What general contractors, owners, data-center builders and earthworks firms fly drones for, how often, and to what accuracy — and, use case by use case, what Omniris does with those flights: measured progress against the design and the schedule, earthwork quantities with stated uncertainty, and a record that holds up when the numbers are questioned.
Construction is the industry that made the drone a site tool. More than a third of the contractor members in one 2026 trade-association survey fly drones, and four in five of those use them to monitor site progress [1]. Nearly every state transportation department that answered a national survey had used drones on highway construction [2]. The imagery is rarely the hard part any more. The hard part is everything after the flight: tying the survey to the design's coordinates, turning a map into quantities someone will pay against, getting percent complete into the schedule without retyping it, and keeping a record that survives a claim.
Omniris covers that path end to end for the work most construction flights are flown for:
Photos become an orthomosaic, surface and terrain models and, if wanted, a 3D model, filed under the site beside every earlier flight. Ground control and checkpoints give a measured accuracy, stated on the result.
Stockpiles, pits and cut/fill against a base or the design surface, each volume with a ± figure and tonnage. Save a boundary once and every later flight of the site is measured the same way.
IFC, DWG, DXF and DGN designs placed in their real coordinates; Primavera P6 and Microsoft Project schedules linked to the design objects that build them; progress measured, approved by a person, and written back into the schedule file.
Deliverables sent to Procore and Autodesk Forma; findings kept in sync with Procore Observations and Forma Issues both ways; contours and surfaces exported as DXF and LandXML in State Plane.
Every photo, result, measurement, approval and export carries a tamper-evident custody history, with signed certificates and legal holds when a dispute starts.
Plan the mission, check the airspace, and in the cloud and data center editions, post a recurring weekly or monthly job for a pilot to fly.
Volumes carry their uncertainty and controlled maps their measured accuracy; what the results are, and are not, is set out in What the results claim, and what they don't.
There is no industry standard cadence. The cadences that are documented come from the purpose of the flight:
| Mission | Typical cadence | What the buyer expects | What governs it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Progress monitoring | Monthly in documented agency practice [2] | Orthomosaic and photos of the whole site, compared date by date; owner and lender reports | Contract reporting requirements; the schedule's percent complete |
| Topography and earthwork quantities | Monthly during earthwork, with a final quantity at completion [2] | Surface and terrain models, cut/fill and net volumes, often for progress payment | Agency quantity and survey specifications; positional accuracy standards [6] |
| Stockpiles and materials | As needed; one of the three most common DOT uses [2] | Volumes and tonnage per pile | The owner's or supplier's inventory practice |
| Design against as-built | At key pours, pads and grades | An as-built survey [2] with the design overlaid; where the work is off grade or out of place | The design model (BIM/CAD) and its tolerances |
| Schedule and pay-application progress | Each update period | Physical percent complete per activity or pay line | The schedule (P6, Microsoft Project) [11] [12]; pay applications (AIA G702 / G703) [19] |
| Stormwater and erosion control | Every 7 days, or 14 days plus after 0.25 in of rain [4] | Condition of silt fence, inlet protection, stabilised areas and discharge points | EPA 2022 CGP Part 4 or the state permit; inspection by a "qualified person" [4] |
| Inspection | As needed | Close views of structures, silt fence, cranes and falsework, with less need for special access equipment or climbing [3] | The inspection programme the work falls under |
| Site logistics and safety | As needed | Laydown, haul roads, access, perimeter and hazards seen from above | The site safety plan |
| Marketing and stakeholder media | As needed | Photos, video, walk-around 3D [1] | None |
Drones replace boots on the ground for many surveys, mapping large areas relatively quickly compared with traditional survey methods [3], and they reduce the need for temporary work zones, special access equipment and climbing in inspections [3]. Agencies that use them for quantities still run them as surveys: a North Carolina DOT photogrammetry unit report on a drone earthwork project, for example, documents field-surveyed ground control, independent checkpoints, and checkpoint errors in feet on NAD 83 and NAVD 88 [9]. Published comparisons put drone stockpile volumes within 1.5% to 3.3% of actual in a Clemson University study for South Carolina DOT [8], and within 4% of a terrestrial laser scan in a peer-reviewed study that found ground control improved the result [10]. Ground crews remain for control, for anything under tree cover or inside a structure, and for work that state law treats as land surveying (see Accuracy and standards).
Data centers stand out in US non-residential construction spending. Census Bureau figures put data center construction spending at $50.7 billion in April 2026, up 28.1% from a year earlier [13], and the Associated General Contractors' reading of the July 2026 figures shows data center spending up 57% year over year while other private office construction fell 11% [14]. The drone work on such a build is the work described in this paper: earthwork for the site and pads, then the progress of every slab, pier and equipment pad, reported to the owner.
Construction drone data has to reach the project-management platform the team already works in. Autodesk Construction Cloud was renamed Autodesk Forma from March 24, 2026 (Autodesk Build became Forma Build) [15]. Buyers expect drone deliverables and issues to arrive in the system their team already uses.
| Use case | What Omniris delivers |
|---|---|
| Weekly progress map | Orthomosaic, surface and terrain models filed under the site; step, swipe or fade through dates in the Site Navigator |
| Stockpile volumes and tonnage | Volume tool with a choice of base, ± uncertainty and tonnage; saved boundaries re-measured every flight |
| Cut/fill between two dates | Material added, removed and net, each with ±, and a change map, graded for alignment |
| Cut/fill against the design | Design surface as the volume base (design model, DXF, LandXML or GeoTIFF) and Compare's Design mode |
| BIM/CAD overlay on the as-built | IFC, DWG, DXF and DGN placed in their stated coordinates, over every flight on the map and in 3D |
| "Is it at grade?" per element | Each linked slab, pad or pavement measured against design height within a tolerance, on survey-grade flights |
| Schedule progress (P6, Microsoft Project) | Import, link to design objects, measure, approve, roll up (percent complete, forecast, SPI(t), earned value), export physical percent complete back |
| Pay-application checks (G702 / G703) | Measured, approved progress per schedule activity and earned value, for whoever reviews each pay application |
| Survey accuracy QA | Ground control, checkpoints with RMSE, an accuracy class on controlled stitches |
| Topography to the design team | DXF contours and surfaces, LandXML surfaces, in State Plane, UTM or the survey's own system |
| Drainage, ponding and slope | Contours, slope, aspect, ponding and drainage paths |
| Stormwater (SWPPP) inspections | Recurring flights on the inspection cadence, dated maps, findings at each failed control, terrain drainage and ponding |
| Site logistics and safety | Dated maps, findings, and AI detection that finds the objects you name, checked by a person |
| Façade, roof and structure inspection | Measurable 3D mesh, findings on the model, thermal maps for roofs |
| 360° site panoramas | DJI sphere panoramas stitched into a 360° view, free, and shareable by link |
| LiDAR surveys | LAS/LAZ processing and classification, terrain, surface and contour products, and measuring in the point-cloud viewer |
| Change alerts | Email when a new flight changes the volume beyond a threshold |
| Owner and lender reporting | Stitch, progress, comparison and situation reports as PDFs; live read-only site links |
| Procore and Autodesk Forma | Send deliverables; pick designs and schedules from them; findings two-way with Observations and Issues |
| Getting a recurring flight flown | Mission planning, airspace check and, in the cloud and data center editions, a recurring marketplace job |
Progress monitoring is the most common reason contractors fly [1]. In Omniris a progress flight works like this:
Upload from the web, the desktop application or the phone. Naming the site when the stitch starts tags every result with that site, so it is listed beside every earlier flight of the same place.
Photo count, camera angle, GPS coverage and separate flight groups are checked, flight height sets the expected map resolution, and, in the cloud and data center editions, the price is shown up front and a failed or cancelled job is refunded in full.
Plus a point cloud and, if asked for, a 3D model. Large sites are processed in sections and merged. A stitch report is filed with the results.
Fade, swipe or blink between dates, measure, compute volumes and place findings.
A live, read-only site link, a PDF report, or deliverables pushed to Procore or Autodesk Forma.
A Site Navigator link gives an owner's representative or lender a live view: the dates and layers you choose, optionally every future flight, with an optional password and expiry, revocable at any time. They can measure and compare dates on the full-resolution data but cannot save anything. By default they can only view; you can also let them download the shared maps, and choose whether to include the source photos. See the Sharing and delivery paper.
From a comparison on a site, Alert me sets up a standing watch: when a new flight changes the net volume (up, down or either way), the material added, or the material removed beyond a threshold you set, you and up to 10 other Omniris users who can open the site are emailed. Alerts are checked every six hours. The Site management paper covers sites, the Site Navigator and alerts in full.
Earthwork is where a drone survey earns its keep, and where a careless volume costs the most. In Omniris a volume is computed cell by cell over the surface model at its full resolution: material above the base is cut, space below it is fill, and the difference is the net. Results show in feet, acres, cubic yards and US tons unless you choose metric; printed reports show both.
| Base | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Triangulated (default) | A base that follows sloping ground under a pile, through the heights at the boundary's corners |
| Best-fit plane | Ramps and evenly sloped pads |
| Lowest point | Flat pads (one corner in a rut drops the whole base) |
| Highest point | Trenches, ponds and voids |
| Custom elevation | A known floor, bench or subgrade height you enter |
| Design surface | Cut and fill against the design: an imported design model, or a DXF, LandXML or design GeoTIFF file |
If two surveys are offset from each other, the offset looks like cut and fill. Omniris grades every pair of dates for how well they line up — same ground control, or a later flight aligned to the earlier one — and labels an unaligned pair's result an estimate. Controlled flights on both dates are the fix.
Three ways to bring the design surface in:
The same design surface drives Compare's Design mode in the Site Navigator: a red-and-blue cut/fill map of where the ground is above the design (material to remove) and below it (material to place), with the share of the survey area the chosen design objects cover.
The Stitching paper covers stitching, measuring, volumes and terrain analysis in full.
State transportation departments already fly drones for as-built surveys, including immediately after construction [2]. Omniris makes the design a first-class part of the site, not a picture laid on top.
| Format | What Omniris reads |
|---|---|
| IFC (the open BIM format), including IFC 4.3 for roads and rail | Every building or infrastructure element, with its properties, quantities and 3D shape; placed on the earth when the file records where it sits |
| AutoCAD DWG and DXF | 3D faces and shapes as surfaces, lines as lines, one object per drawing element |
| MicroStation DGN (V8 and V7, 2D and 3D) | The same, one object per design element |
The design and the drone survey are usually in different coordinate systems, and the gap can be several feet sideways and tens of feet in height. Omniris requires both sides to say what they are:
For objects with design heights — slabs, pads, pavements, subgrade — Omniris measures how much of each object's footprint is at the design height within a tolerance. The site default is ±0.1 ft (about 1.2 in / 3 cm), adjustable per object type. Only survey-grade flights are graded (RTK with network or known-point corrections, or surveyed ground control); if the tolerance is tighter than the flight can measure, the object is marked "survey too coarse for this tolerance" rather than given a number.
The Design, progress and integrations paper describes design import, coordinates and grading in full.
Schedules already have a place for measured progress. In Primavera P6, an activity whose percent-complete type is Physical takes a percent complete the user records (or one calculated from activity steps), separate from duration or units [11]; Microsoft Project's Earned Value Method field can use Physical % Complete instead of % Complete to calculate earned value [12]. What is usually missing is the measurement. Omniris supplies it, from the flights.
Primavera P6 (XER or P6 XML) or Microsoft Project (.mpp or Project XML), with WBS, dates, links, calendars, costs and baselines. Updates are matched activity by activity; removed activities keep their history.
Pick objects on the map, draw around an area, or match by a rule (for example layer name against activity code). Each link says how the object counts: by count, length, area, volume, mass or percent.
Elevation at grade on survey-grade flights; detected present where AI detection was run (for example formwork in a footprint); or manual, from the web, the desktop or a phone on site — the method for curbs, pipe and poles.
Measured values are proposals until someone approves them. One approval covers a flight and is sealed into the chain of custody with a fingerprint of exactly what was approved. Manual entries count once saved.
Percent complete against planned through every WBS group, a forecast finish from the rate actually achieved, SPI(t), and earned value when the schedule carries costs (actual cost and CPI only when it carries actuals).
Export to schedule writes physical percent complete, actual start and actual finish into a copy of your schedule file, with a change list of every value written. Files are edited, not rebuilt (an .mpp comes back as Project XML); your scheduler imports the file.
P6 uses physical percent complete only for activities whose percent-complete type is Physical [11]; Microsoft Project uses it for earned value only on tasks set to the Physical % Complete method, which is not the default [12]. The change list flags every activity set any other way.
Thousands of near-identical objects — piers, equipment pads, slabs, duct-bank runs — are linked to the activities that build them by rule rather than one by one, measured on every survey-grade flight, and rolled up across the campus. In the Gantt chart, an owner's representative can see the percent complete the schedule file reports beside the measured progress, with every approval on the record.
A pay application's continuation sheet (AIA G703) lists a percent complete for every schedule-of-values line, so that the architect can certify the payment due [19]. Omniris gives that reviewer measured, approved progress per schedule activity and earned value. Where pay lines and schedule activities differ, the project team maps one to the other.
Not every construction flight is about quantities. Half of the drone-flying contractors in the ABC survey use drones for inspections [1], and FHWA points to routine checks such as flying a programmed path over silt fence after rain, and high-risk ones such as crane and falsework construction [3]. In Omniris, what a flight finds becomes a finding.
The Findings paper describes the workflow in full.
A drone flight can cover the perimeter controls, inlets and stabilised areas that the CGP requires a qualified person to inspect every 7 days or after a qualifying storm [4]. Omniris supports that inspection:
The inspection report the permit requires, and the judgement of the qualified person, stay with your stormwater programme.
A dated, measurable map of the whole site each week shows laydown areas, haul roads, access points, fencing and open excavations as they are, not as the logistics plan drew them. AI detection finds and outlines the objects you name in plain words — equipment, vehicles, containers, materials — across photos or a whole orthomosaic, and a person checks and corrects the result before anyone relies on it (see the AI detection paper). AI change lists what appeared or disappeared between two dates.
A measurable 3D mesh of a building, a thermal map of a roof, and findings pinned to the exact spot on either. Thermal maps carry real surface temperatures you can click and outline; roof surveys use a preset that follows ASTM C1153, reporting warm areas on a flight after sunset as moisture candidates (see the Thermal imaging paper).
| Product | What it is for | Measurable? |
|---|---|---|
| 3D mesh | A photo-textured model at real-world scale, with surface and terrain models alongside: progress, façades, as-built records | Yes — in 3D on the model, and on the 2D map from its surface and terrain models |
| Gaussian splat | A photo-real copy that keeps glass, foliage and fine detail. Stakeholder walk-throughs and a visual record | No — it has no reliable real-world scale |
| 360° panorama | A DJI sphere panorama stitched into a 360° view, aligned to gravity and north | No — for looking |
| LiDAR point cloud | LAS/LAZ surveys classified into ground, vegetation, buildings, wires and towers, with terrain, surface and contour products | In the point-cloud viewer; the map's volume and comparison tools work on photo surveys, not LiDAR height maps |
A 3D model made in a stitch is placed with that stitch's ground control, or with the photos' GPS when there is none. A mesh built as its own 3D project takes its scale and position from the photos' GPS only; with a standard (non-RTK) drone the whole model can sit several feet from its true position without changing anything measured on it. The Digital twins paper and the LiDAR and point cloud paper cover these products.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Ground control points | Import surveyed coordinates from common survey equipment and software or CSV, in your survey's coordinate system; ArUco coded targets found automatically and confirmed by you; heights on a known reference converted to one reference before the stitch |
| Checkpoints | Surveyed points held out of the fit and measured on the delivered map: error east, north and up for each, horizontal, vertical and 3D RMSE, the mean error in each direction, and which checkpoints lie outside the area the control encloses. Checkpoints marked later are measured on the finished map without re-stitching, at no charge |
| Accuracy class | A stitch's ground control is labelled by its loosest point's stated horizontal accuracy: survey-grade (4 in / 0.1 m or better), survey control (up to 3.3 ft / 1 m), or basemap-grade (looser, or picked from imagery); a stitch aligned to an earlier flight is labelled so, and control with no stated accuracy gives "accuracy class unknown". Checkpoint accuracy leads the stitch report's ground-control results when checkpoints were used |
| Without surveyed points | Ground reference points picked on satellite imagery (assumed good to about ±10 ft / 3 m horizontally and ±33 ft / 10 m vertically, and labelled basemap-grade) or alignment to an earlier flight of the site |
Omniris reports measured checkpoint errors and RMSE; it does not test them against an ASPRS accuracy class, count checkpoints against the standard's minimum, or certify a map. Errors at control points show how well the map fits the points it was fitted to, not its accuracy elsewhere — checkpoints are that test. Without ground control, positions come from the drone's own GPS and the stitch report says absolute accuracy cannot be stated from that flight alone.
Design grading uses whichever is looser, the accuracy stated for the control or the vertical accuracy the checkpoints measured, so a checkpoint can only tighten what is graded, never loosen it.
Construction disputes — delay claims, quantity disputes, change orders, defect claims — turn on what the site looked like on a given day and who said what about it. Omniris keeps the flights and everything made from them as evidence, not as loose files:
The Evidence integrity paper describes custody, certificates, holds and encryption in full.
In the United States, commercial flights of small drones are flown under 14 CFR Part 107, which requires a remote pilot certificate (or direct supervision by a certificated remote pilot in command) and limits altitude to 400 ft above ground level, unless the drone is within 400 ft of a structure and no more than 400 ft above its top [16]. Omniris plans the flight and keeps the record; the pilot flies it in the aircraft's own app.
The Mission planning paper covers planning, airspace and checklists.
In the cloud and data center editions, a contractor or owner without its own pilot can post a job: draw the site, pick deliverables (photos, video, orthomosaic, 3D model, thermal, multispectral, LiDAR, raw data), and set the schedule and point of contact. Approved pilots whose travel radius covers the site are notified and can apply; the client accepts one application, or sends an offer straight to a pilot who has delivered before. Results are delivered into the job's folder and accepted or rejected with notes.
The marketplace, payments and payouts are part of the cloud and data center editions only; on-premises installations fly with their own pilots.
The Omniris Pilot phone app, for iPhone and Android, carries the jobs, the pre-flight checklist (filed with the job as a permanent record), the findings assigned to you and site progress recording. Work done without signal is saved on the phone and sent once it reconnects. See the Field app paper.
Connect your Procore or Autodesk account from the Integrations tab of your Account page (an organization's account is connected by one of its managers), then link each site to a Procore project, or to a Forma project and folder.
| Procore | Autodesk Forma | |
|---|---|---|
| Sending deliverables | Any file or folder — orthomosaics, elevation models, reports, schedule exports — to the project's Documents, large files included | The same, to a Forma folder; a file with the same name becomes a new version |
| Bringing files in | Pick a design or schedule file from Procore Documents | Pick a design or schedule file from Forma |
| Findings | Two-way with Observations: new items, status, assignee, comments and pictures; title and description are sent when an item is created, and edits made in Procore come back | Two-way with Issues: the same |
| How fast | As they happen, through Procore's change notifications, with a check every 5 minutes as a fallback | A check every 5 minutes |
| Schedules | A schedule in Procore can be read into the Progress panel; progress goes back as an exported P6 (XER) file for your scheduler to import | Schedules come in as files; progress goes back as an exported file |
| Omniris inside the other system | An Omniris panel inside Procore showing the site's map, flight comparison and progress — only what that person can already see in Omniris | — |
A change that arrives from Procore or Forma is never echoed back, and each change is applied once. A Procore Observation or Forma Issue created there arrives as a finding marked "Location needed" until someone places it on the map, because they carry no map position. Encrypted files are skipped and listed as "Protected — not sent" unless someone allowed to open them releases them on purpose.
The capabilities in this paper run on every Omniris edition:
| Edition | Processing | Notes for construction |
|---|---|---|
| Omniris cloud on Microsoft Azure | A processing machine sized for each job, started for it and released after it | Marketplace, recurring jobs and payments included |
| Omniris cloud on Google Cloud | The same | The same |
| Omniris data center edition | Omniris' own processing servers | Marketplace, recurring jobs and payments included |
| On-premises, on your hardware | Your site's own processing servers; photos and results stay on site | No marketplace or payments: you fly with your own pilots. You register your own Procore and Autodesk apps, and the site must be served over HTTPS to connect them. An installation connected to the Omniris cloud can send a single stitch there when it chooses. |
On-premises suits owners and builders whose site imagery must stay inside their own network. Where processing runs on a fixed set of machines (the data center edition and on-premises), if no machine is large enough for a 3D model of the selected photos, the stitch dialog turns the 3D options off and says why, rather than accepting a job that could never run.
Construction numbers end up in pay applications, claims and as-built records, so Omniris states what each result is:
Omniris provides measured quantities, measured accuracy and the record behind them. Whether a survey meets a contract specification or an agency standard, and what a number means for a payment or a claim, is for the surveyor, engineer or owner who relies on it. The reports give both the numbers and how they were measured so that judgement can be made.