How Spain’s Acciona Puts Drones to Work in Construction Projects

Brief 

Greater accuracy, lower costs and improvements in safety and efficiency are among the advantages offered by the use of drones in construction, says Jorge Gomez, innovation manager for the Spanish infrastructure group Acciona. The company employs drones on projects around the world, Gomez notes, including activities “such as photogrammetric flights and photographic reports, both for drafting new bids and works in progress; volume calculations, structural inspections, monitoring works progress, assessing the environmental impacts associated with a project’s construction, or taking soundings on mountainsides.”

Insight

Drone technology, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), is used for different reasons in the construction industry, according to a top executive of Spanish infrastructure group Acciona.

As a tool that improves communication, safety and marketing, their use in building sector can offer many advantages; capturing real-time images from the field, stated Jorge Gómez, the Innovation Manager (Head of tunnels and railway research).

In the last few years, drones have helped make several improvements in construction, from increased accuracy in reporting, to improving safety conditions, to cutting costs and increasing efficiency, he added.

Gomez said while the uses of drones do not include the actual labour phase of construction, they play a huge role in the planning and analysis process because they can provide an aerial view of a site at a comparatively smaller amount of the cost of the construction.

“We are currently using drone technology for various activities in the construction sector, such as photogrammetric flights and photographic reports, both for drafting new bids and works in progress; volume calculations, structural inspections, monitoring works progress, assessing the environmental impacts associated with a project’s construction, or taking soundings on mountainsides,” he explained.

According to him, the use of this technology, which has already been implemented on various company projects in Spain and abroad as part of Acciona’s commitment to innovation and the digital transformation, aims to leverage the benefits of mass data capture to digitise and optimise existing construction processes.