Land and Minerals Consulting limited (LMCL) adopted the trading name DroneSurv^® in 2013 for its surveys and inspections using remote systems.

On 17^th June 2013, LMCL became one of the earliest companies in the UK to be issued with a Permission for Commercial Operations (PfCO) by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) with the CAA Reference number 244.  Since then LMCL have continually maintained their CAA permissions and currently hold an Operational Authorisation based upon an Operational Safety Case (OSC) for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone operations in the Specific Category and a PDRA01 Operational Authorisation to fly drones with 150m of Residential, Commercial, Industrial and Recreational areas.

DroneSurv own and operate numerous types of Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) from <250g drones flying in the Open Category A1, through slightly larger drones in the Open Category A2 to their largest Trinity VTOL fixed-wing mapping drone flying under their OSC in the Specific Category.

LMCL also supply surveys and inspections under the DroneSurv name for their Uncrewed Surface Vessel (USV) bathymetric and hydrographic surveys, Uncrewed Underwater Vessel (UUV) inspections and Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) surveys and inspections for confined spaces or hazardous work environments.

There is a lot of confusion in the drone services sector over the definition of a ‘survey’ with many drone companies referring to simple building inspections as building surveys.  For us, a survey is a precise 3D recreation of the ground (topographical survey) or building (digital-twin).  If it’s a topographical survey, then millions of points (point-cloud) and orthophotograph is only part of the ‘survey’.  A true topographical survey will have all the line features (top of quarry face, bottom of quarry face, top of embankment, bottom of embankment, kerb edge, road edge, building footprint, etc) and point features (spot levels, tree centres, manhole covers, telephone poles, etc).  It should also be produced by a trained Surveyor with a membership of an appropriate professional institution (RICS / CICES).