Are you looking to add drone services to your offerings? Want to include aerial data in your products or services? There are a few ways to bring the value of drone services to your clients. Let’s explore the pros and cons of each!

 

In-house Drone Pilots

Piloting your company’s own drones sounds like a great (and fun!) opportunity at first blush. Like many new technology adoptions, there’s a bit more to it than just acquiring the new tech, though.

In Canada, drone pilots will need a certification in most cases which may be a great benefit you can offer to your employees! Aside from the time and effort required in getting certified, expect to also need to spend on related gear (vests, cones, emergency equipment) in addition to the drone itself! Remember too – it’s one thing to know how to fly a drone and a whole other to know how to collect reliable, quality data! You’ll likely want training beyond the basics to scale your drone services.

Pros

• Pilot certification as a continued learning opportunity
• Flexibility

Cons

• Investment in aircraft (and other gear)
• Time and resource investment in training
• Worker flying drones means other work not getting done

 

Contracted Drone Pilots

Hiring certified drone pilots is another way to add aerial drone services to your portfolio. The benefits here include not needing to invest time, effort or money in sourcing a drone, training or any of the related gear. You also won’t need to worry about getting employees trained and certified!
Challenges arise though in first finding qualified drone pilots and then ensuring they’re up to your standards! Will the same pilot be available to fly your jobs regularly? Will they be able to provide repeatable results? Can they prioritize your work when you need them to? Do you have to pay out the nose to get the answers you want to those questions?

Pros

• No hardware purchases
• No pilot certifications required

Cons

• Expensive
• Quality assurance
• Inconsistencies

 

Remote Pilot Network (RPN) Pilots

RPN pilots come vetted by industry experts to ensure their capabilities. Not only are they certified, but they’re supported by comprehensive end-to-end software that enables scalable, repeatable, and quality data to be captured when you need it, as often as you need it. There’s no need to purchase drones, training or other equipment to create a drone services program within your organization!
While your employees might have liked to have company-sponsored training provided, they’ll certainly appreciate being able to focus on their regular job and initiatives, knowing they have access to the aerial drone data they need.

Pros

• No hardware purchases
• No pilot certifications required
• Repeatable and scalable
• Vetted pilots

Con

• Employees not certified

 

Join our nation-wide network of drone pilots and clients with the RPN – a collaboration between Coastal Drone Co and Spexi Geospatial. Click to read on to find out more information about the Remote Pilot Network and how you can begin leveraging the largest system of pilots to do work for your business.