School and church drone surveys for Portsmouth City Council

Portsmouth City Council, who we’ve enjoyed working with many times on creative and technical drone projects, approached us in the summer of 2021 for a number of aerial survey jobs.

Though lockdown restrictions had eased and public spaces were busier than they’d been the previous year, flying over roads and rooftops in our island hometown’s dense residential areas was safer than ever — both subjectively and legally!

Subjectively: we’d put another year of flawless flying in the logbook, and could no longer count the number of smaller agile drones in our fleet on just our fingers.

Legally: the new UAV rules which were committed to UK law in December 2020 have made it more cost effective and easier to conduct safe, authorised flights in tighter, more congested spots without utilising an operational safety case.

Our first drone survey took us to St Wilfrid’s Church, humbly tucked away on George Street in Fratton. Portsmouth City Council had just bought the church building, and found that its roof was in need of repair.

We flew at dawn (sounds dramatic!), using a sub-250g drone to shoot high-quality top-down photos of the roof for the council’s surveying and development teams to analyse and annotate in their maintenance plans.

Another three aerial inspections soon followed, all at schools. Portsmouth City Council hired us to capture overhead inspections of the buildings at Manor Infant School in Fratton, Cumberland Infant School in Southsea, and Copnor Infant School in Copnor.

These were simple, straightforward jobs, and that’s exactly what makes drone property surveys so powerful. Most days, we can get a call in the morning, be on site a few hours later, and have the photos processed and sent to the client before sundown.

No unsightly, time-consuming, risk-incurring scaffolding which blocks doors and windows, disrupts classes/events, and results in fragmented handheld photos!

Just flawless GPS-driven aerial mapping that’s wrapped up in a matter of hours — and you wouldn’t even know we were there!

Find out more about our drone surveys and aerial inspection services →