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Safety Metrics for the construction industry

jmorris

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Howdy Y'all

I am heading up the Drone program for our company. My roadblock that I am running into is convincing our safety professionals that drones aren't Skynet out to kill everyone. We had been flying mapped flights everyday with an occasional media flight for the management committees. Currently we are grounded from all flights until we can convince them that they are safe. has anyone struggled with this as a professional? I'm stuck in between owners of several billion dollar projects and a handful of uneducated and close eared people.
 
We had several incidence with faulty equipment with no impact on human or property. Still considered a "near miss" but if you take into account lessons learned, flight hours and fail rate we still have a 98.7 pass rate witch is a heck of a lot better that things like cordless drills or portabands that are used every day on site.
 
We had several incidence with faulty equipment with no impact on human or property. Still considered a "near miss" but if you take into account lessons learned, flight hours and fail rate we still have a 98.7 pass rate witch is a heck of a lot better that things like cordless drills or portabands that are used every day on site.

Several incidences? That does sound troubling. What type of problems? Our program has years under the belt and we've had only 2 incidents total... one battery failure and one "Operator Failure".

You're fighting Media (at least partially) driven fear about sUAS. John Q. Public has been programmed to think they are dangerous and merely spying on our every move. I'm not saying those aspects aren't accurate but in the big picture the threat is minimal at best.

What you need is real world data that you can use as proof instead of theories and hypothesis. Show them the #'s of YOUR program.
 
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We had one battery failure and an ESC failure. Both fatal to the drones. no pilot error was determined.

Our recommendations were that adding the parazero chutes to the drones even if there was a problem mid air that it would mitigate the risk of a impact to human or property damage. but being a unproven system (only youtube and salesman accounts) doesn't fulfill their requirements to launch. we have a full plan to in house test the systems to fingers crossed prove that they work.
 
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Flew for a year and a half on a half billion dollar construction site with equipment, cranes and facilities. Only had a few "incidences" where we still had LOS and radio control, but lost video feedback. VO was critical in getting aircraft back on track.

Main point is educating those who are concerned.

Our "Key" to safe operations were to never fly over (or nearly over) anyone/anything that was critical. Only flew directly over areas where if we lost the aircraft we had a safe radius and would do minimal structural damage. Visual Observer is an absolute must! Inspect before every flight. This includes landing/changing batteries. Never take a chance if there is a problem you can't figure out beforehand. Never upgrade your software/firmware unless you have read about it and had time to test it off site.

If you fly high, then fly far away. If you have to fly near critical equipment, then lower elevation is safer because of less potential energy. Watch for interference with microwave/radio/broadcast signals, wires, buildings, and you know the rest.

Safe flights are not guaranteed, but it ultimately comes down to the operator to act safe. Use a redundant systems drone like the Inspire 2 and that reduces the chances for equipment failure... and above all else, carry enough insurance.

Good luck, I hope this sheds some additional light onto what has already been said.
 
Regarding the parachute, is there anything you can glean from the new FAA rule change about flying over people?

It appears right now that they are not requiring any particular approach. They have provided some specific numbers regarding the energy of an impact with a human and have left it up to the various manufacturers to figure out how to meet those standards. Similar to what is done for automobile bumpers. The government provides a standard and the manufacturers provide a solution that meets the standard.
 
I work at UC Merced California on the construction site, we have several safety people, and biologist that think we are going to kill some endangered bug. I'm going to make a plug for the Inspire 2, why, because it uses two batteries and I have had one battery failure, but no flight failures.
Number one issue, don't fly over people, and we all know that. Plan your flights when crews are on break or lunch, or after normal work hours. Especially mapping, I can only do mapping on Sundays. You need to prove to the safety people that even if you have a failure you will be flying in a manner that is the least likely to endanger anyone else.
If a drone like the Inspire were to go dead stick at altitude and hit someone it could very easily kill that person even with PPE (hard hat).
Our now bi monthly mappings also overfly parts of the active college so we must be sure no students or faculty are in harms way.
When management of a large construction site realizes what they gain by areal photo documentation they will override the objections from safety gurus. We are now two years into this job, and about the same with UC Davis and haven't killed anyone. Furthermore we have not had one failure of any of our Inspire drones.
The other issue is training documentation, all our pilots must attend the Avion UAV training in Huntsville, AL and demonstrate that they can fly safely and professionally before graduating, they also do 107 training for those needing the license.
If your safety people need recommendations I can put you in contract with the construction superintendents and they will verify the safety record we have with them and what we go through to insure safe flights. If you are interested PM me, or you can contact Multivista for safety record history.
 
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