Orthomosaic site mapping
A single scaled, geo-referenced image of the whole site, stitched from a flight grid, ready to draw over in CAD or drop into a GIS.
Site mappingFor surveyors, architects and developers
Fly the site once, and take away files you can draw on
Geo-referenced orthomosaics, terrain models, contours and point clouds of your site, processed from a single flight and handed over in the formats your own software already reads.
- Scaled and geo-referenced, in the coordinate system you ask for
- Survey control from your own land surveyor where a project needs it
- One visit, no scaffolding and no site shutdown
- A2 Certificate of Competency, CAA registered, insured with Coverdrone
You getOrtho GeoTIFFDSM and DTMPoint cloudContours DXFPDF plan
The gap
A photograph shows you the site. It does not let you measure it
Most aerial work sold to the construction and property trade is photography: a good picture of a site from above, taken from one position, with the perspective and the lens distortion still in it. Useful for a brochure, no use at all under a drawing. Measure across it and the answer changes depending on where in the frame you measured.
What a design team, an estimator or a planning consultant actually needs is the site as data. One scaled image of the whole thing, tied to a coordinate system, with heights underneath it. A surface you can trace an existing boundary off, cut a section through, take a stockpile quantity from, or set a proposed layout against.
That is the whole of this site. Same aircraft, same pilot, a different job: the deliverable is a file you open in your own software, and the writing here is about what those files are, what they can be relied on for, and where they run out.
Services
One flight, three kinds of output
Most sites need a map. Some need heights and quantities as well. A few need the shape of a building modelled in three dimensions. All three come out of the same visit.
Terrain models, contours and volumes
Surface and terrain models with contours, sections and cut and fill or stockpile volumes, for earthworks estimating and drainage design.
Terrain and volumes
Point clouds and 3D site models
Dense point clouds and textured mesh models of a site or a building, for design work, visualisation and taking measurements off an existing structure.
3D site modelsCredentials
What sits behind the survey
CAA registered operator
Operator ID and Flyer ID held, which is the baseline anyone commissioning a flight over a live site should be asking to see before anything takes off.
A2 Certificate of Competency
The qualification that covers flying closer to people and property than the open default allows, which is what a built up site or a town centre survey needs.
100 megapixel Hasselblad camera
On a DJI Mavic 4 Pro. Resolution is the whole argument on a mapping job: it decides whether a stitched site map shows a plot peg or a smudge.
Radiometric thermal camera
A DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced with a 640 by 512 thermal sensor, for the jobs where a site needs a heat reading alongside the map.
Insured with Coverdrone
Full commercial cover. Certificates go to your site team or your client before the visit if that is part of your process.
Written note within 48 hours
Every job comes with a written record of conditions, coverage and the limits of the data, not just a folder of files with no explanation attached.
Construction background
The surveyor came into this from building work rather than from photography, so a site brief about levels, access and programme lands without translation.
The handover
What actually lands in your inbox
Files, in the formats agreed before the flight, with a written note explaining how they were made and where they should not be trusted.
- Geo-referenced orthomosaic as a GeoTIFF, with a world file, plus a JPEG copy
- Digital surface model and digital terrain model as GeoTIFF rasters
- Contours at your chosen interval, as DXF or shapefile
- Point cloud as LAS or LAZ, and a textured mesh where the job needs one
- A scaled PDF site plan at a sheet size that suits the drawing
- Volumes with the base surface and the method written down beside the figure
- A written note on conditions, coverage and the limits of the data, within 48 hours
The work
The sites this gets flown over
Development plots, earthworks, road and rail corridors and town centre roofscapes. The common thread is that somebody needed the ground measured rather than photographed.
Coverage
Twenty five towns with live development land
Every town page is written around the projects that actually get commissioned there, the ground conditions that decide how a site flies, and the airspace over it.
Questions
Questions we get asked
- What accuracy can you achieve?
- No figure is quoted on this site, deliberately. Positioning from the aircraft alone is good enough for planning drawings, feasibility work, progress records and estimating. If a drawing has to be relied on for setting out or a boundary, it needs surveyed control points established by a land surveyor, and the flight is tied to those instead.
- What does a mapping job cost?
- A fixed price per site, agreed before the visit, based on the area, what has to come out of it and how far it is from Exeter. Send the boundary and what you need and you get a price back, not an hourly rate that grows.
- How quickly do the files arrive?
- The written note comes within 48 hours of the flight. Processed outputs follow the same route for most sites; a very large area or a heavy point cloud takes longer to build, and you are told which yours is when the job is quoted.
- Do you need permission to fly over a site?
- You need the agreement of whoever controls the ground, and any airspace restriction over the site has to be checked and cleared first. Around Exeter, Yeovil, Chivenor and Hinkley Point in particular that means arranging things before the day rather than turning up and finding out.
- Can you fly a live construction site?
- Yes. It is the most common job on this site. Flights are planned around the working area, and five minutes with whoever runs the site beforehand is worth more than any amount of paperwork afterwards.
- What software do the files open in?
- GeoTIFF, DXF and shapefile outputs open in AutoCAD, QGIS, ArcGIS and most civils packages. Point clouds come as LAS or LAZ and meshes as OBJ or FBX. Say what you use at the brief stage and the exports are set up for it.
- Do you cover the whole of the South West?
- Base is Exeter, which puts most of Devon inside an hour, and Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset within reach for a day's work. Travel inside that range is part of the fixed price rather than a separate line.
- Can you fly in poor weather?
- Mapping wants steady light and low wind. Flat cloud is better than bright sun for a map because it kills the shadows, but rain, low cloud and strong wind all stop a flight. Dates are held loosely for that reason and moved rather than flown badly.
Elsewhere
If this is not quite the job you have
These are separate sites we also run, each set up for a different problem. Follow whichever one matches what you actually need.
Aerial Photography ExeterIf what you actually want is a finished photograph or a video for a brochure or a listing, rather than a file you can measure from, that is a different job and a different site.Drone Roof SurveyIf the question is the condition of one building's roof rather than the shape and extent of a site, a roof survey answers it better than a mapping flight would.
See the output formats
Request a mapping quote with Drone Mapping Services
Tell us the address and what you need looking at. Sam Hembury will come back with a fixed price and the next available slot.