Drawing on a background of over thirty years working in the roofing industry, we now provide a specialist inspection service utilising a variety of drones to carry out roof and high structure inspections of industrial and commercial properties on behalf of building surveyors, property managers and contractors.

We provide detailed imagery to for the purpose of dilapidations & schedule-of-condition reports, condition assessments or promotional photography of completed projects.

Seagull Aerial Survey & Photography has an Operational Authorisation from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) for the use of drones – Authorisation number PDRA01-22563, and we are qualified to the CAA GVC level. We also hold the relevant insurances for drone flying in the UK. We can co-ordinate any works in Flight Restriction Zones (FRZ) for drones, such as airports, prisons and nuclear power facilities.

In addition to inspection photography we can also provide photo-mosaic maps (ortho-mosaics) of sites for inspection, progress monitoring or for reference in documents.

To accompany the roof inspection imagery, we can provide condition assessment reports of roofs based on the inspection photography (the company owner is a member of the Institute of Roofing).

While not being a substitute for manual inspection of roofs and structures, drones (especially under the control of an experienced roofing surveyor) can provide an economical, quick and safe alternative to the use of ladders, tower scaffolds and cherry-pickers, which are the more traditional means of accessing roofs. The drone allows information to be obtained about a roof where manual access is impractical, or undesirable.

Visual inspection through remote photography can only provide external imagery of a roof and cannot provide detailed information on underlying issues in the substrate. However it is often the case that detailed imagery of the roof covering, while identifying obvious defects with the roof, will also give indications of specific problems in the substrate which can the be utilised to efficiently plan targeted further manual inspection.

Drone imagery of any elevated assets such as chimneys, towers or high-level parapets is often a viable alternative to attempting manual inspection of these features.

Away from inspection work, we enjoy the more creative side of photography and regularly provide imagery – photo or video – of completed roofing projects for contractors. With experience in roofing contracting, we tend to understand which aspects of a new roof installation a contractor will be most proud of and focus our cameras on those aspects from elevated viewpoints. The key is to emphasise a contractor’s quality workmanship.