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John Dickow: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to another episode of Your Drone Questions Answered. I'm John Dicko, here to find the answer to your drone question that you submitted. Today's question is, what is the clientele for photogrammetry or mapping services when it comes to drone mapping?

today I have with me Dylan Gorman. He's the founder at Pilot Byte Dylan. Thanks for joining me today.

Dylan Gorman: Appreciate being here. it's a pleasure.

John Dickow: First I want to give you an opportunity to just kind of introduce yourself. talk a little bit about pilot flight, a little bit about your drone experience, especially when it comes to mapping.

Dylan Gorman: Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, my name is Dylan Gorman. I've been flying drones for coming up on 11 years now.

Professionally, it's been about six, mainly focusing in. Drone photogrammetry and mapping and, uh, actually well before pilot bite existed. I had a few DSPs, drone service provider companies that I ran, sold one of them to a software company, that leveraged the, uh, 2d and 3d maps that we were creating for commercial real estate and a lot of progress updates for construction.

I managed basically their drone division for about a year and eight months, we, [00:01:00] uh, carried out anywhere from 150 to 200 flights per week underneath my management. So we captured a lot of data. all mapping photogrammetry data. I left in December of 2022. So just last year, really focusing on shifting into doing education.

One of the things that I realized running an organization of that size with well over 100 different contract pilots is most of them didn't have that foundational knowledge or understanding of how photogrammetry and mapping really worked. So oftentimes we'd get data that would come back that wouldn't really be so I dabbled with the idea of just putting out some technical educational videos on YouTube just for fun and lo and behold, two years later, some of those videos have blown up.

One of them literally just hit a million views last week, which was pretty cool. and the one question that I always kept getting asked was, Hey, can you teach me? How, how can I learn about this? What are, what are some resources that are out there? And I kind of thought to myself, well, When I first started out doing this stuff, I had no idea what was [00:02:00] really out there, what you could really do with drones, what were the commercial applications of drones.

So, I decided to start putting out some YouTube videos, and then... This year, I've been 10 months, uh, on my own doing pilot by where it's an online education platform. So similar to drone launch academy, I have, a few of my own courses just taught through my expertise of doing this for the last six years, working with surveyors, engineers, architects, construction companies, people that leverage this data.

Uh, every single day, to the point where now, like I said, I've got a education platform. I have my YouTube channel, um, and I'm doing in person workshops. So helping companies doing consultation, really building the foundation of mapping modeling photogrammetry for really anybody, people that are just starting in the industry and people that have leveraged this technology for a long time, but just want to get a deeper foundational understanding of it.

John Dickow: That is awesome. That's really cool. And I'm so I'm glad we got you. You're the right guy to answer this question let's just get into the meat of it a little bit here our audience. We're all we're learners For people who are [00:03:00] beginners and may not know exactly what photogrammetry is when it comes to drones Can you just kind of briefly explain what the idea is behind it?

Dylan Gorman: Yeah, so photogrammetry requires really, you don't even have to have a drone. It's just the concept of extracting three dimensional data from two dimensional images. So whether you're using your iPhone or a drone, or A DSLR camera, right? If you capture enough photos with enough overlap of an object, you can extract 3D data from it.

The most common 3D data that we're familiar with is models. Think like video games or virtual production, or any of those simulation, like archviz simulation. we see those really pretty meshes of buildings, objects, whatever else it may be. From there, it can get a whole lot more complex, where you can extract, contour data, you can do NDVI reports for agriculture, I mean, it's, there's a whole plethora of things, but just the basics of photogrammetry is extracting that three dimensional data from two dimensional images.

John Dickow: Perfect. Thank you for laying that [00:04:00] foundation. and that kind of leads to my next question, which is the meat of the question, I think it's fair to say why somebody would order that kind of service.

And so talk to me a little bit about the type of people, the type of industries that could need this type of drone photogrammetry

Dylan Gorman: service. Absolutely. honestly, the photogrammetry mapping, whatever you want to call it, I believe it's a fundamental skill to harness because it can be leveraged in so many different ways, whether it's asset inspection for telecommunication poles or transmission and distribution lines, right?

The stuff that we need, like what we're using right now to communicate through the internet, somebody needs to inspect it. So creating a three dimensional model of it is. Not just practical, but it's necessary to keep up with the maintenance and making sure that they're following protocols when it comes to designing cities, right?

They need to get the existing layout, the urban footprint of what's already there and leverage [00:05:00] aerial data, whether it's from satellite or from drones and recreate a three dimensional model there. Other applications, which is primarily what I leveraged it for with my clients, was for progress updates in construction.

So whether you're doing volumetrics, uh, figuring out the size of stockpiles, whether it's sand or whatever kind of materials on site, um, tracking and, The progress of the vertical built of sites, you know, not just having the earthworks of moving dirt around the site, but also watching the foundation get poured and all these other steps come a new into play.

Um, and I'll give you a real world example for a client that we would leverage this for at first, you know, they were pretty hesitant about leveraging photogrammetry, services that we were providing them at the time. This was almost five years ago. Now they were. paying us about 175 every single time we went out.

Again, very early days, still kind of figuring everything out over the entire project. I'm from Florida, so Publix is a big grocery chain, especially in the [00:06:00] Southeast. So we, they were developing a Publix and obviously there are several different parties involved when it comes to developing a construction site.

Uh, you've got the plumbers, the electricians, the Actual contractors that are building the foundation and people that bring in the dirt, right? You have all these different people working on a site. So keeping track of Everything that is going on is a huge task, which is why you have a project manager there on site every single day But they can't see everything that's going on So they hired us to start leveraging our drone services are providing these 2d and 3d scans of the site and in track the progress Well, one day during the Earthworks project, and believe it or not, Earthworks is very expensive.

A site that I did a few years ago was about a 300 and something acre mixed use development. It was 17 million dollars just to do the Earthworks on it. That's just to move dirt around the site on an existing place that has the dirt already. So think about on a much smaller scale, dirt is still very expensive.

On this site, the contractor had [00:07:00] lied, basically said, Hey, we need more dirt for you guys to bring in roughly about 60, 000 worth of dirt for you guys to bring it. Well, client asked us that, Hey, can you guys actually go back in time and see how much dirt we actually had at this specific stockpile? Lo and behold, we went back two weeks, looked at the dirt, gave him just a rough report or estimate of that stockpile.

And they took that report, the volume of it presented to the contractor saying, Hey, you guys actually have more than enough dirt. Why do you guys need more? And the contractor asked, well, how did you get that? And they said, we scanned it, found out that the contractor was selling dirt on the backside of the project site and essentially lying to the developer.

So that 12, 000 that the developer had paid us over the span of, I believe it was 16 months or 18 month project that we were doing. Paid itself. And I actually had a conversation with my old, business buddy that, uh, my old business partner from that old company that we sold, literally two days ago, talking about how that company still talks about that project and how we have saved them [00:08:00] that 60, 000 and how they want to start re implementing, drone data back into their projects that they're doing.

So that is just a one real world use case of leveraging aerial maps, the photogrammetry and mapping in a construction sense, there's so many different protocols that you can get into, but that's the one that I know best. Yeah.

John Dickow: that's kind of amazing. That's one you wouldn't think about.

I've heard about, you know, drones being used on construction sites and, and mapping out progress and, and locations and building models. But then also that was, I mean, what you explained there is essentially like an audit that saved them money. And so that's a whole other safety net that, that drone mapping service provided.

Dylan Gorman: That's amazing. No, absolutely. And I've talked with several other construction companies, some off the top of my head, uh, core. Construction, Ryan construction, Turner construction. Like these are some multi billion dollar companies that are running operations and having conversations with them a few weeks ago at drone deploy conference.

They were all talking about how they all had very similar instances that happened, and since then they have implemented drones [00:09:00] as a requirement for every single phase of the project. And even some of them, such as Turner Construction, they're not allowed to have their own internal drone program. They have to subcontract it out.

And who are they subcontracting it to? DSPs. So being able to understand what this data can provide, what that value is, right? Everything is a value add, right? We're in a service industry. So you need to understand what your client is looking for, how you can solve a problem for them, and if you can solve that problem, it's gonna save them time.

But it's up to you to educate that client on what your capabilities are. It's not as simple as getting your Part 107, getting a compatible drone with any of these photogrammetry softwares. And paying for and then expecting, you know, your phone to ring. It's doing the due diligence of getting that education just beyond your Part 107, right?

Getting that technical education, whether it's going through an online course or going to an in person workshop, or even just trying it out yourself, right? There's a lot of free resources out [00:10:00] there for you to, to learn from. Understanding how that technology works and then applying it for your specific client's use case, it's what's going to take you from an average drone pilot to a above average drone pilot.

But even then, you can expand further on that as you learn, as you experiment, as you try out new things with this whole. Quote unquote, reality capture world that we're getting into, built off of the foundational understanding of photogrammetry and mapping.

John Dickow: Yeah. you've already shared some really great advice right there.

And what you just said, being able to communicate to a client, the value of your service. And I know drones to a lot of people, uh, maybe not to us as much, but to a lot of people in the public drones are so very new.

In what ways have you been able to sort of sell that service or, could someone in any kind of industry, any type of mapping, sell

Dylan Gorman: that that's a great question. And I always have to remind my students and people that I consult with that the drone is not the business. It's the solution to a [00:11:00] problem, right?

It can help solve problems. It's the service that you build around. It's Not just the drone, but the service that you're providing, right? what data can you capture? But not only what data can you capture, what can you extract from that data that provides value to your customer, right? Because we can combine all of these different tools together, but if you don't understand how, one, it works, and two, how it solves a problem, then you're just stuck with a commodity.

Right. Something that can take cool photos and videos, which I think that's what most people associate drones to. However, the landscape is starting to change very rapidly, especially being at some of these conferences that I've gone to where they're leveraging drones for some crazy applications. and the foundation of it is the photography, the LIDAR, the multispectral cameras that exist on it.

But it's all the foundation of photogrammetry and mapping, right? That's the core of it. It's what you can take from that raw data, extract from it and apply it to solve your client's problem. That's what's going to be that [00:12:00] differentiator.

John Dickow: That's great. people like you, the entrepreneur that leverages drones, so much of our audience are, people who want to learn drones and apply it to their career or start a new career with the drone.

you've done just that and you've already kind of mentioned that it's beyond the drone by itself. It's beyond just learning how to fly a drone, but it's finding a certain niche. Can you expound upon that a little bit and just share some advice, for anybody in our, audience who's.

hoping to, add a drone into their career, whether it's starting a new career or into their current industry. What advice would you have to say to them?

Dylan Gorman: I have two pieces of advice that I would give. one of them is something that I live by every single day. I actually have it tattooed on my arm here.

and it is succeed through failure. Do not be afraid to fail. Keep trying until you figure something out. It's going to be tough. I'm six years into this professionally, and it's still tough. not easy, right? Sure, YouTube may make it seem that, you know, I'm living a great easy life doing all these projects, but in reality, there's a lot of hard work that goes in before I actually fly the drone and even after I fly the drone.

5 percent of really the job behind a drone [00:13:00] is flying the mission. Everything else is before and after. The second piece of advice that I would recommend is ask questions. There's no stupid questions in this industry. It's how I've gotten to where I am today. I've asked just about every dumb question that you can ask within the industry, and I still continue to ask questions from people that are more experienced than me.

From those experts, whether it's an engineer, a surveyor, an architect, right? Well, really specifically the industry that I operate in. And you can apply this to if you're in forestry, or you're doing transmission and distribution, or even you're just simply doing real estate photography. Asking people that are already in that position that leverage this technology and just Asking and doing is, the best way to break past that, fatigue of, of trying to figure it out through just YouTube University or, you know, seeing a few guides online.

so those are really the two biggest pieces of advice that I can give. And I guess really a third one that I could add is... Be patient. This stuff, [00:14:00] this stuff takes a while to really get a good understanding, grasp it, but then also be able to explain it. Cause not only are you a service provider, not only are you selling to your client, but you also have to educate your client no matter what industry that you go in that leverages a drone.

John Dickow: I really appreciate that advice and then from somebody in your shoes, you've clearly put in the time. that patience bit is important, anything else you wanna add, Dylan, before I let you go? This is, this has been great.

Dylan Gorman: If you guys want to learn more about what you can do with drones, check out my YouTube channel, just search Dylan Gorman drones perhaps.

Uh, and I'll pop right up. if you want to learn stuff in person, I'm hosting workshops all over the U S I'm actually just about at the end of, my second tour. so I have some stuff on the West coast and some stuff in Texas. so if you're interested in learning about photogrammetry and mapping, please.

You know, attend my workshop. and for all of you that are listening, I actually have a special discount. If you use DLA 25, you get 25 bucks off of your ticket. and then if you want to learn about LIDAR, a little bit higher end of, the side of mapping, but, I do [00:15:00] have some demo workshops that I'm still doing.

I've got about eight left of those, for this year. So be sure to, uh, to check out my platform and then also my website where you can find some courses and some other stuff, um, is www. pilotbite spelled b y t e. com. love to help educate, teach. Do all the stuff. We love

John Dickow: that. We love the drone education.

We love the educators. Dylan, We really appreciate having, you out here on the, on the podcast we hope to have you back. And I'm sure we'll have more mapping questions. You could submit your own questions at yq io. We will find the answer to that question or find the person who can answer that question. Or if you're on the Drone Launch connect community.

Go ahead, type it in there. We'll see it. We'll for the answer. In the meantime, we'll see in the sky.