Municipal laws in New York City are hampering the city's real estate developers and building owners as they look to embrace the use of drones to perform periodic building and facade inspections on their properties, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
In New York City, owners of buildings rising six stories or more are required to inspect their building facades every five years to assess building safety issues as part of the Facade Inspection and Safety Program (FISP). The process typically involves painstaking visual inspection as well as the erection of extensive temporary scaffolding. Typically, the inspections can cost thousands of dollars to perform while also cluttering sidewalks and overhead areas with the scaffolding elements.
“It’s long been our feeling that it would enable buildings to save a tremendous amount of money if inspection of facades could be done with drones with cameras,” Mary Ann Rothman, executive director of the New York City Council of Cooperatives and Condominiums, told The Wall Street Journal.
Others, however, see benefits from the detailed, human-led inspection. Stephen Varone, president of Rand Engineering & Architecture, for example, tells The Wall Street Journal, “Putting your hands on something can find a lot more issues than a visual inspection."
An effort to legalize personal drone use in the city has been stalled for over a year and a half.
I agree, I hope drones will never replace exterior tall building surveys.
A visual inspection avoids life safety risk and has to be done by qualified professionals in person. Our sense of touch really helps an inspector understand the materials he is working with.
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Years ago I met a person who does exterior tall building surveys and mentioned this as an idea. Her reply was that it's a great idea in theory, but there are problems that are not visible on camera and on more that one occasion they removed a piece of material from a tall building that posed a possible life safety risk as a "favor" to their client.
I can only image similar issues with interior surveys, like door hardware that wasn't properly installed or repaired.
Oh- wait, theres a solution to that too...
Instead of drones, which are unreliable and dangerous, the solution should be some kind of pully-robot spider system that can survey, clean, paint, etc. A few years ago, I proposed this to some people as a way to preserve brutalism (which is probably disliked because it is dirty). We end up tearing down a lot of buildings instead of cleaning them...
That would be cool. Robotic window cleaners would make you a fortune
Install some type of track system at top of buildings, with a cable system and they can up down and all around...
3 words: Rope Access Technicians
I agree, I hope drones will never replace exterior tall building surveys.
A visual inspection avoids life safety risk and has to be done by qualified professionals in person. Our sense of touch really helps an inspector understand the materials he is working with.
The requirements for these survey inspections in New York are the direct result of deaths caused by falling facade materials. They require hands-on inspection. These developers and realtors are trying to cut costs by conducting the survey by drones instead of the required hands-on inspection. Going up there in person and touching things, and listening to them as you knock on them or try to move them finds more deteriorating, loose elements than a camera does. That should not be replaced by drones until drones can be equipped with the same capabilities that a human hand has to feel, grasp, push, pull, knock, etc., and the same abilities to hear and interpret sounds. Most likely that is possible or will be soon, and maybe it can be made affordable. Until then I don't want to see inspectors replaced by flying cameras.
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