How to Prepare Your Site for a Drone Survey

A drone survey looks like a short job. The crew arrives, flies for an hour or two, and leaves. That is why site preparation gets treated as an afterthought, and why so many survey days end with a partial dataset and a conversation about coming back.

Almost none of those lost days are caused by the aircraft. They are caused by a gate nobody has the code for, an escort who was not told, a haul truck parked in the middle of the area being mapped, or a question about coordinate system that nobody can answer until Monday. All of it is solvable in a short conversation a few days out.

Here is what is worth settling before the crew leaves the shop.

Decide what you are buying before the date is booked

This is preparation too, and it is the piece that decides how much of everything else you need. Ground control, a longer window, a second pass or an early start are all consequences of what the data has to do, so an operator cannot tell you what the day looks like until you have answered it.

Three short answers are enough to size the visit: what the output is, who reads it, and whether it has to line up with an existing survey, a design model or last quarter's flight. If the answer to the last one is yes, get the coordinate system and datum from your engineer before the date is booked rather than after the deliverable arrives, because the wrong choice shows up weeks later as a shifted file. Our piece on which coordinate system your drone survey should be in covers what to ask.

Access, escorts and the sign-in problem

This is the single most common cause of a delayed start. The fix is boring and it works.

• Gate codes, keys and lock boxes. Confirmed the week before, not the morning of. Combinations change.
• Site orientation. If your site requires an orientation before anyone walks the yard, say so early. Some are an online module, some are in person and only run on certain days. That single requirement has moved more survey dates than weather.
• Escort requirements. If the crew cannot move unaccompanied, someone has to be assigned and told. An escort who finds out that morning will be doing their own job instead.
• Sign in and permits. Whether a work permit, hot work equivalent or a simple visitor log applies, and who raises it.
• PPE and vehicle standards. Flagging, beacons, fire extinguisher, spark arrestor, CSA footwear, FR coveralls. Industrial and oilfield sites vary and the rules are not guessable.
• Somewhere to set up. A launch area with a clear view of the working area, reasonable footing, and out of traffic. It does not need to be big, but it needs to exist.

Also worth checking: whether the site is a radio-controlled zone, whether there is a channel the crew should monitor, and whether anything on site interferes with GNSS reception or control link. Tall steel, energised switchyards and deep pit walls all change where an aircraft can reliably be flown from.

The approvals that need lead time

Airspace clearance is the operator's job, not yours, but it is not always instant and that lands on your calendar. Your part is small: give the exact site location early, and flag any temporary constraint the operator cannot see on a chart. A medevac pad that only exists during a turnaround, a nearby fire operation, or a neighbouring site running its own aerial work all count. Can you fly my site covers that side.

The approval that more often breaks a date is internal and has nothing to do with aviation. Many industrial sites require their own written sign-off for aerial work, sometimes from a department that is not the one commissioning the survey. Find out whose signature is needed at the same time you ask about orientation and escorts. Two days is usually enough. The morning of is not.

Ground control, targets and existing monuments

If the deliverable needs to be tied to real world coordinates with verifiable accuracy, ground control comes into it. That does not always mean new targets. Often the better answer is to use control that already exists on your site.

Before the flight, find out and share:

• Whether the site has existing survey monuments, and whether their coordinates and datum are documented somewhere you can send.
• Whether your own survey crew is available to pick up check points, or whether the drone operator is providing that.
• Whether targets can be left on the ground safely, or whether traffic and equipment mean they have to be set and recovered inside the flight window.
• Whether anything is buried, staked or marked that must not be driven over or disturbed.

How much control a job actually needs is its own question, and the answer is usually less than people expect once RTK or PPK is in the picture. Our article on how many ground control points you actually need goes through it, and RTK versus PPK covers which positioning method suits which site.

What has to stop, move, or stay exactly where it is

A drone photographs whatever is there. Anything that moves during the capture shows up as a smear, a ghost, or a hole in the surface model. It is far cheaper to pause a loader for twenty minutes than to explain a distorted stockpile toe afterwards.

Worth walking through in advance:

• Working equipment. Loaders, excavators, haul trucks and water trucks inside the capture area. Either they pause, or the flight is planned around their pattern.
• Parked equipment and material. Anything sitting on top of a surface being measured will be measured as part of it. Pickups on a pad, a trailer parked against a pile toe, a bin of fines against a face.
• Active faces and live loadout. If a stockpile is being drawn from during the flight, the volume is a moving target. Better to fly before the shift or during a break.
• People. Not a safety-of-flight problem on most sites, but a privacy and courtesy one. Crews appreciate being told.
• Things that must not be captured. Proprietary equipment, an area under investigation, a neighbouring property. Say so before the flight, when scoping is trivial, rather than after the orthomosaic exists.

The neighbour question comes up on almost every fenced site and is worth reading once: do you need the neighbours' permission to fly your own site.

The site conditions you can actually control

Two of these are yours to arrange, and arranging them is part of preparing the site rather than something to fix afterwards.

• Dust. Active haul roads in a dry spell degrade the imagery. Book a water truck pass before the window, or put the flight at shift change. That is a dispatch decision you make in advance, like pausing the loader.
• Snow and standing water. Both hide the surface being measured, so whether to clear a pad, or to fly before the next fall, is decided when the date is set. See surveying stockpiles and sites under snow.

Sun angle and smoke are the operator's call rather than yours, but both narrow the usable window, so ask for the time of day the flight needs and protect it on your side. Thermal work narrows it furthest. Background on both is in the conditions that make or break a thermal inspection and flying drone surveys in wildfire smoke season.

One named contact with actual authority

Name one person on site who can make a decision on the day, and give the crew their mobile number rather than a switchboard. On the day there will be at least one question that needs an answer in the next ten minutes: whether the loader can stop, whether the north pile is in scope, whether that yard past the fence belongs to you.

If the answer to those questions is "I will have to ask", the flight either waits or proceeds on an assumption. Neither is what you paid for.

Agree the reschedule rule before anyone drives out

Weather calls are uncomfortable in the moment and easy in advance. Before the date is locked, agree:

• What conditions stop the flight. Wind, ceiling, precipitation, visibility, temperature.
• Who makes the call and by what time.
• Whether a partial flight is acceptable, or whether it is all or nothing.
• What the backup date is.

Cold is a planning input rather than a stop condition for most of the Alberta winter, but it has a defined envelope and it changes battery behaviour and flight duration. Winter drone operations in Alberta sets out what actually changes.

The short version

If you only send one message before the flight, put these in it.

• Exact site location and gate access, including codes and who holds keys.
• Orientation, escort, permit and PPE requirements, and how long each takes to arrange.
• The deliverable, its reader, and the accuracy it has to hold.
• Coordinate system and datum, plus any existing control or previous survey to match.
• What is in scope and what must not be captured.
• What will be moving during the window and whether it can pause.
• A named site contact with a mobile number.
• The reschedule trigger, the decision time, and the backup date.

That list takes ten minutes to write and removes most of the ways a survey day goes sideways. If you are still working out what to specify in the first place, what to put in a drone survey RFP covers the scope and compliance clauses, and you can see the services this preparation feeds into on our commercial drone services page.