There are two kinds of people that will benefit from this book. Which one are you?
One group are current professionals in the civil engineering fields who want to know how (or if) a aerial drone can benefit you and your goals. This can be extended into those people who work in related phases of civil engineering projects:
- Land developers who seek to hire the best civil engineering firm
- Commercial and residential real estate developers who want to do the same
- Decision makers and stakeholders in federal and state agencies who procure and manage large civil engineering projects
- Construction company owners and project managers who have to build and execute on what civil engineers designed
If you want to quickly learn how drones are bringing higher quality and high ROI to your projects - including the desperately-needed help to more likely
finish these projects in scope, on schedule, and on budget - you will get a lot of value out of this book. For instance, you’ll get:
- A concise summary of the current state of US laws and regulations related to commercial drones (with emphasis on those laws most relevant to civil engineering projects)
- An executive overview of major components and systems in a UAS (Unmanned Aerial System)
- Major risks for using a drone at a civil engineering site (and how to mitigate them)
- Dozens of lessons learned from civil engineering projects across the USA (and world) over the past 3+ years
- Key requirements you need to identify and define BEFORE ANYONE BUYS A DRONE
- Critical investments and plans you’ll need to make in your staff, training budget, and schedule to safely, legally, and profitably add a drone into your operations
- Additional resources to accelerate your next steps
The other kind of person this book will help are “drone service providers” and entrepreneurs who are looking for a profitable way to serve clients in the civil engineering industry with their expertise, products, and/or services. Here’s how:
- The other group of people reading this book will realize, after reading about all those requirements and investments mentioned above, that their first best step is most likely to OUTSOURCE with a drone service professional. This will be the most cost-effective, safest, and fastest strategy to validate the ROI, refine their requirements, and gain buy-in from key stakeholders in their company. That’s where you can step in.
- Learning from the most profitable successes (and costly failures) of drones in civil engineering applications over the past 3+ years will give you great insight into how you can most effectively pitch (and adjust) your offerings for drone products and services.
- Customer empathy and knowledge is essential. Speaking their language in discussions and your marketing materials is essential to establish credibility and interest. This book will help you there too.
Now for an understanding of how this book approaches the topic of drones in civil engineering. You see, we are living in very “interesting” times with transformational technologies like drones, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, etc., all colliding with age-old institutions like architecture and construction.
This paradox of very old and very new systems and practices coming together creates one heck of a challenge. (That’s probably why you came here looking for help, so thank you for that.)
Based on my extensive experience bringing innovations into many companies and organizations, I have found that the most effective approach is to understand and apply multiple frameworks to a problem. It’s like having more than one tool in your toolbox.
We simply need more than one mental model, management model, and implementation approaches to adequately deal with this exciting (yet very complex) situation facing us.
Therefore, this book will use a combination of three approaches:
- Project Management
- Systems Engineering
- Lean Startup
If you are proficient or expert in one of these areas, kudos and congratulations. You’ll be able to leverage and apply these strengths as you become part of the movement making drones a powerful and profitable tool for civil engineering.
If you have been curious to learn more about any of these domains, you will get an accelerated introduction into them here. It will have a specific focus on the concepts and aspects most relevant and powerful for using drones with civil engineering projects.
Project Management has become a dedicated discipline and body of knowledge in its own right. When successful, your project will finish within scope, schedule, and budget. With high customer satisfaction. Bringing a drone system into an organization that hasn’t used one before can be (and should be) seen as a project in itself. You need to take a thoughtful, methodical, and disciplined approach to this goal. This book will help you there. As a bonus, you’ll be advancing in your knowledge and understanding of project management too.
Systems Engineering is the interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, implement, and maintain complex systems made by humans. Drones certainly qualify! More importantly and beyond that - the drone is one part of a larger system you need to think about. As just one example, there are humans involved in the system. Whether you are the Remote Pilot In Command (RPIC), the owner of the company who wants to use one, or the customer who want to gain the benefits, you are a crucial part of the system too.
Lean Startup is an innovative mash-up of
Lean Manufacturing and
business innovation / entrepreneurship principles, methods, strategies, and tactics. Here is a preview of concepts that will be applied directly to your desire to use a drone in civil engineering safely, legally, and profitably:
- The elimination of waste (Muda)
- Continuous improvement (Kaizen)
- your Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
- Just In Time delivery (JIT)
Hopefully this book is getting to you just in time so you can avoid spending thousands of dollars and countless hours moving down the wrong path. Or losing out on future benefits and profits because your competitors are moving ahead faster than you with their own implementation of drones.
I hope you are as excited as I am about the future. So let’s get moving!
