What are the benefits of introducing drone surveying? 6 reasons it can help address labor shortages

In construction, civil engineering, land development, and maintenance sites, workloads are increasing while it remains difficult to secure sufficient personnel. Surveying is one of the tasks most affected by labor shortages because it is involved not only before work begins but also in checking against design, verifying as-built conditions during construction, monitoring progress, and recording after completion. Moreover, on sites with large coverage areas, terrain with significant elevation differences, or locations where entry requires caution, trying to operate using only conventional methods tends to place a heavy burden on site personnel.

One technology drawing attention is drone surveying. Because it can capture the condition of terrain and structures over an area from the air, it does not completely replace all traditional surveying methods, but its adoption is advancing as a way to reduce on-site burdens and enable work to be carried out more easily with fewer personnel. For practitioners, what matters is not simply using new equipment, but concretely understanding in which processes efficiency will increase and to what extent it will contribute to addressing labor shortages.

In this article, we organize the effects of introducing drone surveying from the perspective of addressing labor shortages, and explain why it is effective in the field by breaking it down into six reasons. We also explain, from a practical perspective, common pitfalls that are easy to overlook during implementation and how to combine it with complementary ground-based measurements.

Table of Contents

• Background on why drone surveying is gaining attention as a countermeasure for labor shortages

• Reason 1: Easier to capture large areas in a short time

• Reason 2: Easier to conduct surveying operations with few personnel

• Reason 3: Easier to reduce entry into hazardous areas

• Reason 4: Standardization of records makes it easier to reduce reliance on individuals

• Reason 5: Makes progress sharing and decision-making faster

• Reason 6: Can lead to reconsideration of dependence on outsourcing

• Points to note when introducing drone surveying

• Operational approaches to enhance effectiveness as a countermeasure against labor shortages

• Summary

Background: Why drone surveying is gaining attention as a countermeasure for labor shortages

Behind the growing interest in drone surveying is not just the convenience of being able to capture images from the air, but also the fact that the very structure of on-site operations has changed. Whereas surveying was once regarded as something carried out in limited stages, today the situations in which survey results are used have increased—not only for understanding current conditions before construction, but also for process management, earthwork quantity checks, progress reporting, preparing explanatory materials for stakeholders, and maintenance and management records. In other words, it is no longer a matter of measuring once and finishing; it is required to capture data repeatedly, share it repeatedly, and use it repeatedly for decision-making.

On the other hand, it is not always possible to assign sufficient personnel to a site. When staff are responsible for multiple sites or work is concentrated on experienced workers, the timing of surveys can be delayed, and as a result subsequent processes may be affected. A vicious cycle tends to occur: there are not enough people, so measurements cannot be taken; measurements cannot be taken, so decisions are delayed; and decisions are delayed, so site operations become even harder to carry out.

For this challenge, drone surveying is a well-suited method because it can efficiently acquire area-based information. Rather than walking the site and checking point by point, it can capture the shapes and conditions of a wide area from above at once, making it easier to reduce on-site work time. In addition, because the acquired data can be stored as images and terrain data, it is easier to share information with people who are not on site. The essence of the benefit of adopting it is that, even in situations where you cannot increase personnel, changing how work is conducted makes it easier to maintain the necessary situational awareness and decision-making.

However, it is important to note that introducing drone surveying does not automatically resolve labor shortages. What matters is clearly defining which processes it will be introduced into, what will be shortened, and whose burden will be reduced. Whether it will actually be effective on site depends more on operational design than on the aircraft itself. Therefore, you must first correctly understand the benefits of implementation and consider how they apply to your company’s operations.

Reason 1: Easy to grasp a wide area in a short time

The biggest reason drone surveying is effective as a countermeasure to labor shortages is that it makes it easy to grasp large areas quickly. In conventional ground surveying, as the target area grows, more time is spent on travel, instrument setup, ensuring lines of sight, and checking each survey point. Depending on site conditions, it is not uncommon to spend more time on movement and preparation than on the actual measuring. Especially when you need an overview of the entire site—such as development sites, slopes, embankments, excavation areas, and material storage yards—the burden increases the more you try to follow things in detail using only ground-based methods.

In drone surveying, because data can be captured as a surface from above, it becomes easier to grasp both the terrain’s undulations and its extent at once. This not only streamlines on-site verification work but also makes it easier to review the required coverage after acquisition and perform any necessary additional checks. In other words, having broader information at the initial stage helps reduce rework later.

What makes staffing-short sites difficult is having to visit the site more often. Not only the time spent on each task, but travel preparation, schedule coordination, attendance with stakeholders, and waiting for weather can quickly fill an employee’s time. Drone surveying makes it easier to capture the current conditions across a wide area at once, which reduces the need to accumulate small checks on every site visit. This is not merely a time saver; it creates the slack needed to handle multiple tasks with fewer people.

Being able to overview the entire site is also effective for preventing oversights. Ground-based checks inevitably offer a limited viewpoint and therefore tend to depend on the inspector's experience and the routes they walked. On large sites, areas thought to have been checked can later turn out to have been missed. By raising the viewpoint, drone surveying makes it easier to grasp the entire target area and helps reduce local inspection omissions. This effect is greater on sites with fewer people, since the area each person must cover increases.

Moreover, capturing area-wide data also helps when explaining things to stakeholders. Even if only on-site personnel understand the situation, unless the client, in-house supervisors, and construction management staff share the same understanding, additional explanations and reconfirmations will ultimately be required. Drone surveying, which makes it easy to visually share conditions over a wide area, reduces the number of explanations and the associated effort, and makes it less likely that only those familiar with the site will be called repeatedly. This, too, is an implementation benefit that should not be overlooked as a countermeasure against labor shortages.

Reason 2 Easier to run surveying operations with a small team

The second reason drone surveying helps address labor shortages is that it makes it easier to run surveying operations with a small crew. On site, in addition to the survey itself, there are many ancillary tasks such as travel, position checks, safety checks, coordination with stakeholders, record-keeping, and compiling results. It’s not that conventional methods are bad, but when staffing is tight, surveyors increasingly have to take on other roles, which can easily affect the overall progress of the site.

Drone surveying is characterized by being relatively easy to organize on-site if thorough preparation is carried out. If you establish the flight plan, area of interest, required deliverables, flight conditions, and the flow of safety checks, the day's operations become easier to standardize. This is important for sites with few personnel, because it allows work to be conducted according to fixed procedures without relying too much on individual experience. When the workflow is standardized, it becomes easier to maintain consistent quality even when personnel change.

Also, drone surveying is a method that, rather than acquiring a large number of points one by one on site, tends to collect the necessary information through flight and organize it later. As a result, it becomes easier to separate fieldwork and post-processing instead of being tied up on site for long periods. This is a major advantage when the number of people who can be stationed on site is limited. With a minimal number of staff on site and the organization and verification carried out at the office, it becomes easier to divide tasks and reconsider the allocation of roles between field and office work.

Furthermore, drone surveying is well suited to small-team operations because the reproducibility of information acquisition is relatively high. In conventional surveying, even if an expert can proceed efficiently, a less experienced person may take longer or hesitate when deciding the extent to be measured. Drone surveying also requires skill, of course, but because the acquisition target is an area, operations can follow a flight plan, and results can be reviewed afterward, it is easier to share procedures and conduct training. What is needed in an era of labor shortages is not a system where a small number of experts push themselves to keep things running, but workflows designed to operate with limited personnel. Drone surveying can be said to be a means that contributes toward that direction.

Of course, just because a task can be handled by a small team, it's dangerous to assume it should all be completed by one person. There are procedures that must be followed, such as safety checks, consideration of the surrounding environment, go/no‑go decisions about flights, and emergency response. However, from the perspective of the overall operation, drone surveying is a technology for making limited personnel more effective rather than one that increases the number of people required. Instead of giving up because you don't have enough people, reorganize the workflow so it can function with fewer people. The benefit of adopting drone surveying lies in expanding those options.

Reason 3: Easier to Reduce Entry into Hazardous Areas

The third reason is that it reduces the need to enter hazardous areas. In workplaces facing labor shortages, ensuring the safety of each individual becomes even more important. In understaffed operations, the absence of a single person can easily affect the schedule, and losses when accidents or near-miss incidents occur are also greater. Therefore, not only speeding up work but being able to obtain necessary information while avoiding hazards is highly valuable as a measure against labor shortages.

Drone surveying is effective because it makes it easy to assess steep slopes, slope faces, areas with poor footing, zones where heavy machinery is operating, and areas that require caution when entering, all while maintaining a certain distance. By reducing situations in which one must unreasonably approach from the ground, it lowers the need to enter hazardous areas for surveying. This makes on-site safety management easier and also simplifies work planning.

The safety benefits are not simply a reduction in accident risk. Work in hazardous locations generally requires more preparation and checks, and tends to take longer. This is because securing monitoring systems, enforcing access restrictions, coordinating with heavy machinery, and verifying scaffold conditions, among other tasks, require a great deal of effort. By using drone surveying to remotely substitute some of those tasks, the time that site personnel are tied up can be reduced. On sites with labor shortages, this time margin helps stabilize subsequent work.

There is also the problem that checking hazardous locations tends to rely on veteran personnel. More experienced staff are better at identifying dangers, so the burden often concentrates on them. However, such a system is not sustainable. If drone surveying can be used to perform initial detection and overall inspection of hazardous locations, and only the necessary sites are examined on the ground, it becomes easier to concentrate seasoned workers’ expertise on truly critical decisions. This directly addresses labor shortages by making more effective use of human resources.

Moreover, work design that prioritizes safety also helps create sites where younger and newly assigned personnel can more easily participate. Tasks that impose heavy burdens in hazardous locations present higher hurdles for human resource development. If you first grasp the overall situation from the air, share that information, and then move on to the necessary ground work, training becomes easier. Addressing labor shortages requires both protecting the people who are currently on site and making it easier to develop those who will take on those roles in the future. In that respect, drone surveying is not merely an efficiency technology but a means that makes it easier to reconcile safety with effective use of personnel.

Reason 4 Standardizing records makes it easier to reduce reliance on individuals

The fourth reason is that standardizing records makes it easier to reduce dependence on specific individuals. In workplaces where labor shortages are becoming severe, a greater problem than the small number of staff itself can be that only certain people can explain the situation. Situations in which the person in charge cannot take time off, handovers are difficult, past conditions are unknown, and someone familiar with the site is needed each time an explanation is required are particularly critical in small-team environments.

With drone surveying, it is easy to preserve the current conditions as images and terrain data, making it simpler to record and share the state of a site. The continuity and spatial relationships of terrain that were difficult to convey with traditional handwritten notes and limited photographs become easier to understand with area-based data. This means information that existed only in the minds of those who saw the site is transformed into an asset that can be shared by the team.

One reason why reliance on specific individuals increases is that the processes of observation and verification are not easily recorded. When what was observed and how judgments were made depend on an individual’s experience, omissions tend to occur during handovers. If drone surveying results are accumulated regularly, it becomes easier to track changes over time and to compare with the past even when the person in charge changes. This reduces the burden required to understand the site’s history.

It also has benefits for preparing report materials. At worksites with labor shortages, not only the surveying itself but also creating explanatory materials for reports can become a burden. Selecting site photos, adding positional context, and explaining points of change can take surprisingly long. With the aerial overview information obtained from drone surveying, it becomes easier to organize the relationship between the entire site and points of interest, and to standardize report content. Improving the quality of explanations also reduces the need for re-explanations and additional confirmations.

Smaller organizations, where each person often holds multiple roles, make information visualization crucial. Operations that rely only on an individual's memory and experience become unstable the moment that person goes on leave, is transferred, or resigns. Drone surveying improves the reproducibility of work by making it easy to record and preserve an understanding of the site. This is not a flashy benefit, but over the long term it directly contributes to building an organization that is resilient to labor shortages.

Reason 5 Easier progress sharing and quicker decision-making

The fifth reason is that it makes it easier to speed up progress sharing and decision-making. What really steals time on-site is not just the act of measuring itself. If the flow of how the acquired information is communicated, who makes the decisions, and when the next instructions are issued becomes stalled, work on-site quickly grinds to a halt. On sites experiencing labor shortages, all stakeholders are busy, making it difficult to align time for checks and approvals. Therefore, a mechanism that accelerates information sharing and enables decisions to be made earlier is important.

Drone surveying makes it easy to visually share the overall site conditions, which helps align understanding with stakeholders who are not on site. For example, the progress of land development, changes in excavation extent, the status of temporary facility placements, and the progress of slope treatment can be difficult to convey with text alone. When there is information obtained from above, it becomes easier to grasp the target area and points of change and to align the premises for explanations. This also helps shorten the time spent in meetings and discussions.

Faster decision-making directly helps address labor shortages. This is because time spent waiting for decisions can leave on-site personnel idle. When there are few people in charge, a single pending decision is more likely to affect other tasks. If sharing situational information is made easier through drone surveying, decisions about whether additional investigation is necessary, whether to proceed as is, or whether corrections are required can be made more quickly. This is crucial for maintaining workflow with a small team.

It is also well suited for regular progress checks. On sites with labor shortages, small daily inspections are often postponed, and problems may only be discovered after they have grown large. By using drone surveying for fixed-point monitoring, it becomes easier to compare overall conditions at regular intervals and to detect early signs of change. Early detection reduces the effort required to make corrections. As a result, it becomes easier to keep a site running smoothly even with a limited number of personnel.

Furthermore, the fact that it can reduce the communication burden both inside and outside the company should not be overlooked. When trying to explain a site using only words, more experienced people tend to omit details, which can make it difficult for the recipient to understand. Conversely, less experienced staff may take longer to explain. Aerial perspective information from drone surveying makes it easier to bridge the differences in understanding between both parties and lowers the barriers to information sharing. This is also effective in enabling operations that do not rely too heavily on the explanatory ability of individual staff members.

Reason 6: Likely to prompt a reassessment of reliance on outsourcing

The sixth reason is that it tends to prompt a reassessment of dependence on outsourcing. When people talk about labor shortages, they tend to focus only on a lack of personnel within the company, but if the amount of work outsourced externally becomes too large, scheduling and verification tasks can actually become a burden. In particular, if you leave even simple status checks or regular record collection to outside contractors every time, you can find yourself unable to act quickly when the timing requires it.

Introducing drone surveying doesn't mean you have to do everything in-house, but it makes it easier to reassess how much to handle internally and what to delegate to specialist surveyors. For example, your company can carry out overall situation checks and progress recording, while leaving parts that require high-precision reference management or the creation of rigorous deliverables to specialists. Once this division is established, communication with outsourcing partners becomes clearer, allowing you to efficiently issue only the necessary requests.

This is important as a countermeasure against labor shortages. This is because, if reliance on outsourcing becomes too high, in-house staff end up constantly occupied with making requests, coordinating, attending on-site, checking deliverables, and re-requesting. It is not uncommon for outsourcing to fail to make things easier. When your company can perform initial checks and regular record-keeping in-house, it becomes clear what should be outsourced and unnecessary back-and-forth is reduced. As a result, you can build a system that is easier to manage even with a small team.

Another major benefit is that on-site response becomes more immediate. In an era of labor shortages, the schedules of those in charge tend to fill up, and external parties may not be able to act right away. In such situations, if your company can perform at least minimal in-house checks, the initial response will be faster. When the initial response is faster, it becomes easier to address problems before they grow, and the effort required later can be reduced.

However, what must not be misunderstood here is that introducing drone surveying does not mean that specialist surveying judgment and accuracy management are no longer required. The important thing is to appropriately draw the boundary between in-house work and external utilization. As a measure against labor shortages, what will truly be effective is not trying to handle everything within the company, but identifying the tasks that should be carried out internally and concentrating external resources where they are needed. Drone surveying can be a powerful means to advance that organization.

Key considerations when introducing drone surveying

So far, we have explained the benefits of introducing drone surveying, but drone surveying is not a cure-all that will automatically succeed just by being adopted. To make it effective as a measure against labor shortages, you need to pay attention to several key points.

First and foremost, it is important not to leave the objective vague. The required operations vary depending on whether you want to quickly grasp the current situation, regularize progress checks, or reduce entries into hazardous areas. If you introduce it while the purpose is unclear, the act of flying itself can become the objective, and it may end without reducing the on-site burden. If you view it as a measure against labor shortages, you should first decide which process you want to reduce by how many hours and whose burden you want to lessen.

Next, you need to plan with the effects of weather and flight conditions in mind. Drone surveying is convenient, but it is affected by wind, rain, lighting conditions, and the surrounding environment. Even if it seems more flexible than traditional methods, you must assume there will be days when flying is not possible. Therefore, on-site plans must include alternatives and contingency days. If drones were introduced to address labor shortages but schedules are thrown off every time flightability is in question, the result is counterproductive.

How to utilize the collected data is also important. If you stop at merely collecting data, the site will not become easier. You need to decide who will check it, what it will be used for, and when it will be shared. Especially at sites with labor shortages, if responsibilities for post-processing and organizing are unclear, the burden will end up concentrated on a few people. It is important to design the flow from on-site collection through organization, reporting, and storage from the outset.

Furthermore, it is important not to misjudge situations that require on-the-ground verification. Drone surveying excels at capturing area-wide information, but tasks that require ground-based supplementation remain, such as checking detailed measurements, setting out positions, and conducting localized inspections. Measures most likely to succeed in addressing labor shortages are not operations that try to complete everything with drones alone, but those that skillfully combine aerial overview with on-the-ground scrutiny. Clarifying which parts can be substituted and which require supplementation prevents unrealistic expectations.

Operational Approaches to Enhance Effectiveness in Addressing Labor Shortages

To enhance the effectiveness of introducing drone surveying, it is important to organize operations around tasks rather than around the aircraft. If you are considering it as a response to labor shortages, it is more important to decide where to incorporate it into daily operations than to use it on a one-off basis.

At first, it's more effective to use it not as a blanket solution but starting with high-load situations. If you begin with processes that are likely to produce results—wide-area condition checks, processes that require repeated recording, identification of hazardous locations, or situations where preparing explanatory materials takes a long time—you will more easily feel the benefits of implementation. Trying to expand to every site and every process from the outset makes operations complicated and harder to establish.

Next, it is also important to decide the acquisition frequency. Rather than flying only when you happen to think of it, define specific times to use it—before construction starts, when switching major work phases, before as-built verification, and before reporting—so that comparing information becomes easier. If you can use it like fixed-point monitoring, it becomes easier to grasp changes and a small team will be better able to track site conditions.

It is also necessary to build a system that does not leave everything to on-site personnel. The more understaffed a site is, the more it tends to rely on the individual efforts of the person in charge, but that is not sustainable. It is important to document procedures for flight planning, safety checks, data organization, and internal sharing so that anyone can understand the workflow. The strength of drone surveying is that, when well designed, it makes it easier to increase reproducibility. In other words, it can be turned into a system that runs even when manpower is limited.

Furthermore, planning the division of roles with ground-based measurements from the outset stabilizes operations. If you organize it so that drones handle area-wide observation from above and ground-based methods handle fine position checks and measurements directly related to construction, the worksite will be less prone to confusion. For measures against labor shortages, an approach that seeks combinations that deliver the greatest results with the smallest number of people is more effective than the idea of replacing everything.

Summary

The benefits of introducing drone surveying are not simply about adopting new technology, but about making it easier to manage sites with fewer people. The main reasons it is valued as a countermeasure against labor shortages are that it makes it easier to grasp wide areas in a short time, to carry out work with a small team, to reduce entry into hazardous locations, to curb reliance on specific individuals through standardized records, to speed up progress sharing and decision‑making, and to facilitate reconsideration of dependence on outsourcing.

However, the important point is not to consider drone surveying in isolation. On site, work that benefits from broad aerial coverage coexists with tasks that must be accurately verified on the ground. To create operations resilient to labor shortages, it is essential to use drones to quickly and widely capture information and to reliably supplement the necessary parts on the ground.

In particular, in situations where rapid and accurate on-the-ground checks are required—such as construction work, as-built management, and position verification—an aerial overview alone may not be sufficient. In such cases, by using drone surveying to grasp the overall situation while combining it on the ground with an iPhone-mounted GNSS high-precision positioning device such as LRTK, you can further improve overall site efficiency. If you can establish a workflow that captures a broad view from above and immediately pinpoints the necessary points on the ground, even a limited crew can more easily move decisions and tasks forward. In an era where labor shortages persist, it is important to combine measurement methods suited to the site and raise productivity with a realistic, manageable arrangement.