Stantec announces the expansion of its Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) professional services with the recent addition of multiple systems. These new survey grade multi-rotor systems will be located in Santa Barbara, Tucson, Reno, Salt Lake City, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina and Ottawa.

Designed by Skycatch, the UAS fleet will support the firm’s environmental services, geomatics, community development, mining, architecture and transportation clients, providing commercial surveying and mapping services.

“It’s an exciting time at Stantec as we expand our UAS fleet across Canada and now offer services in the United States for the first time, leading the industry with our Geomatics capabilities,” says UAS Operations Manager, Kevin Grover. “The Skycatch system provides everything we need in one package that is easy to use. This will allow us to provide clients with detailed 3D terrain and high resolution imagery much faster than before.”

With the unmanned devices, Stantec can process, view and share 3D information to staff and clients in a web browser while using a secure cloud-based data solution.

Stantec has commercially operated UAS across Canada since 2013. In addition to meeting safety and regulatory standards in Canada and the U.S., Stantec has developed an internal UAS training program and established a UAS governance committee to review practice and operational procedures. Stantec will have certified UAS operators in Canada and the U.S. (under the new Part 107 rules).

With the complete drone and data systems, Stantec can complete ground surveys up to five times faster than most current solutions, which require significant ground work before beginning mapping efforts. Compared with conventional topographic mapping methods, this time savings can possibly increase many times faster still.

Data end-users will see benefits as well, including full-color point clouds that allow engineers to identify 3D objects more easily than with single-color LiDAR scans, and manual “cleanup” of the raw data is made unnecessary by advanced vegetation removal algorithms.

For more information on Skycatch, visit www.skycatch.com.

— Steve Edwards for Stantec.