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AirGCI Takes Flight for Building Inspections

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#AirGCI Takes Flight: FAA-Approved Drone Flights From GCI Consultants Redefines Building Inspections

West Palm Beach, FL (December 6, 2016) – In a glimpse of the future, GCI’s first drone for a building inspection took to the skies over Hollywood, Florida, on Nov. 21, 2016. A small, white quadcopter, carrying only a high-tech camera, buzzed over the clay tile roofs of a client’s buildings and returned carrying all the high-resolution visual data necessary to evaluate the condition of each of the roofs.

The drone, aka unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), was christened “Air GCI” and proudly displayed its FAA license number. It demonstrated that it can take off or descend vertically, fly in any direction, maintain stability in 22 mile-per-hour winds and turn on a dime.

In the past, a job like this would take a work crew about four to five days to build the scaffold, examine the roof and write a report. Even then, some areas of the roof would be inaccessible for practical or safety reasons. Finally, a cleanup detail would have to be called to put the building site back to the way it was. Now, a single operator on the ground can fly the shoe-box-sized drone anywhere and view the roof on a tablet or laptop. It collapses the work of a week into a single work day, and the drone operator can move on to the next job.

Paul Beers, founder and CEO of GCI Consultants, said, “We’re proud to be part of this moment. It’s clearly a highly efficient way of doing business and providing clients with an outstanding roof inspection, but it’s also much more than that. This technology is going to make building inspections safer, faster and less expensive.”

Beyond just getting a good view of the roof, the drone can inspect and zoom in on all areas of the building envelope where problems can start, from glazing to cladding to waterproofing work. The video can be stored, shared and retrieved for follow-up investigations.

Beers went on to provide a vision of where this technology is headed for construction firms: “Air GCI inspection drones will allow us to provide needed services, such as annual building inspections at a fraction of the cost. This will be a big benefit for our customers in proactively identifying and correcting issues which will extend the life of their building systems.”

Watch the AirGCI drone take flight.

About GCI Consultants:

GCI Consultants is a firm dedicated to intelligent consulting in the field of construction engineering. The experienced team of experts brings specialized industry knowledge to issues related to the integrity of the exterior building envelope. Services include design advice for new construction, forensic investigations of building envelope failures, quality control inspections and expert witness testimony. www.gciconsultants.com

For more information, contact: Janice Hoffman at 561.228.4262 or send an email to jhoffman@gciconsultants.com