How Sundt Construction uses Skydio drones

Sundt, one of the largest 100% employee-owned construction companies in the southwest, specializes in a number of construction projects including transportation, commercial building, industrial, and renewable energy.

Skydio’s drones have streamlined Sundt’s drone operations in a big way, saving them time and money, while opening up additional avenues for revenue. Because of this, they are planning on transitioning their entire fleet to Skydio drones this year. This speaks to just how much Skydio is set to change the paradigm within the construction industry.

i've spent years trying to make these kinds of models this kind of level detail you know with traditionally manual drones to try and replicate what skydio has been able to program into all of their drones it's impossible

we're here in goodyear arizona it's currently 110 degrees outside we're building this enormous data center for our client i'm dean miller i work for sun construction i'm a virtual construction engineer i came to sun construction because i knew how to build 3d models and work with them too as time progressed we started to adopt drones as a whole and i learned to fly them progress that three more years and we're at where we are now with 30 plus pilots 40 drones and a slew of solutions traditionally we use manual drones now that skydio's been released we've been able to transition to skydio autonomous drones inspection is important at sun because it allows us to show progress of the project as a whole inspections have traditionally been done by hand and that's somebody walking around with their phone or an ipad laser scanners plumb bobs taking pictures from the ground level but now that skydio's been released we've been able to utilize this autonomous drone to help the documentation of our job sites and that's by allowing us to go into areas that otherwise couldn't be flown before because it doesn't rely on its magnetometer like traditional manual drones it allows us to fly inside and next to heavy metals this gives us the ability to document interiors of buildings as well as exteriors because of the autonomy enterprise foundation we've been able to get up close to different obstacles we can fly through doorways even through windows and get into tight areas and document those areas to check for accuracy and as builds i'm josh anderson i'm a senior project manager with sun construction here in phoenix arizona been at the company for 17 years drones definitely help us build our projects faster safer and better faster we can cover more ground with the drone it's that simple we can cover a lot of area in a short amount of time better is we've got real-time video and documentation control of what we're building or if we have to refer back to something we can do that safer because we know of obstacles that we wouldn't normally see when we're on the ground to look for hazards we can plan work at heights we try to keep people on the ground as much as possible it's safer on the ground we're in this business to build great projects but we want to create careers for everybody and help support their families and that's why we work safe drones help us do that drone usage over the years in construction has come a long way skadio specifically has been great for us we're getting a much better image in a shorter amount of time with skydio drones we're able to create photos mosaics and 3d models here's an example of an hvac unit that we created a 3d model

when it comes to progress tracking we're constantly looking for new ways to utilize the information given using the autonomous skydio drones we're able to verify accuracy of placements and verify that everything is being built correctly once a project's complete we're able to fly it one final time and capture that moment in time of when we're handing over the finished product to our clients we're able to use this for marketing in the future and it also helps us to get new work utilizing skydio autonomous drones we're able to reduce our inspection time by ninety percent that ninety percent on a job site means money