Surveyors track earthworks daily with fast, accurate drone data
Rancho Mission Viejo has been developing large-scale, master-planned communities since the late 1960’s. A typical development phase can exceed 100 acres (40 ha) and include anywhere from 600 to 900 graded lots for sale to home builders. Grading contracts have ranged in size from 1 to 25 million cubic yards. So they also hired a survey and GIS company called Turnpoint Geomatics to track work being done in order to pay the right price for it.
“Rancho Mission Viejo hired us to track the daily earthwork quantities,” said Ken McDonald, drone pilot and GIS analyst at TurnPoint Geomatics. “Anytime a lowest dirt [remedial] cut is made, we fly and capture drone data to track it. That’s how the grading companies are paid.”
TurnPoint Geomatics started out surveying earthworks on foot, with a GPS-equipped backpack. They’d then map the data points into a model, but this was getting time consuming. So they turned to drones, particularly the DJI Phantom 4 RTK. While this was a massive improvement, it still took a lot of time to set up ground control for the small segments multirotors cover. Then, three hours to fly the complete site.
- Land management and development
- United States
Reflecting on how we could continue to improve this process, we wanted a better solution for the next phase of work. Enter the WingtraOne. This allowed us to fly higher and faster with less ground control, and the entire site took 35 minutes to complete.
Ken McDonald
Drone pilot and GIS analyst at TurnPoint Geomatics
Large area, high-accuracy coverage in just 30 minutes with WingtraOne vs. several hours with a multirotor drone has been a game changer for TurnPoint Geomatics and their clients. Specifically, they now have high-accuracy daily views covering the entire active worksite.
“We give them a cut-fill balance, every day”
Moving huge volumes of dirt is a costly service. The process of estimating the price has changed dramatically with the entrance of drones into construction and earthworks workflows. Decades ago contractors could charge more because there was no way to measure the exact amount of dirt or verify what had been moved. Now measuring and validating is the norm, via repeatable, low-cost aerial surveys with drones.
“You know, grading companies could only estimate quantities at periodic intervals,” McDonald said. “We can track the ground to exactly what’s going on and give our client a cut-fill balance, every day. So, when the grading company now bills our client, they come to us first, and verify the price. So that’s how well we watch over our client.
“Nobody I know has been able to track it like this. They can pretty much guarantee we’re going to be able to tell them so that we’re saving them lots of money.”
Rancho Mission Viejo can back this up themselves: “Over my last 20-plus years with Rancho Mission Viejo, I have driven the use of technology to improve our efficiencies in all aspects of our work—particularly the tracking of earthworks,” said Jack Morales, Senior Vice President of Community Development at Rancho Mission Viejo.
“With up to five equipment spreads moving dirt at a time, ‘ground measurement’ has always been educated guesswork, leaving untraceable voids in the final product.”
Several years ago, Morales’ team tasked McDonald to research the latest drone and software tech. After experimenting with other products, he found WingtraOne.
“This tool has been a game changer for our daily operations,” Morales said. “The speed and accuracy of tracking the movement of earth and inspecting the installation of infrastructure improvements is unmatched.”
In addition to reliable results, we have also saved substantially on ground man hours and, most importantly, kept Ken and other TurnPoint personnel safer by reducing their exposure to moving equipment.
Jack Morales
Senior Vice President of Community Development
The Wingtra difference
To Wingtra distributors and partners, the sale of a Wingtra is not the end but rather the beginning of a relationship. The goal is to make sure that anyone flying the drone is confident and achieves their goals. It’s not just about customer service and an amazing product. It’s about a relationship that results in customer success.
In this case, TurnPoint Geomatics purchased from our partner RDO Equipment, and this approach was clear.
“The support we received from RDO was instrumental in our success when initially setting it up,” McDonald said. “Their involvement overall eased our onboarding process.”
