Challenge: Billingsley is an 80 acre residential development acres featuring single-family homes and townhomes. During the construction of the first few townhome buildings, the client noticed higher than expected construction costs. MSP was asked to provide elevations at the proposed building corners. Due to a period of prolonged rainfall and the resulting sloppy conditions, obtaining this information using traditional survey methods would be a time-consuming process.

Solution: We decided to have the Reality Capture team handle the aerial survey of the site. The 10-acre project was completed in just four hours of flight time. Within 48 hours of the flight, we processed the drone data and presented the client with a “heat map” as depicted.

Outcome: The heat map revealed most of the building pads were too low. With the use of mapping, we were able to generate precise elevations for each building foundation at multiple points. This information allowed the builder to determine the amount of extra blocks required for each building.