Flying for the future — drone asset management partnership announced

A new partnership between Swarm UAV and RIGCOM Access aims to substantially reduce the prohibitive inspection costs normally associated with asset management.

Swarm UAV is a drone developer and operator whose general manager, Ryan Hamlet, is confident that his offering is making major inroads into asset management because it is safer, more efficient and cost-effective. He says that the company is seeing a steady increase in workload and has been asked to inspect stormwater channels, heritage-listed town halls, train stations and sports stadia in recent months.

Using a large chimney stack inspection as an example, scaffolding and labour costs could easily escalate to $15,000, whereas a drone flight around the chimney with engineers viewing a live feed and a 4K video file equates to around one tenth of the cost.

RIGCOM Access is a provider of industrial and commercial asset management services and was thinking of setting up its own drone service. RIGCOM Managing Director Craig ED Myton said that adding the ability to provide fast and effective drone inspection to its service offering is the next step in the company’s evolutionary process.

“Providing great services to our clients, and anticipating and implementing new technologies to benefit them, is one of our core philosophies,” said Myton.

“We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, as we already knew there were some active players in the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) market. Our existing experience in specialist industries such as mining, oil and gas, utilities and energy, along with the knowledge that our clients have been interested in potentially utilising UAV technology, made for a very clear case to partner with one of the best in the industry.

“The benefits of combining our services are numerous. Firstly, they include significantly decreasing the risk of injury or harm for our inspectors. It also enables us to operate a lot quicker and more flexibly — enabling some inspections to be undertaken while facilities are still in operation, which in turn decreases out age time on key assets. As a result, we see increased productivity of assets.”

RIGCOM’s offering includes rope access, rigging and height safety services, which are a safe and effective way to access and maintain facilities. The advantage of combining this approach with UAVs is faster access, less asset downtime and a reduction in potential health and safety costs.

“Both UAVs and rope access can be limited in what they can do in certain situations. Combining both services enables our clients to get the best possible solution,” said Myton.