortize the gear/lifespan/return to make a profit.

LIDAR was hugely expensive 10-15 years ago, now the portables are almost reasonable in price. When you can couple a LIDAR with the smaller drones then your system would be useful for let's say Borneo or New Guinea. It can penetrate the jungle and give you landforms underneath the canopy, which a visual pic taking drone can't do. So with position coming of age for the drones and LIDAR removing the vegetation. We may have something that works really well. Just not yet. Some jungle is so difficult on foot, Borneo for example. Our survey crew got lost for a week. The survey crew!

I hope you have good luck pursuing this it could prove to be a decent income stream.

 

[brett8883]

.

LIDAR was hugely expensive 10-15 years ago, now the portables are almost reasonable in price. When you can couple a LIDAR with the smaller drones then your system would be useful for let's say Borneo or New Guinea. It can penetrate the jungle and give you landforms underneath the canopy, which a visual pic taking drone can't do. So with position coming of age for the drones and LIDAR removing the vegetation. We may have something that works really well. Just not yet.

Well have you seen this puppy?

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I know it’s expensive but at $20,000+ a job you’d think you’d make that up real quick ?. Just giving you trouble

Some jungle is so difficult on foot, Borneo for example. Our survey crew got lost for a week. The survey crew!

?that’s pretty funny

 

[Dogpilot]

The equipment is attractive, the price point is almost there, the lifespan is getting better. There are other considerations. So let's say your on the Indonesian side of New Guinea, wanting to work around the Grasburg mine with you cool advanced drone, doing all we discussed. There is a special lubricant needed for the local officials to let you use the equipment, much less get it into the country. Grease is very expensive, local surveyors don't need grease. This special grease can exceed the cost of your equipment.

The general run of the mill folk still see drones as special or a threat. It is just the perception. May be some time where my drone is as commonplace as my binoculars (which cost more than my M2P). Then the local twits will not give you grief and require special permits or NOC letters to let you work. Just a small excerpt from my report of an exchange in India, which took weeks to resolve, just so I could do my work:

So I go and wait at the hotel for the money transfer to be effected. There is an 11.5 hour difference, so everything here from the US side tends to happen in the evening, which is the working day in the US. In the morning, I get to the airport at 10:30, where I only have to wait a few minutes this time to get to the Airport Director’s office. They have received the money, I give myself a small hurrah in my mind. I then ask “can I have my pass now.” At this point I think I was transferred to the previously mentioned parallel universe. No sir, we issued you a pass already and it has expired. Wait, I never got a pass. No sir we issued it but you never picked it up. Wait I was not allowed on the airport to get it. Sorry sir, it was issued. But it lacked one signature, when I was here and you couldn’t issue it. Besides the Airport Director denied me access until the payment was made. Yes this is true, but the pass was issued. The director pledged me full access if I paid the fees off. Yes this is true, but we issued the pass and it expired.

So you can see how local twits run your costs up.

 

[brett8883]

The equipment is attractive, the price point is almost there, the lifespan is getting better. There are other considerations. So let's say your on the Indonesian side of New Guinea, wanting to work around the Grasburg mine with you cool advanced drone, doing all we discussed. There is a special lubricant needed for the local officials to let you use the equipment, much less get it into the country. Grease is very expensive, local surveyors don't need grease. This special grease can exceed the cost of your equipment.

The general run of the mill folk still see drones as special or a threat. It is just the perception. May be some time where my drone is as commonplace as my binoculars (which cost more than my M2P). Then the local twits will not give you grief and require special permits or NOC letters to let you work. Just a small excerpt from my report of an exchange in India, which took weeks to resolve, just so I could do my work:

So I go and wait at the hotel for the money transfer to be effected. There is an 11.5 hour difference, so everything here from the US side tends to happen in the evening, which is the working day in the US. In the morning, I get to the airport at 10:30, where I only have to wait a few minutes this time to get to the Airport Director’s office. They have received the money, I give myself a small hurrah in my mind. I then ask “can I have my pass now.” At this point I think I was transferred to the previously mentioned parallel universe. No sir, we issued you a pass already and it has expired. Wait, I never got a pass. No sir we issued it but you never picked it up. Wait I was not allowed on the airport to get it. Sorry sir, it was issued. But it lacked one signature, when I was here and you couldn’t issue it. Besides the Airport Director denied me access until the payment was made. Yes this is true, but the pass was issued. The director pledged me full access if I paid the fees off. Yes this is true, but we issued the pass and it expired.

So you can see how local twits run your costs up.

Ah yes good old fashion special grease. They see you coming and all they see are dollar signs I understand completely.

 

[Ralph thompson]

RTK is used to correct the GPS signal. GPS is actually very precise but not accurate in Lat Long. RTK is used to make a correction to a GPS Lat Long value at your location based on the exact known location of the RTK transmitter. The new Dji Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced, like some more expensive drones can use RTK and I believe the result is very accurate, on a par with tradition surveying methods.

 

[Mt-Ed]

As on older person nearing the end of my life, I oft wonder how different my life might have been had the technology of today been available when I was first starting out? I look forward to seeing what new technology comes along before I'm gone......I find it thrilling and fascinating!!!!

 

[Theresasky]

I agree completely, Mt-Ed! I used to to do aerial photography in my little Cessna 120, hanging a Pentax 6x7 out an open window. For other jobs, I used a rented Hasselblad with a gyro hanging off it for stability. Once in awhile I'd do side work for a guy with a hole in the belly of his Cessna 180 when we needed survey or mapping shots. For that we used a WWII vintage Fairchild camera that was so heavy! I was a "lab rat" for a company that contracted with USGS to fly flight lines at 20,000 AGL to make the stereo photos that made up the mapping info for USGS quadrangle maps. Those cameras were East German Jenas that took 9 inch wide film! Today's drones and technology are absolutely amazing! With RTK and PPK capability, the accuracy available today is something we only would have dreamed of back then! It's all very exciting!

 

[Dogpilot]

No disagreement the tech is simply amazing compared to what we used just a few years ago with NOAA. While you may look to things like RTK as a big jump in accuracy, which it is. There as you all seem to know, a big problem in pointing accuracy. This is the small issue they don't seem to amplify in the fluff that goes with these devices. If you know the device's position within a few centimeters, but the pointing accuracy and reporting is off just a small fraction of a radian, then the center of the photo is not where you think. All getting better all the time and honestly they are not talking much about the pointing accuracy so a judgement cannot be made with any particular basis. It all boils down to accuracy vs $$.

Then there is the employ people because it pleases the locals aspect. For example, we can automate 90% of the haul trucks and even some of the pushing operations with dozers. This does not sit well with the unions or locals who want people to have high paying jobs. Haul truck drivers in OZ make roughly $100k for essentially sitting in the cab. Mining is a small fraction profit over high volume. Trimming overhead is critical, so circling back to the drones. If the accuracy is to be less repeatable as a human on the ground and it cost more diesel to move the mistake, then you use a human. Aside from the fact everybody is happy when you use a human.

You can always put surveyed in markers on the ground, tie them together with the photos, but then there is that pesky human in the loop again. I just don't know if we will get all the details ironed out before Skynet goes active and the machines take over and we live in caves again. Looks like that move out of the trees may not have been such a good idea after all.