Changed my mind on drone scans after a foreman in Tulsa said something simple
I used to think weekly drone flights were just a way for PMs to make pretty flyover videos, but a foreman on a Tulsa job pulled me aside and said he caught a missing brace on the third floor that saved a re-inspection. That one catch paid for the whole drone setup on a 40k sq ft build, so I stopped treating it as a toy. Anyone else using scans for punch list stuff or just progress pics?
That bit about the foreman catching a missing brace is what got me. My buddy runs a small crew down in Waco and had almost the same thing happen last spring. He got a drone mainly to send clips to his PM so he could stop driving to the site every week. About a month in, he spotted a section of roof decking where the fasteners looked off in the scan, so he walked it the next day. Turned out half that run was barely nailed and they had to fix it before inspection. His PM was all in after that and started having him fly the site every Friday. Now he uses it for punch list stuff too, mainly finding little things like missing outlet covers and gaps in trim before the walk through. Saves him a ton of trips back out there.