I'm John Torek. And I'm Danny Sullivan. And you're listening to Speaking of Design, bringing you the stories of the engineers and architects who are transforming the world one project at a time. Drones are leading to exciting advances in the AEC industry. Today, in the first part of a two part episode, we'll learn about what it takes to become a drone pilot, some of the unique challenges they face in the sky, and how they're making safety a a priority while flying.
For Carlos Fehmer, flying runs in the family. I guess it started off with my dad was a fighter pilot in the air force, and he retired after twenty years. After retirement from the Air Force, he became a helicopter pilot. On my mom's side, my uncle, who I'm named after, was also a fighter pilot. And I also have a cousin who is a commercial airline pilot. So needless to say, maybe, it's in our blood.
Growing up, we went to various air shows, and some of my favorite things to do were watching the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds fly. When drones started to take off, Carlos bought one for personal use, and family interest in flight continued. Well, my wife and I have, four kids. Two are in college where my oldest is a senior at LSU, go tigers. And my daughter's a freshman in high school, and I have a son who's nine years
old. So they're really different, but I'm pleasantly surprised that they've taken a keen interest in drones. His two college age sons have become certified drone pilots, while his youngest loves to tag along with dad. On the weekends, we have a test facility, and sometimes I'll go out and I'll do some testing on the drones or fly in particular. So he'll ask me, can he come out and watch? So it's pretty cool to see how fascinated
they are with drones so far. The drone even joins the Femur family on vacations. And and the drones offer a a really unique perspective. So it's, you know, fairly portable for one thing. You know, it fits in your backpack. And I think it's great for taking pictures and videos of those experience. So we've been, fortunate to have some great pictures and videos that we've taken over the years. Carlos lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, where he leads HDR's data acquisition program.
His interest in data dates back to his days at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, where he got a degree in management information systems. I guess I've, always had a passion for technology and data. So information management concerns like the cycle of organizational activity starting from acquiring data for information for one or more sources through the distribution of that information to those
who need it. Carlos oversaw an extensive survey program and later became president of John Chanteland Surveyors, part of the Fugro Group of Companies. He later joined HDR, where he was presented with the opportunity to manage a new drone program and worked with the team to develop a strategy to align drone use with the company's services in the architecture,
engineering, and construction industry. Truly, every stage of a project can benefit from drone technology, but it has to be the right tool for the job. So you keep that in mind as you look at the various projects. Drones could capture data faster, safer, and provide more quality data and typically is less expensive in certain cases as opposed to traditional methods. They're used on environmental projects today. They could be used for construction monitoring,
for surveying sites. We're also using it on marine mammal observations for the Navy. Kind of the big buckets are marketing and visualization, survey and inspections, and then moving into construction monitoring and earthwork monitoring. The benefits to architecture and engineering clients were clear. That said, introducing a new technology to a safety conscious company of 10,000 requires a lot of planning.
Some examples are to consider what are the risk, what is the exposure in the event of an accident, and you also must balance that with what are the benefits. And you also need to look at operations and oversight. What is the overall governance look like? All questions Carlos had considered with a different type of fleet at his previous company. Prior to coming to HDR, Carlos oversaw a survey group that had multiple divisions across hydrographic,
land, and aviation. We had a rock star team with great processes in place, and and that really makes the job easier from before. As far as how it prepared me for questions we have had to consider, for example, we put new training in place for our pilots and put office and field training requirements together, and we expose our pilots to situations in a training environment that they are prepared for in the event a situation occurs on a real project. Occurs on a real project.
The first time I've ever even flown a drone was during the HDR's official training that they brought me to. So it's something I was interested in. I looked at the technologies and all that by never adding hands on experience until we actually started launching the program. That's Mike Cameron, a drone pilot and photographer at HDR. Mike has piloted more than 250 drone flights spanning more than one hundred and
twenty hours in the air. With a bachelor of fine arts from Creighton University, Mike appreciates the unique perspective a drone brings to his work. With shooting with the drone, I feel like that I have more of an artistic touch compared to my photography and video six years ago when I wasn't flying a drone. And that's just the way the industry has progressed. With drone photography and video, it's relatively new. So you could really push the envelope in how you
create your art. As early hobbyists flew their personal drones, the FAA anticipated the beginning of an airborne wild wild west. So in 02/2015, they adopted regulations requiring commercial drone pilots to register their drones and pass a test for a drone pilot license. There's a lot of differences when you look at being a commercial pilot versus a hobbyist. You have a lot more risk, a lot more liabilities when you're a commercial pilot. You have to get your part
one zero seven license. It's heavily made up of aeronautical charts. It's how pilots talk to each other, how you talk to airports. And for the most part, you will not be doing that when you're operating your drone. You might have to call an airport to get a permit, but not during, I'd say, about 95 to 99% of your actual flight. That being said, it's important to know how other people utilize that airspace.
With the FAA overseeing some of the busiest and most complex airspace on Earth, Mike said it's imperative to understand the perspective of airline pilots. You guys realize that whenever you're flying a drone commercially or for fun, you're actually in FAA's airspace. The moment you jump off the ground, technically, you're in airspace. So all the rules applied to you are all FAA's rules. So
you need to be concerned. I mean, you don't wanna hit an airplane, so you need to be cognizant of the rules airplanes are following. I know that airplanes shouldn't be below 400 feet unless you're near an airport. You You gotta be aware there's gonna be scenarios where there's a helicopter or airplane that's gonna be well below that, and so you gotta be ready for that even though technically it shouldn't be happening on a daily basis. That also includes understanding where you can't fly
your drone. You also gotta know about restricted airspace as well. If you look at a sectional chart of United States, you're gonna see lines everywhere, places you can you can't fly. You definitely don't wanna be flying in a military zone or a federal zone. The part one zero seven is like the written driver's test you take at the DMV. That still leaves you to learn how to
actually operate the drone. Partnering with a company that helped develop drone manuals for The US Army And Navy, the pilots go through intensive exercises to learn how to handle real life scenarios in the field. And that's where we go out and we go over scenarios like, what if you lose connection with your drone? What if you can't see your drone anymore? What if all your controls go down? What happens if your drone crashes? And we we
we go through all these scenarios. Mike said he was required to have ten hours of flight time before taking on an official job, but actually practiced for closer to twenty. Just going in a field in different scenarios, like different wind speeds, turning off the controller, going near structures to see how that changed the controls if I lost controls. You could read a lot about it, but a lot of it was just hands on. Alright. I got the control in my hand. The drone's
up in there. Well, this happened. This is how I need to correct it. That happened. That's how I need to correct it. A lot of it is now habitual because I've flown so much. Carlos offered a real life example of when a drone pilot is flying near a structure, such as a building or a bridge. What happens if you lose GPS and it switches into ADI mode? What happens if you lose communication
with the drone? If you are flying near an asset, let's say it's a bridge or dam, and you lose GPS signal, it'll revert into a mode called ADI mode. And what that means is more of a manual mode. So in the case of a GPS, when it's in that specific mode of the drone, it'll hover. And let's say that you have wind coming in at 16 miles an hour, what the drone's gonna do in GPS mode is keep it stable so it's gonna stay in one location. When it's an ADI
mode, you're flying it manually. And if the wind's 16 miles an hour, that means the drone's gonna be going in the direction of the wind. Meaning that a pilot needs to understand the difference between each mode and be comfortable handling the drone in either one. So what you have to do as a pilot is compensate. So if you want it to remain stable, you're going to use your controls to counter the wind to keep it in the same
location. So one thing that we do in training is in that particular environment, you wanna put it in that mode to where you know what to do in the event it happens in the field. Other scenarios where you could lose GPS is if you're, near vegetation and a few other things. So really important to be exposed to those elements in a training environment. So when it happens in real time and on a real project, you're prepared for it. Another scenario, the sudden loss of battery power. I think
you need to be prepared for anything. So we try to plan for everything for a flight and identify takeoff and landing areas, but we also identify good emergency landing areas as well. So if there was a battery situation and the battery is malfunctioning, the pilot evaluates the situation and will make an emergency landing or they're gonna get back to the landing area depending on the type of battery issue. So we train on those elements during the classroom and field portions of our training.
Drone pilots not only need to be prepared to fly in general, they also need to prepare specifically for each mission. My responsibility is to do a UAS project review and mitigate any hazards, if there are any, on that site, as well as get the proper, waivers that are needed in order to execute that mission safely. That's Delfina Ortiz, unmanned aircraft systems or UAS, operations lead at HDR.
After beginning her career as a CAD technician, Delfina worked on several environmental projects involving GIS data. GIS or geographic information systems essentially captures, stores, and displays data related to specific geographic points. Making it great for creating maps to display everything from natural topography to infrastructure to underground utilities. So Delfina went back to school to get her GIS certifications, which opened the door to another new technology.
The environmental group goes out with a handheld GPS and they collect data. And whenever they come back in, I process it using the new skill set that I had acquired. And I wanted to learn more about that. So just learning about GPS and geospatial data was really a driver for me to start looking into drones. Dofina also got her part one zero seven certification to become a drone pilot and soon took on her current role in
Carlos' growing drone program. The management and maintenance of the drone fleet is every bit as important as the training of the pilots
and a critical part of Delfina's job. Getting your FAA registration number tagged to that drone along with all the bits and pieces as far as batteries, remote control, any additional payload that's utilized with that drone and keeping it all together, having that proper management, especially when you have, in our case, 16 drones, you've gotta keep them maintained and identified in order to keep it organized. All
drones are not created equal. Each drone may have a different height and wind restriction, different battery life, and different limit on the distance it can be flown. Each manufacturer may have a different app to plan the flight or control the drone. Each model has a different controller. In addition to overseeing the fleet, Delfino reviews each flight plan submitted by a pilot for approval. We'll look at the risk assessment and see if it's something that our
skill set can provide. And we're looking at airspace. We're looking at the wind because some aircraft cannot fly in in a certain wind speed. You wanna keep it below twenty, twenty five depending on that aircraft. And then precipitation, we're looking at just different things in the atmosphere. Trees. You know, that you got a lot of trees around you. How are you gonna mitigate that? Where are you gonna take off and land? And, of course, the area of interest and if we have access to that
property. During the risk assessment, several factors can contribute to a decision not to fly. Well, if it starts raining, that will be a definite no go. Also, if there's military operation areas, and typically, they'll give a nodum of they're gonna be out there and the timing. Of course, if you get out there and you see that they're already in their mission and maybe outside of that time frame, that would be a no
go. After the risk assessment, Delfina reports back to the drone pilot such as Mike Cameron. And so if it doesn't pass that test, if the risk is too high, then we don't even do it. Example of a scenario where we've thought about doing drones, and then after we researched it, we decided it wasn't the best fit was photography of the Golden Gate Bridge. And we were doing a bridge inspection
at the top of the bridge. And from my experiences at the Golden Gate Bridge from my other shoots, I realized that the wind speeds were extremely high on ground level. And we're capped out about on most of our drones at about 20 to 22 miles per hour. And I knew that once we got up in the air, we're gonna be way above that. So we talked about it, and we decided that in that scenario, a helicopter was the best fit because our drones
wouldn't be be able to operate. And then you throw that in, we'll cover while we're flying a drone near a commercial road that has a lot of traffic on it, and it's a landmark. And besides the safety aspect for the civilians there, you also look at it, it's a high profile job. So that was one that we nixed just because it wasn't the best fit. Delfina conducts a UAS flight review through drone logbook.
If the mission is near an airport, then she checks to see if the unidentified aerial systems facility map is enabled or disabled using the FAA's LAANC database for permitting flights. Though nobody ever says it, LAANC stands for low altitude authorization and notification capability. It's essentially where you log the flight plan, find out where you can and cannot fly, and get access to controlled airspace.
If the Lance UAS facility map is marked red or disabled, then Delfina reaches out to the FAA for a waiver before determining if a flight can be approved. If you're looking at a map, you'll see green boxes on any app that contains a LAANC, like air map. If you look on air map, you'll see LAANC. And if it's red, that means I have to reach out to the FAA. If it's green, they'll tell you the altitudes
that are allowed in that area. And if there's any deviation from that, we need to reach out to the FAA and get that waiver in place. And that's just what it takes to get the flight plan approved. Once it's a go, there's another set of checklists to consider. We have a preflight checklist, like, the night before. Before you leave the office with the drone, we wanna make sure you have all your equipment. All your batteries are charged. You have your legal paperwork. You wanna have your licenses.
You wanna have your memory card charged up. You wanna make sure that the drone's in proper working condition. You wanna make sure that your props, which are the propellers, aren't chipped or bent or anything like that. So basically going through all the equipment. Followed by more checklists at the job site. Once we get to the flight area, the checklist is similar. So you wanna check batteries again. You wanna check condition of your drone. You wanna make sure your compasses
are calibrated to that specific location. And you wanna make sure you've done all your updates on your drone and your software. We should mention, this also includes a self check. We can't fly an airplane, but we are pilots. We're controlling aircraft. We're controlling an FAA airspace. So we do treat it like we are pilots. So the same regulations they they do for them for their self checks, we do for ourselves. We need eight hours of sleep. No drinking,
no drugs. Even if you're taking a science med medication that will alter your abilities in any way, you gotta hold off. I mean, there's been some times where I went on a flight where, you know, I haven't eaten in five, six hours. I'm thinking ahead. Am I gonna get fatigued or dizzy because I haven't had my protein through the day and I stopped? I'm like, alright. Well, we're gonna go get something to eat, and then we're
gonna fly after the fact. Because I wanna be fully cognizant of everything, and I don't want anything to get in the way with that. That checklist uses the acronym, I'm SAFE, referring to illness, medication, stress, alcohol, fatigue, and eating. Once the pilot gets to the job site and is ready to fly, a safety briefing covers the specifics of the flight. Number one is the safety of the people on the ground. A lot of the stuff we do is in construction sites.
So before we go in any construction site, we have our teams give a safety briefing to the construction workers. I'll bring everyone in, and then I'll have a safety briefing with everyone so they're fully aware of what's going on, fully aware if something should happen. This is how we're gonna handle it. So they're cognizant of every scenario. However, for a more public site, such as a completed park or a roadway through a new downtown development,
the biggest concern is public safety. When we do flights in public spaces, we make sure that we don't put the public in risk in any way. We don't fly over the public. We don't get close to the public. We don't even put that as an option. However, that doesn't mean the public won't be very interested when they see the drone in the sky. We do have, bystanders who are
interested in drones. There's a lot of interest in the public with drones because the public out there has the small drones that they fly around the house, and then they see our big drone, and they've become very curious. So we have, steps in place where our VL, which is your visual observer, handles the public while we're flying our flights, and then we'll halt the flight. I'll hover the drone until we're able to get the public back a safe ways away from us where
we can continue the mission. The final step before takeoff is a check of the ground space and airspace around the launch site. You also go through a checklist of airspace concerns, whether you talk with your VO, if you're in any controlled air spaces, if there's any airports nearby, if there's any heliports nearby, if you're in a public place, is there a potential of the public coming and asking questions, and what do you do in that scenario? You cover other hazards, like if there's birds.
What kind of birds? Are there birds of prey? Is there a possibility of a bald eagle coming? You can make a checklist of emergency landing areas, potential radio towers that could cause signal interference or any other towers. Once the drone is in the air, a pilot will encounter variables. Much like when you're driving a car, that's where your training and expertise
kicks in. Any structure has a potential affecting the operations of a drone depending on what metals are made in that building, if the building's blocking satellite connectivity. It doesn't necessarily mean that all of a sudden your drone drops from the sky, mind you. It just means that you gotta be aware of when you're flying next to these structures, a could happen, b could happen, c can happen. And so you're aware of doing one, two, three in case
that should happen. So there's a lot of stuff that can affect the metal underneath the ground I've had affect my connectability with my drone. Now the flight still go on perfectly fine. It's just when warnings pop up, all of a sudden, there's a loss of connectivity. I know how to shift my flights to react to that. The drones themselves are smart too. They come programmed with features to safely land in the event of an emergency. Now hypothetically, let's say
those give out. Or let's say there's an issue with the pilot and the pilot can't fly the the drone back home. The drones we use are very smart drones, and there's a lot of programming that goes into them. And they will return back to home if there's a lost connectivity for more than three to five seconds. If you hit a certain button on the
the controller, they're automatically returned home. We have them set where if they fly out and there's not enough battery, they know when there's not enough battery to return. They'll automatically return at that time. Each specific flight, we we set the heights, the parameters for that so they can return to home safely. We have put the precautions in there, and the drones are programmed to do what they have to do to make it home safely.
On the next episode of Speaking of Design, we'll continue with part two when we'll look at more at how drones are being used in the AEC industry. From surveying the wreckage of a train derailment to monitoring whale migration, to creating a digital twin of a 160 foot high dam, drones are bringing new perspectives to projects of all kinds. For more information on this podcast, visit hdrinc.com/speakingofdesign. You'll find links to pictures, articles, and more information about this project.
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